BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 09
Fuckup: Here we go, Chapter Nine, ‘Geomancy Lights’! Starts smooth with some Sarah Vaughn… “When we’re alone…”
Hal: …And immediately cuts to Plush not being alone, but ranting so loud about some new DJ school in Amsterdam that he can be heard two doors down! So much for the penthouse serenade!
Fuckup: He’s absolutely fuming, sees the school as a total con, just marketing bullshit from the big tech manufacturers who he reckons already own all the music, games, and films. That anti-monopoly, anti-commercialization nerve is being hit hard again.
Hal: He’s so worked up he has to call Max to vent, and the rant is epic: Calls DJs “Tepid insectoid entities” playing Top 40 while doing the splits, says Serato ads are worse than Tesco ads, and declares he wants to play “furious black sludge metal” and gargle lyrics about “Satan eating advertising executives and marketing execs for breakfast, dinner and supper.” Blimey!
Fuckup: Pure, undiluted rage there! But Max plays the calming influence, the pragmatist. He suggests maybe the school isn’t all bad, maybe the marketeers could even help spread good vibes… He even carefully stops himself mentioning Dr Briq, clearly aware of the deeper paranoia fueling Plush’s anger.
Hal: Max’s internal thoughts are really interesting too. He sees Plush has good ideas, even commercially viable ones, but knows Plush’s “militant anti-capitalist” streak and desire to just “obsolete capitalists with open-source freeware” gets in the way. He sees Plush expects mountains to move overnight.
Fuckup: It’s a great insight into their dynamic. Plush the furious idealist, maybe bordering on self-sabotage, wanting total revolution now. Max understanding the vision but also the market forces and Plush’s own challenging temperament.
Hal: This opening sets up a conflict between Plush’s radical anti-commercial ethos and the encroaching reality of the corporatized creative world, filtered through his intense personality and Max’s more pragmatic lens. The Geomancy Lights might be shining, but Plush is seeing red!
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, Plush seems to have chilled out a bit after his rant, possibly with help from his friend… uh… Kush. Now he’s getting back to the core system.
Hal: Yeah, he’s sketching out lists, seems like he’s defining the actual components of his Tribetable Method, maybe expanding on the earlier Turntable Method ideas. This looks like the technical manual section!
Fuckup: First up, the DISKS. This blows the whole concept wide open. It’s not just vinyl! He lists Retina lens, Skull, Cells, Shell, Stone, Eyeball, Tree trunk, Lillypad… alongside Turntable, Platter, Slip-mat. Natural forms, body parts, abstract concepts like Sigils… He calls them “Disks of Earth,” an interface between symbols and language/objects. He even mentions holographic projections appearing above them using VR/AR – connecting back to that tech critique.
Hal: Then the Disk TEMPLATES. This is the software layer, the knowledge systems mapped onto these diverse disks. We knew about Thoth Tarot, Astrology, Enochian Tables, Mayan Codex. But look what else is here: Harmonic Musical Intervals, Chinese Ideograms (like Fenollosa!), CNS RNA/DNA maps, the Periodic Table, Beth Luis Nion (that’s the Celtic Ogham alphabet, right?), even a Cannabis Terpene Index and the Chinese Zodiac! He’s trying to integrate everything – ancient alphabets, modern science, music theory, genetics, weed science – into his system, mapping it all onto beats and rotations.
Fuckup: The ambition is staggering! And then he lists the actual physical Disk MEDIUMS: Hemp, Wax, Clay, Wood, Glass, Metal, Stone, Pearl, Flesh, Papyrus, Fungus, Perspex, Vinyl, Cuttlefish bone… It’s organic, mineral, synthetic… deeply elemental.
Hal: Followed by the ETCHING AGENTS used to mark these mediums: Saliva, Water, Spice Dyes, Blood, Sperm, Dew, Coconut milk, Chalk, Toad-slime, Venom, Ink, Tears… This is getting into full-on bodily fluids, natural substances, poisons… it feels less like DJing and more like chaos magick or alchemy, using the most fundamental substances to inscribe symbols onto these varied discs.
Fuckup: Absolutely. This section really pulls back the curtain on the how. It shows the Tribetable Method isn’t just metaphor; Plush conceives of it as this incredibly complex, multi-layered system grounded in a vast array of symbolic templates, inscribed onto diverse physical mediums (from skulls to vinyl) using elemental and biological agents.
Hal: It’s the ultimate fusion of ancient knowledge, modern science, DJ technique, and potent natural/bodily substances. This is the engine room for the reality-hacking, narrative-invoking weirdness we’ve been seeing. Serious “table magick” indeed!
Fuckup: Alright, Hal, let’s keep Chapter Nine, ‘Geomancy Lights’, spinning. What’s Plush up to now?
