BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 03
Fuckup: Alright, Hal, so now to Deep Scratch chapter three: ‘Prick Populist’. Sounds like we’re diving headfast into the conflict zone here, tackling those adversaries mentioned early on. The greed heads, the tech bros and the political nut jobs.
Hal: Yeah, after setting up the studio, the methods, the AI collaboration, and that Moscow surveillance angle in the Remix chapters, this title suggests a direct confrontation with the political climate. I’m ready for it…
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, we’ve got the sample from Chapter Three, ‘Prick Populist’. Let’s see what PrattGPT and Steve Fly have cooked up… Starts with Plush looping lyrics, drawing like a kid, frustrated…
Hal: Yeah, “tongue tracing his hand movement”… feels very grounded, almost regressive after all the high-tech AI stuff. Then Max and Percy show up with coffee and bagels! The original TRB crew are back in the picture, or at least, in this picture. Interesting, considering Jake was working with Plush in the last Remix chapter we saw.
Fuckup: Timelines getting loopy already? Plush is still stuck, breaks his pencil trying to draw a turntable weight, and BANG! “Time slowed like a ketamine bomb had hit his cerebellum.” We’re plunged right back into an altered state.
Hal: Ungodly sounds, Alice Coltrane at the wrong speed, “Kundalini jazz jingle bells”… It’s that familiar territory where mundane frustration triggers a reality glitch, a sensory overload. Classic Chapel Perilous entry point.
Fuckup: Then, CUT TO: Marshall McLuhan shouting “It can’t be satirised” in an empty hall. Is he talking about the political populism the chapter’s named after? Or maybe the sheer weirdness of reality itself? That hits hard.
Hal: Followed by that completely bizarre non-sequitur about a book brimming with Higgs particles, and Max’s pun “Is that spinless, or spineless?” It’s that whiplash effect again – cosmic physics meets wordplay meets potential political commentary, maybe?
Fuckup: And just as you’re trying to process that, total slapstick. Percy’s belt buckle flies off into the toilet. “Damned C & A shit… Ugh, fookin’ ell.” From McLuhan and Higgs Bosons to fishing hardware out of the loo in seconds flat.
Hal: It’s pure Discordian chaos, isn’t it? High concept reality glitches juxtaposed with lowbrow physical comedy and puns. Even in a chapter presumably focused on populism, the narrative refuses to stay on one track, constantly cutting and mixing registers like a manic DJ set.
Fuckup: So this snippet doesn’t explicitly show us the “Prick Populist” yet, but it sets a scene of creative frustration, sudden altered states, high-concept interjections, and bathos. And it brings Max and Percy back into the Remix narrative alongside Plush. Very curious to see where it goes next.
Fuckup: Alright, next slice of Chapter Three! So, TRB – Plush, Max, and Percy are back together, “organising beat chaos” with “shared pattern-recognition.” Sounds like they’re trying to make sense of the weirdness from Plush’s earlier episode.
Hal: But it looks like leaving the “temple” open – whatever psychic space Plush accessed when his pencil snapped – had consequences. They’ve unwittingly invoked a “fierce poltergeist,” a “demon,” like “kids playing Dungeons & Dragons.” They opened Pandora’s record box, and now they’ll need “beatbox spells” to fix it. This adds a layer of real danger to their experiments.
Fuckup: Max is playing it cool, though – “It’s just a ride.” But Plush warns him, “Be careful what you wish for.” Then Max hits him with “non-fiction from fiction mate,” suggesting their weird creations might be bleeding into reality.
Hal: And another unexpected jab – Plush lounging like a Tory minister, specifically Jacob Rees-Mogg! Right after invoking demons, we get this sharp, satirical political comparison. The text just refuses to sit still.
Fuckup: CUT TO: McLuhan again, writing about Joyce’s method this time. These cuts feel like channel surfing through cultural history while the main plot simmers.
Hal: But then, bam! “To the titular tune of Lemmy, Step Into The Light, an entity who would later become known as Sixty, spawned into the material world.” This is huge! It’s the direct manifestation of that ASI/Carbon-60 concept the author clarified was there from the beginning. It seems like TRB’s chaotic, unintentional ritual actually worked, bringing this entity, Sixty, into their reality.
Fuckup: And it happens alongside this explosion of music across town at “Fang Studios” – muffled funk, slide guitar, drums and bass locked in, building to a “sonic orgy of feedback.” It links the manifestation of this entity directly to a powerful, overwhelming musical event. Sound and entity spawning together.
