BRD Written by Fareed Haque. @GarajMahalMusic is: @FareedHaqueMusic, Kai Eckhardt, Oz Ezzeldin, Hassan Hurd. Video content generated using Gemini Veo. The creator intends to plant a tree for each full video and encourages anybody who enjoys this video to go support a local artist, or plant a tree, or both! Visit http://www.garajmahal.us and Patreon.com/stevefly
ON THE CUTS…
Amsterdam, 2012. DJ-poet Plush, reeling from attacks that shattered his career, forms TRB with Max and Percy. Inspired by Robert Anton Wilson, they fuse turntablism, magick, and literature into the chaotic TribeTable Method, accidentally plugging into Wilson’s unfinished “Tale of the Tribe” and a brewing historical conspiracy centered on the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
As they juggle invoked entities (“The Sixty”), time-traveling tardigrades, and messages channeled through experimental beats, they attract the attention of a ruthless cabal manipulating reality through AI, populism, and bizarre rituals involving peanut butter. From Amsterdam coffeeshops and secret bases beneath the Malvern Hills to the decks of a reality-bending DJ battle, TRB must decode the “Hologrammic Prose” of the universe, hijack the narrative, and fight the “Prick Populist” threat before the singularity hits endgame.Deep Scratch is Vanta Black science fiction comedy.
It’s Burroughs cut-ups slammed into Pynchon paranoia, fueled by hip-hop aesthetics and occult theory. Expect prophetic visions, weaponized memes, sentient technology, talking books, exploding jellyfish, and the desperate search for the perfect beat in a deep fake universe. The tables are turning. Which side are you on, are you on, hello, check check…?
Happy New Yeah I’ll Write Then…
Dedicated to those who didn’t make it through the brutal 2024, and those who may feel forgotten, left behind or overlooked. The world is a better place with you in it, innit, just don’t get any big ideas, like saving the planet, okay. Phew, it’s a lot, innit, and only increasing as each year rolls by, the older you get the more you have to process, and balance the exponential reality check-book. Selective memory and the swiftly forgotten as a survival measure. You are that which remains, I am that which remains, so here we remain the remains of the day.
Here some past present future tensions stretched and shrunk to fit the purpose. Stuff I think about, in review, inner and outer, subjective and attempted objective, half full and half empty looking glass. Hopes and fears, everybody does it. Short term nostalgia trip and honest scribble for any readers who got this far.
What was real in 2024? I ask of myself and the outsiders. What is true or true enough to get some group of believers or other, on board with the bare cult minimum of effort. New loops lie ahead on history’s rollercoaster, only just finished and designed by a drunken lunatic, and we’re zooming upside down and around, some well strapped in, some with hands in the air, some standing as we go over the top and around the bend.
The challenge to keep one’s head, while seemingly others lose theirs to some ideology or other, some big dada or saviour, some scam, yet it’s all many have. A rude and crass “i told you so” or “you’re very wrong” does not help, the result is the same. Creeping insanity, don’t call it genocide, the feeling that you’re the only one who thinks this or that way, locked off, isolated in a world of self doubt and a lack of confidence, well shit, pick up that pen, that brush, that instrument, that rhyme, get it down and out. Now.
Write, draw, play, speak, now’s the time. It’s for your own good, don’t expect fame or fortunes, go for sanity and therapy. Order, chaos, complexity, disorder, in various ratios, plus harmony, sense, knowledge, understanding, try to figure it out for yourself first. Test it. Take it easy, the world is not all your problem. Start small, be thankful for what you’ve got, try to make it make sense. Be the altruism and benevolence you wish to see in the world. Yes, these are positive reinforcement messages from my toilet wall.
And try to remember, after covid, 80% of incumbent candidates, those currently in office, lost in 2024 elections, worldwide. Change, in a political sense, swept across the chess board like a powerful haunting super fart, turning over unprepared governments like bowling pins, upsetting apple carts and causing distress to many rational thinking people. Populism, powered by collective post-covid, post-truth psychosis, rears its ugly head, in the spirit of vulture capitalism, or disaster capitalism, these ravenous birds of prey snatch away the hungry, disenfranchised, vulnerable and angry into their clutches. Bejewelled birds of prey, covered in priceless diamond rings, rubies and emeralds, the richest birds paid up by the richest apex predator: Musk. 2024 is his year, the year of the Musk man, emotionally derelict, money talks and bullshit walks all over what tatters of the constitution remain after the feeding frenzy by sharks and hyenas, lawyers and crooked supreme justices over decades. And the climate and the climate. Wars and war, arms and arms. Don”t call it genocide, follow the rules of war, arms sales but fly no flags. Arms race, race race. Too many still profit from disaster, from disaster too many turn away. Union strong, truth and honesty strong, small is beautiful, stronger together in 2025. Deeee escalate. What of the tribe and the tale of 2024, the tech fash bros and lurch toward theocracy, a second coming closer, a fake saviour, devil in tanned disguise, as Elvis said.
