Plural Machine

One of my photographs of the fabled sound mirrors at Denge has been used as the cover image for Eden Grey's new recording, an atmospheric, modular synth-derived soundscape. Taken on a close, ominous July day in 2014, the photo fits the sonic atmospheres well.  Listen here .

Despite its undoubted cultural vitality, Glasgow has often had a grim reputation, especially south of the English border. Yet the very bleakness, exacerbated by epic mismanagement, aggressive deindustrialization and sectarianism has also made it a site of constant and sometimes tragically over-ambitious attempts at utopian regeneration. This can be seen in the now highly poignant film Glasgow 1980 , which was already being quietly forgotten and surpassed by harsh reality even before the city had reached the year the film is supposed to depict. It poignantly promised a gleaming, post-industrial future in which "muscle gives way to automation." Yet in between the completion of the film and 1980, the oil shock and economic slowdown shattered the dreams of its makers and backers. Relatively little of the utopian plans (which to some already seemed dystopian) was ever built and many of the hopes of the "white heat of technology" era came to nothing. Other buildings...

Last Saturday I join a pan-European group of friends and c. 700, 000 others on the People's March. As I explained to a Japanese journalist, we were there as we felt we had no choice. I have the sense that many in the country feel that if they just keep their heads down and give the Brexit People what they want, then they'll be satisfied. This is a huge mistake. The elite mob of disaster capitalists, neofeudalists and kleptocrats may not be unstoppable, but they are absolutely insatiable. Ultimately, nothing will satisfy their lust for blood and power, so it is better to make a stand now while it's still possible than to have to wrest back control from them amidst the Hard Brexit chaos they dream of. The most hard-hitting banner: Farage as English F ührer  I've been on 2 previous marches on this subject, but this was a huge increase in numbers and energy. Apart from a tiny pro-Trump mob outside Brexerspoons on Whitehall, there was no opposition. The weigh and spiri...

Join us for the London launch of the English/German book Gesamtkunstwerk Laibach , a collection of new perspectives on the work of the group. Co-editor Uwe Schütte will present the book and this will be followed by a panel discussing their own selections of Laibach videos: Alexei Monroe will analyse  Mi kujemo bodočnost 1983 Simon Bell  will analyse  Opus Dei (Life is Life) Michael Goddard  will analyse  Wirtschaft ist Tot Uwe Schütte  will analyse  Germania Codex Europa will play a selection of rare and lesser-known Laibach pieces, alongside a few classics. Tickets are available on the door or f rom the venue website .

Quatermass is a story of the future ... but perhaps only a few years from now. What might be in store for us if our civilisation were to come under terrible unforeseen strain. Nigel Kneale, 1979. I saw the final Quatermass TV series as an impressionable 10 year old. Like many of my generation, it's stayed with me ever since. The earlier Quatermass films and TV series are more respected critically and writer Nigel Kneale himself had reservations about the way the 1979 instalment was realised. Yet however imperfect it is, it does have great poetic dystopian power. At the time, the urban warfare and mad cults it depicts were (correctly) taken as Kneale's somewhat bitter look back in anger at the social and political chaos of the 1960s and 1970s. It's forgotten that Kneale was looking forwards as much as backwards. In a feature for the TV Times to promote the series, he argued that the near total collapse of civilisation that he foresaw might be just a few years awa...

Title slide of my presentation. Image of the doomed Birmingham Central Library, June 2015. Photo by A.M. Last week I spoke at the Nonument Symposium in Ljubljana, focussing on the way that 'Brutalism' is used and abused in contemporary culture. The renewed cult popularity of Brutalism is a phenomenon I've been observing with a mixture of fascination, enjoyment, ambivalence and disgust for some time and the lecture had a packed agenda. It was an attempt to try and decode the various agendas and interests circling around Brutalism and to track them. I analysed a range of examples, from internet culture to contemporary design to industrial music to science-fiction.  Brutalism as a (life)style or even an attitude is arguably more 'sexy' and, for some, virtuous than ever, yet many of its most iconic structures are now being demolished or de-brutalised through cladding - a term now synonymous with the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire. Image of the doomed Birmi...

