THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN

ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN [LP]

LISTEN/PURCHASE:
https://ecolagbohrsac2021.bandcamp.com/album/the-only-way-we-know-to-have-fun

THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN brings together tracks from a plethora of EPs and singles created during the summer of 2020 in the tradition of medieval speedcore, esoteric grime, and horse riding ambient. All are presented as the fragments of a love story unfolding in multiple layers of time and space amongst various prominent themes such as allegories of the occult of mass media mind control, dangers of overindulgence in fantasies or illusions, ‘primers’ that walk among us, virtual/ online legend tripping, simulacra/beauty of nature, criticism on the concept of power and economic world order, undefined holes in the sky and a surreal visionary of England’s fauna and flora.

Even if not in its preconception and initial creative stages, the work’s artistic modus operandi is relatively resemblant and heavily influenced by the Beatles and the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s band-within-a-band idea as it also is conceptualized as a performance – but as a fictional internet-based organization from the future legislating the research and development of the ‘hyperreal’ instead of being an Edwardian military band and have an album under this artist name.

Created using a ThinkPad X230 [running Qubes] to scry on itʼs black surface, on the album brute use of medieval and Gaelic music samples is brought together with bubblegum acid techno, FM sound design, drone doom, and a relatively abstract form of UK grime. Also, still not abandoning the interest in the ‘technological’, duo’s interest in artificial intelligence in creative applications pursues a more under the hood and philosophical approach, especially under the light of esoteric influences. Such experiments can be seen on most of the shorter tracks but most dominantly on the album’s opener track Knowledge, where the Council’s approach to the conjuration of a melody can be heard.

With the aid of the extra dose of text included in the track titles and throughout the very collage-like looking album sleeves, the plethora of publications under the same artist name presents highly theatrical and dreamy imagery of the world combining personal experiences such as cycling through the London under quarantine in the abandoned streets witnessing a sequence of apparitions and visions covering the almost entire timespan of the town or using a multiple angle mirror placed against the iMac as a tool for scrying to highly vivid visions from the distant past, to a future where green and archaic sceneries of Londinium where the proof of god has been laid out by math, and people are most jolly artful. Amongst the visions of beautiful and straightforward spring days spent at a local park, we witness the Humankind freed of the artificial situations we, for centuries, have created for our psyches may find comfort by averting what we find truest as a peril to the amenity of our personal constructs. A new type of existential dread, enhanced and deepened by the ‘digital’ has been the first mental plague, but a new form of ‘love of god’, the state of being freed from such human traps of ego, the pathology of the brain, errors encountered contacting archetypes of oneself within has ended.

If desired, the album can be studied or experienced further on an abundance of digital sub-releases [EPs, nightly-builds, and singles], which also are available for download/purchase. Along with the OCCULT POP singles, THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN is regarded to be the tip of this pyramid of this creative work/release structure, which in itself is a form of medieval feudalism.

THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN title is inspired by the Porcupine Tree track Sever. The income from the sales of THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN LP and apparel will be spent on the good fortune of our stupid earth.

credits

released July 13, 2020

Illustration of the Tree of Crystal by Sin Eater, courtesy of Scarlet Imprint
La belle dame sans merci, Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853–1928), Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, UK / Given by Mrs Yda Richardson, 1913. / Bridgeman Images

Mastered by Alyn Sclosa

Press quotes

‘As through circling a cathedral like interior, before swelling into white noise hiss. It feels like a purge, cleansing the air ready for chilled, almost new age tones that bounce off the pristine walls.’

– The Wire

‘Based on the recorded evidence, our new Dark Age sounds pretty inviting’

– Electronic Sound

‘…AI, film, software programming and digital arts as they meld experimental electronics and abstract genre mutations with medieval and Gaelic samples…’

– Crack Magazine

‘…Mixing up artificial intelligence with Arcadian fantasy and the occult with deconstructed club sounds..’