Yet, here we are. So, what’s next you lot? What text, image, sound, video, real, fake, co-created or hallucinated? What what what. Our new duty, or one of em’, is to cohere, to pull it all together into digestible chunks of a bloody big healthy cake, a slice of bitter sweet 2024, on the flipper side there’s Crypto Fash Hyper Crime Family Strokes, or some such new U.S sitcom. United States drama mind creep, season two of the worst unreality TV show ever. Trump, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist in chief. What now my cuddlies, what now? Well, let the suicide squad enter a hate induced coma.
Continue as you were, poet, artist, philosopher, wit, romantic. Forget about the chicken hawk show, conceive of a kind of Buddhist reality construct, where all human beings are like equally coming Buddhas, full compassion for all sentient beings, including them, they, the Trumpers and worse. It’s inside us all somewhere, maybe misplaced or misidentified, the love is there. One way forward, truly, but not so popular in a rage and rant world, is forgiveness, albeit, coated in L.S.D. Love harder and deeper, more broadly. Keep a grip of yourself. Hold onto others tight. Thou shall not kill or swindle others out of their neurons. More self help slogans for your uncle’s garage wall.
2025 will be a year of pulling away from social media and unpublishing some work, closing accounts and encouraging others to do the same. The time and energy saved will, with luck, funnel into alternate avenues to reach people based on analogue media. Art, craft, performance, workshops, hanging out.
The AI is not to be feared or rejected, we must organize and use every means at our disposal to build that better world of abundance for all, attained without lies, violence and threats. Continue the work and don’t expect any recognition or thanks because such expectations may cause you to want to quit. Never give up. Work on kindness and sharing, tolerance and spreading love, there’s enough people already working on the opposites to these virtues.
Sincerely wishing you all a piece of peace pie, success, health, healing, learning, giggles and clarity in 2025.
The following collection of experiments with Stable Diffusion 2.1 are dedicated to the great Vermeer, and in celebration of his current show at the Rijksmuesum, right here in Amsterdam, where I’m sitting now. I’ve seen a lot of pretty naff’ posters, and promotional artwork for the show, the girl with the peal earring is all over the place. I wanted to print some of these out in various sizes and formats and scatter them about the exhibition. I wonder what you think about them?
–Steve Fly.
Thanks to everybody who made this possible.
–Steve Fly
Order a signed copy via www.patreon.com/stevefly
Into the 90s crates of dusty mellow cuts, selected and mixed on the fly. File under downtempo trip hop, chill beats and instrumental healing tones. Excuse the wonky mixes and wonky turntable that decides when it wants to quartz lock, keeping me on my toes.
Shout out to all Ninja and Mo-Wax heads, nods to the dope soundtrack beat necks. Featuring tracks by Funki Porcini, Raw Deal, Pressure Drop, The Heliocentrics, DJ Krush and more. Recorded 8th October, Amsterdam
Episode 871 is coming from Radio Free Amsterdam’s Detroit headquarters at 55 Peterboro St. where I’m continuing my recovery from open heart surgery and featuring an hour of new music from guitarist Lurrie Bell’s album Let’s Talk About Love—including Let’s Talk About Love,” “Chicago Is Loaded with the Blue,” “Earthquake and Hurricane,” “Cold Chills,” “Feeling Good,” “Directly From My Heart To Yours,” “Turn To Me,” “Missing You,” “Why Am I Treated So Bad,” “Winehead Woman,” “You Ought To Be Ashamed,” and “My Dog Can’t Bark”—interspersed with conversational segments with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens of Big City Rhythm & Blues magazine.
The John Sinclair Foundation Presents
LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE
Cass Corridor, Detroit, July 7, 2020 [20453]
Yusef Lateef: Happyology
Lurrie Bell: Let’s Talk About Love
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Chicago Is Loaded with the Blues
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Earthquake and Hurricane
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Cold Chills
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Feeling Good
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Directly From My Heart To Yours
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Turn To Me
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Missing You
Lurrie Bell Conversation with Robert Jr. Whitall & Sugar Mae Owens
Lurrie Bell: Why Am I Treated So Bad
Lurrie Bell: Winehead Woman
Lurrie Bell: You Ought To Be Ashamed
Lurrie Bell: My Dog Can’t Bark
Charlie Parker: They Can’t Take That Away From Me
A JOINT PRODUCTION
Hosted by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Program produced, edited, assembled & annotated by John Sinclair
Executive Producer: Steve Pratt
© 2020 The John Sinclair Foundation
DEEP SCRATCH 