“I can imagine as an apocalyptic: let it go down. I have no spiritual investment in the world as it is.” — Jacob Taubes
In his “On the Concept of History,” the messianic-communist philosopher Walter Benjamin asks us to imagine an angel who is unable to stop the suffering of the world. The angel cannot do anything at all but be witness to the ruin of the world, because the angel cannot close their wings, which are held open by a strong storm called “progress.” Before this angel is the entirety of history as wreckage and ruin, one single catastrophe piled up before the angel. The proof of this vision of history is given in the remarks by Benjamin that feel as if they could have been written today as we marvel at the stupidity and cruelty that must be protested over and over, “One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is _not_ philosophical.”
For those of us who seek something otherwise than history on the dance floor, the hagiography of raving does not serve us well in this moment. When Pat Parker tells us that “they will come” and asks “where will you be, when they come,” it simply is not true that techno or dancing or this community will save us. For too many “they” have already come and “we” have done very little, almost nothing, precisely as is allowed by the demands to survive in the world. In a very real sense, _we are them_. The hagiography of the dance floor may allow us to imagine that the reason the party sucks has everything to do with them, but the dance floor is us and we share it alike with our favorites and violence workers from Palantir, lovers and unkown abusers, those who are committed to this life despite the financial burden and those who fund their lifestyles with dirty family money, and so many of us are substance users whose favorite chemicals are caught up in exchanges of violence beyond any single person’s control, as well as other angels with dirty faces.
Crafting a slow burn that ends in ecstatic and intentionally wasteful movement, this mix meditates on the idea that techno is not about release, not about community as a mystical body hiding its relationship to power, not even about freedom in the usual sense we take the term. Perhaps the power of techno's 4/4 beat is the way it captivates, allowing for somatic and sonic access to the deeper experience of world-captivation. To recognize techno and the movements it provokes in the body as a meditation on the inextricable link between submission and resistance may allow us to to reject the hagiography of the dance floor and recognize that in the struggle for pleasure the greater struggle is with the self. That even if and when the external oppressor is subdued, the oppressor within us may still lie in ambush. Techno allows us to give attention to the idea that the meaning of liberation might be the very undoing of the borders between us and them, between good and evil, between servitude and freedom.
As these thoughts guide the mix, brought tracks by friends into conversation with older and new tracks by some of my favorite contemporary producers. I have also included a number of my own unreleased tracks as well as two off of my recent EP, available on Cathexis Records. Track IDs happily available upon request.