– The Quietus

‘…a dizzying introduction that goes some way to prepare you for their intricate, concept-heavy musical productions and visuals. Melding avant-garde electronics with surreal computer-generated environments…’

– Fact Mag

‘With meltpop elements akin to Wieman/Zèbra smashed right up inside the kind of thumping glitch-rave freakery that’d make itself well at home on Hausu Mountain, it’s certainly a heady (and occasionally overwhelming) blend, but if it doesn’t send you down the rabbit hole after me then, well, what the hell are you even doing here?’

– Underscore

‘…posing a duality between the artist as a chaos magician and the machine as an oraculous tool. Across the track, simple yet haunting melodies stutter across the frequency spectrum.’

– XLR8R

‘Fucking with an online date at a beautiful natural spot somewhere in the Beckenham Place Park’ builds upon a seething flurry of synthesis and hiccuping samples, gradually decomposing into the chilling peals of cybernetic fox screams as the camera zooms out, the digital illusion of safe and sanitised augmented connectivity shattered to reveal the messy reality of physical interaction.’

– Fact Mag

‘…juddering, misfiring beats threaten to puncture the pleasing ambient melodies and birdsong with unbidden flashbacks. Kaleidoscopic perspectives swamping reductive clarity and erasing certainty…’

– The Quietus

EUPHORIA [2023, LP, DEEP-WEB SITE, LONDON LEGEND-TRIP]

LISTEN/PURCHASE:
https://mostdismalswamp.bandcamp.com/album/euphoria

Following the cyber-tragedy of two albums getting bootlegged in the digital crypts of DarkNet curation markets, released on the mixed-reality biome Most Dismal Swamp, EUPHORIA is the official follow up album THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN [self-released, summer 2021] and a multimedia ecosystem by the ENGLAND’S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS [a.k.a ecolagbohrsac2021].

Musically composed of draconic mediaeval EDM, deep-fried Digital Middle Age hyperblackmetalpop, magick Lamborghini ride-core, delysidMIDI trance chord-pack dance tunes for shaking stars, sampling of prayers from alternate worlds, sp3xtral matrix-grim3, meme-lexicon-spawn construct seal themes from fantasy RPGs, postnuclear Barbican skatepark Splice pack mash-up dancefloor music, Capriconus Hardstyle, AI models turning the chatter on N3 to Burial like shit, 3D glitter pandemonium .gif flower garden ambient and folk music of the other syde, it’s a compendium of blurred ‘remix-culture’ [spaces of shared co-creation beyond the boundaries of one’s present time or location > memergence of doom / a total annihilation of time and space via cut-ups], the actual meta-hypermedia-hellscape, speculative cyntery through various OpenAI granted technologies vs copyright, memeification of mythic themes that populate the archetypal strata of the modern technological psyche, multiplying reproductions of reality that actually doesn’t exist and crystalline euphoria of South London late-capitalist-fantasy/marshland funfairs.

On the album the only fucking way they know to have fun turns into various kinds of euphoria as the lore also is taking off where the previous instalments left off on the album; distant recordings of festivals at the Crystal Palace park blend into fulfilment of UE5 arcana [Waltzer] while cyber-prophecies bleed into personal meme-ories. On a crypto-token gated online construct, ‘sending Nick Drake songs over DMs’ turns into an AI model where the folk singer can be singing the title [‘by a sacred place capable of representing / to garden was to place oneself’] of previous album’s closer track – all, slowly blending into an unprompted dialogue about a ‘greater realm’ and a ‘sin’.

EUPHORIA will be released as a digital download, CD, a deep-web page with further material/location specific [legend tripping] listening experiences and a memeorial park bench [lol, it’s so anti-capitalist, you need to sit down, stop..and listen to it etc.] located at the Crystal Palace Park. Other surrounding works include a shadow release purchasable only through various black-markets [published by S.W.I.M], cryptokeys unlocking various online constructs, physical installations, UE5 constructs, EUPHORIA currency, live A/V shows, fashion items and a cryptolith/pamphlet compiled from the discussions and posts from the first iteration of the MEMERGENCE OF DOOM forums.

EUPHORIA is dedicated to Rodney Mullen.