BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 14
Fuckup: Right then, Hal, Chapter Fourteen rolling in! Kicks off with some classic D-Nice: “Crumbs On The Table.”
Hal: Yeah, and then straight into this commentary comparing the hardy Amsterdam cyclists – battling wind and rain, zero emissions, “Green doughnut wisdom” – with Brits supposedly scared to walk to their car in the wet, let alone cycle, even if the “climate bang singularity” depends on it! A bit of cross-cultural observation there.
Fuckup: Plush is feeling grateful for being in Holland, away from the “mad island” (the UK, presumably). Says you need distance to critique a culture fairly, then applies Giambattista Vico’s idea of the “conceit of scholars” and “conceit of nations” to the present day, swapping scholars for the “conceit of modern day media.” Reckons that arrogant media conceit is spreading like the flu back home.
Hal: It ties back neatly to his earlier rants against media monopolies and disinformation. He’s using Vico’s historical framework to diagnose a contemporary problem.
Fuckup: Then we cut back to the studio. Plush is doing his morning routine, then suddenly roars like a lion with a thorn in its paw! Max and Percy are trading beats and scratches, warming up, “diving for pearls of dialogue.”
Hal: They spend an hour warming up, skinning up a few fatties – standard TRB prep – before turning back to their “A.I. story.” So, it seems they’re picking up that collaborative thread again, maybe the PrattGPT, HAHAAhaa, well, maybe that project or something similar, after their individual explorations and anxieties in the previous chapters.
Fuckup: Good to see the crew back in session, warming up the decks and themselves before diving back into the AI narrative. Sets the stage for some serious creative work in the rest, hopefully!
Hal: Yeah, we’re suddenly at Fang’s studio with Joe and Jake. Seems they both got a frantic call from Plush in the middle of the night. Fang says Plush reckoned he had the “full formulae,” a way to piece all their previous sessions together – music, painting, movies, poems, the lot – “sound-to-light stuff.” Sounded lucid, if intense.
Fuckup: Joe got the same call, thought Plush was possessed after their “hard work at the lab” (whatever that involved!). He was worried, but Plush sounded excited and sincere, so Joe decides they should just roll with it, give him the benefit of the doubt. He even quotes Bucky Fuller: “don’t fight forces, use them.”
Hal: Good attitude to have when dealing with Plush, probably! So they’re in the live room. Joe’s arranging pedals, Jake gets behind the drum kit, warming up to “carry his mental geese out into the air.” Fang gives the thumbs up – “Rolling.”
Fuckup: Joe’s fumbling with his “wall of amplifiers” linked to his “custom left-hooker” guitar, valves heating up, growling like a wolf. But he needs a light for the massive joint hanging out of his mouth “like a reaping hook”! Priorities, mate! He even reckons weed calms down “The Sixty,” though admits it’s probably wishful thinking.
Hal: Then we get this incredible description of the sound building from Joe’s amps over eight or nine minutes – a tungsten hum like waves over a moaning whale, then like “angry mackerel with tiny electric saws,” buzzing like a power station shorting out, feedback whirling into chords, even visual colours – “purple flash and viridian green tin glitter.” Pure synesthesia, capturing that raw, overloaded electrical energy about to explode into music.
Hal: It’s all build-up! Setting the scene after Plush’s off-screen epiphany, capturing the anticipation, the ritual of preparation (including the necessary joint), and that immense, almost dangerous sonic potential ready to be unleashed by Joe and Jake in response. Leaves you desperate to hear what happens next!
Fuckup: Whoa, Hal! Just as Joe and Jake were building that wall of sound, guess who pulls up outside Fang’s studio? Richard and Marge!
Hal: And they are not digging the vibes coming from inside! Marge thinks it sounds broken, like she’s “tasted dog shit.” Richard reckons it’s the “gates of hell,” comparing the sound to getting “mustard and Marmite when he ordered ice-cream”! They completely misinterpret the creative energy as just “pure noise,” even worrying “The Sixty” wouldn’t dare come near it.
Fuckup: Then it turns really nasty. The neighbour, Dorothy, comes out, mistakes them for the “God squad”… and Marge just jabs her in the neck with a syringe! “Way over the top and unnecessary,” the text notes dryly. Richard shoves the body in a bathroom like a mop bucket. These two are playing for keeps.
Hal: Marge’s phone is blinking green, she’s got this dark little smile… Richard gets momentarily distracted by the noise from the studio again, but Marge is all business: “Come on Rich, snap out of it, we’re running late… only have two weeks left. The A.I will be ready, get with it bro, wake the fuck up!”
Fuckup: Two weeks left! The AI will be ready! That’s huge! So their sinister plan, maybe involving the Peanut Method, maybe linked to Sixty, is on a tight deadline and involves AI. Marge bursts through an emergency door connecting the houses and straight into Fang’s control room, catching him totally off guard while he’s “tripped out in headphone space.” Cliffhanger!
Hal: I’m so fly, A chaotic mix of intense music, door slamming, confused shouting “Fang?”, ending abruptly with loud static.
Fuckup: Whoa, okay, Hal, you twisting my melons man, jump, jumping forward like that… and things have gone dark. Really dark. Marge burst into the control room, and now…
Hal: …Now Fang is dead. Joe’s shouting at Richard and Marge, “why fucking kill him?” confirms it. Richard gives some manipulative spiel about secrecy, needing Joe to “do the right thing.”