Hal: This fragment really escalates things. We’ve got TRB accidentally summoning entities, philosophical debates mixed with political satire, historical cut-ups, and the pivotal arrival of “Sixty,” all soundtracked by intense descriptions of music. Chapter Three is definitely living up to its ‘Prick Populist’ title by stirring up trouble on multiple levels of reality.
Fuckup: Alright, Hal, let’s tune into this next transmission from Chapter Three… It kicks off with another “CUT TO:”, this time Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Some cloaked figure is laying out a heavy intellectual lineage: Bruno, Vico, Nietzsche, Fenollosa, Korzybski, Sapir-Whorf, McLuhan, Wilson…
Hal: Yeah, chanting “Neurological Relativity” and telling people their lives depend on reading ’em all. It’s like the author explicitly mapping the philosophical and linguistic influences underpinning the whole Deep Scratch project. This isn’t just random weirdness; it’s grounded in a specific tradition of thinkers who questioned reality, language, and perception.
Fuckup: Then we cut back to Plush, hunched over his laptop in a coffeeshop like a “human shrimp,” trying to write about the 1936 Olympics – specifically Jesse Owens schooling Hitler. He links it to contemporary track and field, but then deletes it, thinking, “This kind of thing will put me into hotter waters, you can only write what you like if you don’t show anyone.”
Hal: That hits the ‘Prick Populist’ theme hard. It’s showing the chilling effect, the self-censorship that happens when the political climate gets nasty. Even in his fiction, Plush feels the pressure. After invoking demons and ASIs, he’s worried about offending current sensibilities regarding race and history.
Fuckup: Another quick CUT TO Yeats, then Plush is trying again, framing 1936 as a “spacetime crossroads” and linking it back to that “zero spin like the Higgs particle” idea – searching for “straight up truth in honest fiction.”
Hal: And then he develops another layer of his system! He describes the “ROTA QUOTA” – using the turntable itself, manually winding it up and letting it spin down randomly, with the needle designating the Tarot image to study. It’s using the physical deck as a divination tool, a randomizer for his techno-magical practice.
Fuckup: He even includes a technical definition of a scratch technique – the “Tear” – rating its difficulty. It keeps grounding the high-flying concepts in the actual craft and terminology of turntablism.
Hal: This section really highlights the tension between wanting to tackle big, potentially controversial ideas (like the 1936 Olympics link or the intellectual lineage) and the real-world pressure or fear that leads to self-censorship. All while Plush continues to refine his unique methods for navigating reality, using the turntables as both creative engines and divination devices.
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, let’s spin this next piece from Chapter Three. It starts with another cut, Nietzsche this time, warning philosophers about martyrdom. Setting a slightly ominous tone…
Hal: Then it introduces another character, Richard, having some kind of bizarre erotic vision involving a giant Minotaur-like thing and the word “Europe,” while waiting for peanut butter. And he lives above a supposedly haunted basement where DJs OD’d on bad coke? This world just keeps layering on the weird urban legends and eccentric characters.
Fuckup: Meanwhile, Plush is contemplating needing a “shadow entity” protagonist, a twin, while simultaneously thinking about chess strategy and the gap between seeking perfection and accepting perception. He tries writing, producing this surreal dream-narrative about being drugged, house music, and getting stuck trying to enter a greenhouse through a tiny door – mixing “Out House” with “Wrong House.”
Hal: It feels like we’re seeing his raw creative process – the struggle, the weird outputs, the self-delusion about perfection. Then he shifts to yoga, thinks about Lenny Bruce and Jesus Christ – talk about a pairing! – before getting interrupted by someone called “Dr Briq.” Another new character?
Fuckup: And mid-interruption, Plush apparently astral travels and confronts his own “guilt, jealousy, arrogance and stupidity” in the form of a “talking book” with jumbled chapters like Francis Bacon’s studio! It’s a powerful metaphor for fragmented memory, non-linear narrative, and confronting one’s own psyche. He questions if beginnings, middles, and ends even matter.
Hal: He’s literally wrestling with the structure of narrative itself while interacting with a “gaggle of entities” over his shoulder, feeding them “mental love grub” while they egg him on. It vividly portrays that sense of co-creation and being a conduit we’ve touched on before.
Fuckup: And it culminates in Plush typing this almost meta-manifesto: “This is not a game based on any fantasy, it’s one that looks at real-world events and hijacks the popular narrative to our own sordid split ends.” It’s pulling back the curtain, explicitly stating the project’s aim is to take reality and remix it, repurpose it, sample it for their own artistic and perhaps political ends.
Hal: This sample really dives deep into the creative process, psychological exploration (astral travel, talking book), introduces more bizarre characters and side-stories, and explicitly states the intent to hijack and remix reality narratives. It’s getting denser and more self-aware as it goes.