18th November saw the opening of the first ever British exhibition by Autopsia. It also marked the publication of my 2nd book,  Autopsia: Thanatopolis , the first extended study on the work of the group. I devised the Thanatopolis (city of death) concept while working on the book. It seemed highly appropriate, given Autopsia's artistic focus on death and the destructive, if not fatal, social and economic forces that roam freely in Neofeudal London. The conclusion of the book speculates on the technologically-driven future of art and culture in a Thanatotic city and culture. Autopsia had its roots in the Punk and industrial scenes of late 1970s London and so it was natural (and long overdue) the project should symbolically return to the city that helped inspire it. The exhibition featured several new works and worked well in the cold, gloomy interior of the Horse Hospital. Early 1980s works were featured ... Alongside Autopsia's latest sardon...

For the past few years I've been working intensively with Test Dept and Peter Webb on a comprehensive archival book documenting their work and its impact. I've contributed an introductory text and two shorter texts on the group's work. Full details of the book and where to buy it will be available soon. Total State Machine will be published by PC-Press on April 23rd and this will be marked by a special event at The Ritzy in Brixton . A premiere screening of DS30 , documenting Test Dept's monumental 2014 installation and video project on the River Tyne will be accompanied by a selection of Test Dept archive material on film and video. This will be followed by a Q & A with founding members Graham Cunnington, Angus Farquhar and Paul Jamrozy. Special DJ sets will be provided by Scanner and Shelley Parker. www.testdept.org.uk
 www.pc-press.co.uk

I have a major new text, in this excellent collection edited by Marc James Léger. ' Sponsored by Self-Management? Re-Constructing the Context and Consequences of Laibach’s Monumental Retro- Avant-Garde ' looks at the subject through the prism of pre- and post-war Yugoslav architecture and features rare Laibach illustrations. Full details on the book can be found on the Manchester University Press website .

I've been working intensively on the publication of Total State Machine a book on the history of Test Dept, which I've co-edited with the group and Peter Webb. I've also written the introduction to the book, which contains a wealth of archival photos and documents plus tour diaries, new texts and exclusive interviews. More information on the  P.C. Press  website.

Pluralni Monolit/WAT launch event, Vila Bled, 07.09.2003 The first edition of my book on Laibach and NSK was launched exactly 10 years ago to the day at Vila Bled, Slovenia, in a hall used by Tito for diplomatic receptions. This is an edited version of my presentation at the launch events in Bled and Ljubljana... This all began twenty-three years ago in Trbovlje when posters briefly appeared with a black cross and the word “Laibach”. No-one then could have imagined we would be here today, presenting this , but in the end time always catches up with itself. What would the former resident of this place have made of this gathering and his place on the cover of the book? Perhaps the situation seems even stranger because this book is not by a Slovene author. What right does a foreign author have to come here and present your history? The same right that Laibach and NSK had to respond to the cultures and symbols that intruded on their space. These artists took for themselves a rig...

I'l be giving a talk entitled From Electronic Terror to Electronic Terrorism: Dr. Who Soundtracks and Industrial Music as Sonic Dystopianism . This is a sequel to the Doctor Who and The Death Factory talk from last year and will include new audiovisual examples and other material. You can view the programme of the conference here . There are papers on preserving electronic music, classic equipment, the work of Daphne Oram and more. The event will conclude with a concert marking the 80th birthday of EMS pioneer Peter Zinovieff. Doctor Who and The Death Factory is an evolving project and I've created a youtube playlist to demonstrate its arguments. More news on this work will follow...

Pri zeleni zajec, Ljubljana. Photo by A.M. After a long hiatus I've re-activated my Stag research blog , images and leads are welcome...

Kraftwerk in Tate Modern. Photo by A.M. I've seen Kraftwerk four times. Firstly in 1991 on The Mix Tour at Brixton Academy. Next in 1992 at a “secret” warm-up gig at Norwich University before the Greenpeace show in Manchester. Then at the epic midnight show at Brixton in 2004 and (possibly but not necessarily) finally at Tate Modern.   In the aftermath of David Cameron's speech on the European question and open discussion of a British exit from the E.U., the high-profile arrival of an explicitly European German group with a futuristic vision couldn't have been more timely. The Robots . Photo by A.M. All the Tate Modern shows opened with The Robots , possibly because the 3D effects are amongst the most impressive (at least on this particular night). The figures looked colossal and the monstrous, slowly rotating robot hands were both ridiculous and threatening. I had never imagined I would see the majority of the Radio-Acti...