An ever so slight detourn from the version at Freq.
History is a virus. A fifth horseman of the apocalypse. It’s brutal, beyond reason, full of rage and memory; brittle with the fear of being forgotten. A terrible, seething mass of tendrils, an Athazagoraphobic moron, shifting it's feet and trying to breathe, trying to suck your air, forgetting itself...
History loves and hates it’s host. It smothers it with affection, wraps it up warm, cools it's feverish brow with gentle reminders and emotional aggregates... but the terrible cytopathic effects are just a little while away. Them little fuckers'll get you in the end...
I know you think you're immune.
I know you think you're immune.
Nostalgia is a dish served cold and for a long time now people have been struggling against it, trying to reheat old spices (and Old Spices), attempting to bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur their way out. But history is winning (had already won before the battle lines were drawn) and now we’re on the retreat, if unable to move.
Buzz and blur, crackle, hum.....
It’s coming (through the trees).
It's still coming. It doesn't stop once it's got here. It'll never stop because it knows that it's never really even got started...
Far Side Virtual is what happens when the real embraces the real; when you stop remaking and start making.The virus comes in waves (but, what ends when the symptoms shatter?) and it can take a lot of shaking. You can struggle against the pre-settings, tread lightly around it or ironically through it or stomp all over its kindly old man face but you can’t avoid the inevitable and neither will you want to, when it comes to the end times.
The eschaton will be immanentized (etc).
And heaven is a tune you can whistle, a sound you’ve already heard, played endlessly and without motive. If you think you remember, you do. There’s no trick. At the end, you’ll lie back and laugh. It’ll make a Donnie Darko out of all of you.
Some resist longer, some even believe they haven’t started resisting yet – the Futurists are then, as now – some burrow themselves into a (w)hole, believe they’re not letting in any light at all, only to find that their dark isn’t a darkness at all, just another form of light, shone from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. The light will tear them apart too, as it tears all of us.
You know who they are:
E************
F****** F******
G*** and Y*****
Add your own.
This is thick, glossy soundtracking. This isn’t ironic, no cosmic joke, nothing haunted.
James Ferraro wasn’t easy to catch. He flirted with the history virus for longer and harder than most. He played all the angles, tried to wrestle with the memories, tried to break them, to cover them in snot and grime and fuzz. He added nauseous waves of his own.
He's tried, you've got to admire him for that.
Endless medicinal cassettes (themselves a symptom), CDRs, LPs have tumbled out, attempting to feed an antibody that was always just one protein shake off oblivion. His music has been magical at times and he’s played the sorcerer role well (even if he thought he was playing the alchemist), dabbling in Crowley magick, in Paris Workings, in symbols. He dabbled in motifs and tropes and Casio licks like Death In June dabbled in Eugenics and tooth and claw (but, what does end when the symbols shatter?). He fiddled in things he only thought he understood better than anyone else. He’s spawned numerous monsters, whose names cannot be said, whose names begin with the cross of H and end in Chris De Burgh, in daytime TV movies, in crane shots and stock footage of shopping malls and queues outside the Commodore 64 shop.
He thought things through, I think. Tried to play all the sides all the time.Perhaps thought this wasn't history at all, but some kind of uchronic intervention, a parallel, reverse-spin world of nu dreams and nu-reality.
Oh James. Remember James?
He thought that he could iron out the creases of history, maybe even thought he would escape but he was always at the Event Horizon and now he’s falling further in. In space no one can hear you scream. No hands clapping. The inside of the ping pong balls that cup The light he’s shedding will be seen by us as glimmer, as sheen, as surface.
C'mon... James. Jim. Jimbo...
Now, he’s letting the virus in, he’s accepting it, embracing it, loving it even more than it needs. Far Side Virtual is what happens when the real embraces the real; when you stop remaking and start making. History has him. His memories have suddenly burst through, unclouded and almost free of hum and chatter. This is thick, glossy soundtracking. This isn’t ironic, no cosmic joke, nothing haunted. The thick Calpol gloop of history is here, shining.
This is a time machine heading into the very near future when everyone gives up the ghost. This isn't even music anymore; it's History incarnate, is indistinguishable from the original, may even be the original...
But it's not a joke. We're not being played. Or rather, even if we are being played and this is all a Jim Ferraro Fuck You and next thing he'll turn around and say: Really? Chris De Fucking Burgh? Daytime TV? Holy Hot Tamalean Hell! Even if that's what happens next it doesn't matter (and why be paranoid when you know they're out to get you?) because he's going under, the virus still has him, is just keeping him alive for his take on the crispy shells(uits) of the 90s...
Do I like it? Is this artefact, this album actually any good? Yeah, it’s brilliant. But then I’m as infected as you.