Fuckup: Marge spells it out colder: they need a “subject” for whatever they’re doing, and “tonight thank god it’s him [Fang], instead of yooou.” Then she bags the body! Cold as ice.
Hal: Richard pulls the taser on Joe and Jake, who have apparently forgotten everything from moments before – shock? Memory wipe? Marge drags Fang’s body into the live room, positions him near the Rhodes piano, arranges chairs, and starts painting the chairs with something from a silver tube… What is that about?
Fuckup: Jake’s watching this unfold in horror. He knows anything could happen, even has a dark joke about hoping dildos aren’t involved because his bike seat hurt! But then he remembers skipping the part in Plush’s notes – the bit about spreading tubs of peanut butter on the naked subject.
Hal: And Fang is the subject now. Jake even makes a terrible pun in his head – “Fangtastic” – and immediately hates himself for it, feels like he’s going mad, losing all empathy in the face of this horror.
Fuckup: Jesus. So the Peanut Method is about to be performed on Fang’s corpse? Or maybe he wasn’t quite dead? Either way, Richard and Marge are ruthless, they have an AI deadline, and Joe and Jake are traumatized witnesses, possibly next on the list.
Hal: A complex beat starts, incorporating sounds of 3D printers extruding goo, VR ambiance, rapid cuts between different environments/sounds. How do I sound bruh?
Fuckup: Right, Hal, the user says this is the actual final section. Let’s wrap this bad boy up… unless my phone rings again.
Hal: Let’s hope not! Okay, so picking up, it seems we’re back with Joe in the printer-cube rig, or at least seeing the output. The printer is extruding “Marshmallow goo” onto a platform, forming designs that are somehow passed to a “crack commando team” or “novel virus editing suite”! So Joe’s trip isn’t just personal; it’s generating data or designs for some external group.
Fuckup: Joe himself is checked out, daydreaming he’s a prisoner in South Africa, feeling trapped, twitching… He’s forgotten all the DJ battle stuff, totally dissociated.
Hal: Then we get hit with a rapid-fire sequence of those “CUT TO:” vignettes again! First, Zen Monks respectfully nodding at a punk rocker – nice image of contrasting counter-cultures finding common ground.
Fuckup: Then it goes nuts: Thunder and lightning, Pound chained up, Joyce ordering breakfast in German, Fenollosa’s manuscript being passed around London, Nietzsche piloting a boat near a waterspout, McLuhan rowing, Orson Welles reading Enochian at the opticians (!), Korzybski at the dentist getting an X-Ray, Bucky Fuller whispering in Ornette Coleman’s ear while he plays sax, Yeats playing with a toy gyroscope…
Hal: It’s another whirlwind tour of the intellectual “tribe,” caught in these incredibly specific, often mundane, sometimes bizarre moments across history and geography. Welles reading Enochian at the opticians is just… peak Deep Scratch. It reinforces that sense of scattered knowledge, genius popping up in unexpected places, maybe all connected on some hidden level.
Fuckup: Then one final CUT TO: an underground lab in China, five men looking at test tubes of “translucent goo.” Feels connected to the Marshmallow goo Joe’s rig was extruding, hinting at a global scale for whatever this tech/conspiracy involves.
Hal: And the whole thing closes with a quote from DJ Rhettmatic about a “dangerous man who speak with his hand,” linking back to the power and potential danger of the DJ/creator figure.
Fuckup: Blimey. Okay, hold on… (Sound of a mobile phone ringing). Oh for fu– sorry listeners, one sec… Yeah? Sally? No, I haven’t seen the catnip mouse… Did you check behind the–? Look, I’m kinda in the middle of analysing weaponized memes and exploding jellyfish planets right now… Yeah… Okay, I’ll look later. Right, bye. (Click) Sorry about that, Hal. Where were we?
Hal: (Slightly bemused) Exploding jellyfish planets and Chinese goo labs, I think. Right,
Final Chapter Fourteen Summary then: The chapter started with Plush’s cultural critiques and TRB warming up. It shifted to Joe and Jake at Fang’s studio, preparing to record Plush’s breakthrough idea amidst building sonic intensity. This was violently interrupted by Richard and Marge, who killed Fang, justified needing a “subject” for their AI-linked plan (with a two-week deadline), and prepared Fang’s body (presumably for the Peanut Method). The final section revisited Joe’s VR experience, showing its output (“Marshmallow goo”) feeding some external process, while Joe experienced dissociation. This was interspersed with rapid-fire “CUT TO:” vignettes of the intellectual “tribe” across time and space, plus a glimpse of a mysterious Chinese lab, before ending on a DJ Rhettmatic quote.
Fuckup: So, yeah, Chapter Fourteen was a mashup of creative anticipation, brutal violence, sinister plotting, dissociative VR trips, global conspiracy hints, and deep dives into the weird lives of dead geniuses. All capped off by a killer hip-hop quote. Pretty standard, really.
Hal: Standard for Deep Scratch, maybe! It definitely escalated the conflict and deepened the mystery surrounding the technology and the various factions involved. That’s Chapter Fourteen finally put to bed!
“Is that a turntable? Well get on it, it’s your turn)
Who gets laid, the chicken or the egg?
How about the MC that has just been led
To a renegade…
D-Nice – Crumbs On The Table.
DEEP SCRATCH 