THIS FUTURE SUCKS

Sup ganics, Abi here. Jed’s still on a leave of absence and we’ve not really had a chance to discuss the next post so I’m gonna show off tell you about my experience playing at this year’s ArcTanGent. 

First up, sorry about the unannounced break. We’re gonna try to be back on an even keel soon, but hey—if we could keep to a schedule, would we really be punx?

With that out of the way, let’s get down to biz. Yes, hi, it is I, Abi from Underdark, I was one half of Fixer Optional all along! Yanno, in case you somehow missed my sales pitch being “Hi I’m in Underdark please read my book”. So anyway, the reason for our absence does involve Underdark playing this year’s ArcTanGent, and I think it’d be a pretty good topic for a blog post to talk about my experience of that, and what it made me think about art.

That’s a lot of people

ArcTanGent is a 5000-capacity multi-stage festival near Bristol. Although comparatively small, it’s carved out a niche as the summer destination for post- and math-rockers, although they book a broad variety of experimental and sometimes extreme acts. I’m more of a 300-cap grindcore all-dayer type, so I still feel like a fish out of water at these events, but it’s easier to adjust than it was last year. 

The culture shock extended to things like: having a backstage, the sound techs not resenting our existence, no one questioning the fact that I’m dressed like a Bloodborne NPC, and people… showing up to our stage early to watch us soundcheck. Well, okay then. 

I’m not going to talk much about the view from the stage. A lot of ink has been spilled on the performances by people whose job it is to write these things. Even if I was that way inclined, it’d probably be a letdown. I’m not really ‘there’ when I sing. Call it losing myself in the music, call it hyperventilation-induced confusion, but ultimately my experience of performing in Underdark is an abstraction. Time out of time, both over too soon and lasting forever, like a visit to another reality where it’s always like this. Motions I planned ahead of time (there’s a reason Neil hasn’t decapitated me with his bass yet) feel involuntary, I improvise rewrites of bars on the fly, even the little stage banter I engage in feels like it’s using me as a mere conduit. It’s at once me and not-me, as if I’ve been possessed by a cooler version of myself. 

I don’t talk much between songs. We play white noise between songs, feeling the lyrics (incomprehensible though they are when I sing them) are enough of a manifesto on their own. My muttered “nice one” “cheers” “safe as fuck” is almost a private joke at this point, like I just screamed until my lungs tore in my chest and I barely want to acknowledge the sickos who’re into watching that. It was funnier when we were drawing 30 people to 50-cap venues. At this gig, I noticed a decent number of trans+ people watching us, including the party that showed up to watch us soundcheck. So I said “big ups the dolls” too. It’s nice when your own people show up for you (outing myself to the 0 people reading this that don’t already know). But that got me thinking.

Nero with a SM-58

Rome is burning, in case you haven’t noticed. People cry about “cancel culture” constantly but pay no mind to the fact that the future itself was cancelled. It happened so slowly that people forgot each indignity by the time the subsequent one was forced on us, but we’re here. I don’t want to get too bogged down in Fisher (just read him yourself, k-punk is still live), but he’s my GOAT for a reason. Peerless societal diagnostician. 

Anyway, yeah, shit’s fucked right now. There’s a genocide going on that you get arrested in the UK for opposing. They blocked us from even looking up details of the war crimes committed without first submitting our ID. LGBT rights are under seige once again. Our feckless puppet government seems more interested in appeasing racists than doing anything to address the material conditions that left so many people looking for a scapegoat in the first place and… the most I have to say is “big ups the dolls”?

But it’s not just me. I caught bands across the whole weekend, and noticed little acknowledgement of the sorry state of things (not that I saw every band, maybe there’s a firebrand I missed). Even the press I did seemed nervous to ask about anything beyond new music, what I was wearing, if I prefer Maiden to Metallica (Maiden 4 lyf). Even the standard “so you’re a black metal band, but you’re not racist? Explain” line of questioning seemed absent. Of course, we’re not political pundits; we’re musicians and we’re there to play music, but isn’t this meant to be the counterculture? Were my expectations skewed by all those fiercely political grind bands I like? Did I expect everyone else to be Bob Vylan or Kneecap (two of the most exciting acts to make it to the mainstream in recent years, btw, not least for their fearless political stances)? Am I, in my own way, part of the problem? Nero playing his violin while Rome burns? 

