Uboa - Literal Hell

Here is a stream of a song I did for a charity compilation "Noise for Artsakh", a fundraiser organised by Armenian industrial musician Blood of a Pomegranate (Tig Harutyunyan), one of collaborators and my mixing engineer for Impossible Light. It's a (mostly) cut-up noise song, not dissimilar to "Salivate on Cue", "Please Don't Leave Me" or "Weaponised Dysphoria" - by far the most fun style to write.

It has heavy use of sampled cut-ups with choral samples. The gun reload at the start is from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl. It also uses a few background samples from Armenia itself in the acoustic part. All the money is mutual aid that goes directly to Armenians trying to rebuild their life after their cleansing from Artsakh by Azerbaijan - a corrupt petrostate. One thing the comp successfully helped fund is a chicken shed of an Armenian family, organised by Tig themself while visiting their homeland.

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Lyrics:

The sky plus the squealing shells and the birds eating the eyes of the once unborn and the drones in the cloudless sky above a city that was once a city and of drones that were once money and and and and and and and and and and and

They said they were in the way

They get off to this don’t they?

They see the bodies

From a genderqueer UAV

All them kids

Turned into meat

And and and and and haha and and and and haha haha and 

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As you should hopefully be able to deduce from the lyrics, its about genocide and imperialism with a reference to the 'forever wars' in the Middle East (Palestine, obviously) and Caucasus regions, as well as Africa (say, the current genocide happening in Sudan) as well as South-East Asia (such as the genocide of the West Papuans). Of course, as a so-called 'australian' , I live on unceded territory myself, whose settlement was conditional on the genocide of people of the First Nations (Specifically, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and the Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation, who lived there for over 40,000 years prior to conquest).

As a lefty loony I tend to dislike these things. I've nearly finished a song for a Palestine fundraiser too (you'll hear that soon). Specifically it looks at the libidinal/economic component to genocide and ethnic cleansing - why do colonisers enjoy genocide and cleansing ethnic groups (say, from Artsakh) beyond the mere economic reward (of stolen resources, slaves etc)? This irrational colonial enjoyment is terrifying - while it obviously often coincides with the logic of capital and imperialism, sometimes it goes beyond it to a highly economically wasteful (and nationally self-destructive) slaughter - jouissance. It's both the pleasure principle and beyond it - Othering is always an enjoyment of Othering. I may be white, but I see a lot of overlap with the enjoyment transphobes get tormenting us, and the abled against the disabled ('Autism Moms', anyone?) - usually children are the first targets in all of these situations. This genocidal jouissance is seemingly everywhere, and only intensifying if left unchecked.

Perhaps by looking into this particular form of jouissance, we might have some hints on how to make a world where ethnic cleansing and genocide is impossible. At the same time, the focus on jouissance must not come at the expense of understanding the political economy, settler-colonial and racist dimensions that are obviously also central. It's all of the above.

The "genderqueer UAV" is a reference to an infamous essay comparing drones to queer bodies (they are gender neutral, disassociated from the male US marine) - an essay rightly criticised as white-supremacist in its bizarre scotomization of the non-white people being bombed.

I was a little worried about putting these themes into the song for this comp at first, but Tig - an anarchist like me - approved. Sadly the lyrics are not (yet) on the bandcamp, however I feel they need context so they are not misunderstood as anything other vehemently anti-genocide, anti-colonial and anti-imperial.

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Show me proof of donation to the comp, and I'll send you stems

I can also send the Ableton file, however it uses third-party plugins (JST Gain Reduction, JST Clip, Kilohearts Multipass) that might complicate matters as well as the latest Ableton (12).

Update: it's been a while and I am assuming the charity has gotten most of it's money. It did help an Artsakh family get a chicken coop. Mutual aid works! Because of this, its now available below for free.