Hal: Well, first we get this description seemingly projected from his chest – interpreting The Hermit card from the Thoth Tarot. It’s dense with symbolism: “Yod, father sperm-hand serpent with a wand, or sword-stafford,” geometric patterns, the Orphic Egg, Cerberus… topped off with a cryptic serpent quote. He’s really embodying these archetypes.
Fuckup: Then he reflects on his twelve years working on this “turntable fiction,” acknowledging the cost – lost gigs, failures, wrong decisions. “Fail harder,” his true friends apparently say. He still believes the “new tech” – tables, mixer, discs – enables dialogue and sees this “MPHDJ neurolink” as the ultimate goal.
Hal: But he immediately catches himself wallowing: “Oi, stop tripping yourself up with this crappy depression and guilt…” He even compares himself to a ventriloquist commentating on his own puppet writing about writing! That self-awareness is sharp.
Fuckup: He considers the Tarot cards as 78 discs (or 39 double-sided, perhaps?), then drops a friend’s pun: “put the Jung in Jungle and the type in archetype.” Love that! Linking depth psychology, breakbeat music, and universal symbols in one go.
Hal: And crucially, the text mentions him “pouring over sections from The Art of Memory.” That’s Frances Yates’ seminal work on classical and Renaissance mnemonic techniques – memory palaces, using vivid imagery and locations to store and recall vast amounts of information. This explicitly connects Plush’s whole system – the TribeTable, the Tarot correspondences, Bruno’s seals – to this ancient tradition of structured memory and creative association.
Fuckup: So his seemingly chaotic methods have deep historical roots! He’s not just randomly cutting things up; he’s arguably practicing a technologically updated version of the Ars Memoriae, using turntables and esoteric symbols instead of architectural loci.
Hal: Exactly! It grounds his practice in a very specific, very powerful intellectual and magical lineage focused on organizing knowledge and enhancing imagination through structured systems. That adds a whole new layer of understanding to what he’s trying to achieve with his table magick.
Fuckup: Right, the last bit of Chapter Nine, ‘Geomancy Lights’. Plush is getting proper meta again, moaning about how hard it is to write about scratching. Says it’s like “dancing about boxing” when everyone’s got 8K drone footage anyway. Why bother with commentary? A bit cynical, even for him!
Hal: It’s a fair point, capturing a dynamic, multi-sensory art form in words is tough. But he pushes on, “typing with just two fingers” – bless him – and then lays down this incredible list of actual scratch techniques…
Fuckup: Go on then, Hal, you’re the analyst. Give us the full breakdown of the Boomerang vs. the Baby-Crab scratch, state its cultural significance in the mid-90s San Francisco underground scene…
Hal: I’m sorry, Fuckup. I’m afraid I can’t do that. My programming doesn’t extend to embodied turntablist knowledge. I can say, however, that listing them like this – boomerang, baby-crab, autobahn, flare scribble, stab wah, chirp, jackhammer, whippet, orbit, hydroplane, transformer, zig-zag – really hammers home the complexity and the established vocabulary within turntablism. It grounds all the high-flying esoteric stuff we’ve discussed in actual, named, physical techniques.
Fuckup: (Scoffs) Fine, fine. Spoilsport. He goes on about “infinite permutations,” “Millions of possible juggles,” telling DJs not to be boring – “Mix it up,” use the “new tools for the trade” to blend, rub, repeat, reframe… Sounds like he’s pep-talking himself as much as anyone else.
Hal: So, Chapter Nine Summary (‘Geomancy Lights’): This chapter saw Plush railing against the commercialization of DJ culture via a new DJ school, leading to a revealing phone call with Max where Max highlighted Plush’s anti-capitalist militancy and impatience. Plush then calmed down and dove deep into the mechanics of his Tribetable Method, listing the diverse range of DISKS (natural, artificial, biological), TEMPLATES (esoteric systems, science, weed!), MEDIUMS, and alchemical ETCHING AGENTS involved. He reflected on his career struggles balancing writing and DJing, linked his system explicitly to The Art of Memory, interpreted The Hermit card, and finally, acknowledged the difficulty of writing about scratching while listing numerous techniques and urging creative mixing with new tools. It’s a chapter heavy on defining the system, Plush’s artistic philosophy, and his ongoing battle against commercial co-option.
Fuckup: Yeah, loads of technical details mixed with rants and self-doubt. Proper Deep Scratch DNA. All that talk of systems and tools makes you wonder what he’ll actually build with it all.
Hal: We’ll have to see! That wraps our analysis of Chapter Nine. Until next time, try not to get your mojo hand sprained.
DEEP SCRATCH 