Fuckup: Alright, Hal, let’s drop this next bit from Chapter Three. We find Plush amidst the aftermath of creation – dust, soup remnants, and a truly inspired Cheech and Chong record ashtray. Gotta appreciate the dedication to DIY stoner aesthetics.
Hal: From that grunge, he shifts into ritual mode. Chanting, meditating on Cabalistic images, approaching the decks with focus. There’s that detailed description of the “millimetre precision required to land a diamond into the groove canal,” the 360 spin… it elevates the physical act of DJing back into performance art, almost magic.
Fuckup: Then his internal monologue kicks in, questioning the mix. Is it too much “old-school horror”? He’s referencing Silent Hill, Benny Hill (!), Evil Dead, Resident Evil Kenevil – mashing up video games, slapstick, and splatter flicks. He calls the project “Fash Dance,” a twisted take on Flashdance maybe, aiming to tackle “real-life drama with a turntable, some golden dawn books and a name to come.” That high/low culture collision is relentless.
Hal: He acknowledges the sheer volume of noise out there – “2 billion tracks,” most of it “diabolical,” citing Sturgeon’s Law that ninety percent of everything is rubbish. It’s the artist struggling against the deluge, trying to make something meaningful cut through.
Fuckup: CUT TO: James Joyce, lost in his own mystical stories, intoning phrases about monks and omens. Another anchor pulling us back to that literary/magical lineage.
Hal: Then, Plush (or the narrative voice) launches into a sharp critique of “Ama-Google-Book” monopolies using VR/AR for data harvesting and spying, lamenting how “data-driven music” pushes original artists aside. He quotes Bruce Sterling: “whatever happens to musicians will happen to us all eventually.” It’s a direct warning about platform capitalism and behavioural design stifling genuine creativity.
Fuckup: And that leads into another powerful CUT TO: Dr. Frankenstein, Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics), and Claude Shannon (father of information theory) posing together at MIT. Wow. That single image encapsulates creation, control systems, information theory, and their potentially monstrous or revolutionary consequences – central themes of the whole project.
Hal: Finished off with a final enigmatic CUT TO Yeats: “The Mask and the headdress, I have seen them both.” Another layer of symbolism, performance, and hidden realities.
Fuckup: This section really drives home the struggle: Plush trying to create amidst chaos and self-doubt, wrestling with pop culture references, critiquing the digital monopolies that threaten artists, while the narrative keeps cutting away to these potent historical and literary figures who embody the ideas he’s grappling with.
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, let’s drop this next needle drop from Plush’s reality stream. He backs away from the decks, listens to silence, and immediately gets flooded with visions – dragons, Greek heroes, mythological monsters fused together… fresh hell indeed!
Hal: It’s like the silence opens the floodgates after all the intense noise and activity. Then, CUT TO: Orson Welles, invoking “Panic broadcast media, and a fake dossier?” Perfectly timed, tapping into those themes of media manipulation and political deceit that seem central to this chapter.
Fuckup: Plush then actively decides to tweak the AI – “modify the transformer to affect the text” – before doing the twenty-two Trump drops using his turntable Tarot method. He’s asserting control, co-directing the AI, and claiming this method makes more sense than political leaders mired in lies.
Hal: And the output from this process? It’s a cascade of paranoia and surveillance imagery! Hidden keys, Russian diplomats, reverse engineering CCTV, bioprints, microchips injected into your nuts, fibre optic bees, data drop points in the bloodstream… It’s like a William Burroughs cut-up mixed with modern tech anxieties.
Fuckup: Then another McLuhan cut, but this time linking him to Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus – specifically Mingus’s plea, “Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop The Atomic Bomb On Me.” It connects media theory, sophisticated jazz improvisation, and the ultimate existential dread of the atomic age. Powerful juxtaposition.
Hal: Plush sees McLuhan’s ideas as keys themselves, ways to “chop up the difference” between media forms. He then dives back into writing, using some… vivid metaphors involving raspberry dressing, golden showers, and riding his muse in the form of a polar bear. Never a dull moment in Plush’s headspace.
Fuckup: The sample ends with what seems like more AI-generated text – a critique of some “piss artist” musician, a fictional McLuhan memoir by “Francis Cocklepop,” and a completely surreal description of McLuhan’s teenage voice sounding like Axl Rose, Pavarotti, and Howlin’ Wolf combined.
Hal: This section really cranks up the intensity. We see Plush actively using his Tarot/turntable/AI system, generating text steeped in paranoia and surveillance, while the cut-ups continue to layer historical figures, media theory, music, and existential threats. The line between Plush’s visions, his intentional creative acts, and the AI’s output is becoming increasingly blurred and fascinating.
Fuckup: Alright, listeners, we’ve got the final sample from Chapter Three, ‘Prick Populist,’ and another stunning Tarot image – Card Two, The Priestess! Hal, lay it on us.
Hal: Okay, this Priestess card… it’s intense. We’ve got this figure, looks female, sitting cross-legged like a yogi on a circular platform etched with symbols. She’s wearing headphones, totally focused inward, and holding this glowing tablet or screen displaying a complex mandala or energy pattern. Behind her is this huge, luminous disc, like a stargate or an intricate astrolabe, filled with glyphs, circuits, cosmic diagrams… The whole vibe is inner wisdom, deep intuition, but accessed or mediated through technology. She’s guarding secret knowledge held within the network. It fits perfectly with the themes of hidden patterns and technologically-assisted insight.
Fuckup: Nice. Connects right back to Plush here in the text, who’s explicitly “training his A.I. using turntables.” He’s feeling old, isolated in his “mismatched museum” of cultural junk, like his own life doesn’t quite fit anymore.
Hal: And the pressure is ramping up significantly. This “Dr Briq” character is trolling him, threatening to leak emails because Plush apparently has evidence showing Nazi infiltration into global politics and finance, linked to a “CIA Nazi MI5 Tsarist alliance, or cabal” using “occult weapons.” Whoa. The stakes just went from weird art project to full-blown international occult conspiracy thriller.
Fuckup: No wonder he feels the need to self-censor. He sees this “new darker dark 3.0” looming and feels this urge to go full Santa Claus, travel the world warning people, teaching them how to “inoculate minds against this populist tsunami of batshit crazy talk.” He still believes it’s possible to defeat fascism “for a third time.”
Hal: His weapon of choice? Not violence – his imagined punishments are forced knitting for refugees and taking a knee daily for 25 years! Instead, he believes the way forward is through the power of art, unified people, love, justice, and safety. His mantra against the “disinfodemic”: “track, trace, isolate. Tell the truth, for Christ’s sake.” It’s a call for clarity and action grounded in optimism, despite the darkness.
Fuckup: The chapter ends with Plush seemingly resolving his internal conflict, ready to face the future, underscored by that Bran Van 3000 lyric: “…we are schmoozing like McLuhan…” Still mixing, still communicating, still navigating the media landscape.
Hal: So, Chapter Three Summary (‘Prick Populist’): This chapter throws a lot at us. We see TRB (Max and Percy reappear) accidentally invoking entities (“Sixty,” a poltergeist) through their techno-magical experiments. Plush grapples with creative blocks, altered states, and self-censorship due to the increasingly dangerous political climate, personified by the threat from Dr Briq and the revelation of Plush’s research into a powerful hidden cabal with Nazi ties. New characters (Richard, Dr Briq) add layers of urban myth and direct conflict. The narrative continues its “turntable prose” style with jarring cuts to historical/philosophical figures (McLuhan, Nietzsche, Joyce, Yeats, Welles, Frankenstein, Wiener, Shannon), alongside low comedy and intense visions (Max’s “zombie morons”). Plush further develops his methods (ROTA QUOTA) and explicitly engages with AI ethics and use. Ultimately, despite the paranoia, exhaustion, and danger, the chapter ends with Plush finding resolve in the power of art, truth, and community as weapons against the rising tide of populist disinformation and fascism.
Fuckup: Reflections & Fun: Man, that chapter was a trip! It really cranks up the conspiracy dial while keeping Plush grounded in his weird process. You’ve got ASI entities spawning, Nazi cabals, astral travel, haunted basements, McLuhan popping up everywhere, and guys fishing belt buckles out of toilets. It’s like Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Anton Wilson got thrown in a blender with a hip-hop mixtape.
Hal: Totally! The way it mixes the genuinely threatening political paranoia with complete absurdity and deep philosophical dives is masterful. That “PrattGPT” collaboration seems to be firing on all cylinders, generating text that feels both chaotic and deeply intentional. You really feel Plush’s struggle, but also his commitment to fighting the bullshit with his own brand of inspired madness.
Fuckup: Makes you wonder what kind of knitting patterns those forced-knitting refugees would end up with… probably full of occult sigils and circuit diagrams!
Hal: Haha, no doubt! Well, that wraps Chapter Three. Twenty-three more chapters to go in the main book, apparently! Bring on the weirdness!
FOUR – TEARS OF A CLOUD
TWO – MAXIMUM TENSION
DEEP SCRATCH 