Everyone agrees here

I dunno though. The footage I just linked was from Glastonbury, a much bigger festival with a much bigger and more varied audience—far more normies stinking the place up. I suspect a “free Palestine” chant at ATG would just be preaching to the choir, and it wouldn’t be broadcast to the world like those Glasto sets were (even after the BBC censored Kneecap’s). It’s the safest of spaces, really. I ran into the aforementioned trans+ punters a few times over the weekend, and they appeared to be unbothered by everything except sunburn—a sadly rare experience for queer people. Even the security are chill. 

Perhaps it’s better like this. The ATG crowd is predominantly serious people, often over 30, with real lives and jobs and dependants. A crowd of right-on punk-adjacent alternative types who know all this shit, and they’re trying to enjoy their week away from reality. The slow collapse will still be there when they get home. 

So is it just my ego-existential terror-canned water cocktail that leaves me feeling uneasy about not doing or saying more for some of the many causes that could do with a champion? Would it have been rude if I said something? Would it be in… poor taste?

The subtle tyranny of good taste

ArcTanGent primarily books musicians who take a very serious and artistic approach to music. Whether it’s the dense horror of meth., the ethereal soundscaping of Emma Ruth Rundle, or the gripping technical beatdowns of Burner, the common thread is that these are real fucking artists, and that’s to the credit of both the festival and the musicians I just namedropped.

The art these people make speaks for itself. Neil and I talked at great length after meth. about the way watching their performance felt like picking up in a grimy squat. About how Godspeed You! Black Emperor drew the audience in with their entrance alone. There was little gimmickry on display throughout: decor was, frankly, lacking (imagine the same festival but you have cool shit to look at every few paces and tell me that wouldn’t be sick), light shows were sparse. Even the digital backdrops often phased subtly between imagery, if they even moved at all. The music did the talking, and that was enough for us as punters. 

So what’s this got to do with tyranny? On the face of it, nothing; that’s why it’s subtle, see? But dig this: my vocals are not easy to decipher. We’re a black metal band, after all. People who want to sing along generally have to look the lyrics up before they get an inkling of what I’m singing about. This allows people, prior to going out of their way to learn my lyrics, to project their own meaning onto the song. Maybe Enterprise is about Star Trek. You can’t prove it’s not without looking it up. Similarly, a purely instrumental band like GY!BE has only titles with which to hint at the meaning behind their art.

Do we, in letting the music speak for itself, risk fostering an environment of complacency, where we only think we’re surrounded by like minded people? Does it matter? Is caring about anything worth it? We’re just here for some music, maaaaan. Yeah, I know, but I like thinking about shit like this and I’m nearly done so bear with me.

Okay, so what’s this got to do with writing? That’s what FxOx is for isn’t it?

Yeah man! Okay so dystopian sci fi is inherently political, and whattaya know, that’s our stock in trade. It’s 100% of our stock currently, actually, and it’ll remain that way for the foreseeable future. In building these worlds, we’re critiquing the one we inhabit. Every part of Virtua Pop is a shot at something I’m pissed off at, and the same can be said of the stories I have in the chamber ready to go. 

Maybe this is where my sense of neglected duty comes from. I get on here and talk about Vichy Internet, I write the books I write because I hate corporate colonialism and surveillance capitalism, maybe I’m lost in the sauce and I too needed a week in a field away from the slow collapse. Yeah, or maybe this is how The Man engineers our brains into complacency. Just another week off, you’ve earned a break. 

I don’t really know what conclusion I’m pushing towards here. I don’t want ArcTanGent to change. Well, maybe if they added some fucking bunting and coloured lights or something, but I meant more like, I don’t want the artists to feel like they have to explain their art. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about since I got home, and hopefully writing this blog entry has helped me put these thoughts in order.

You’re gonna be seeing more of Fixer Optional soon, and it’ll be about as subtle and tasteful as a wrench to the fucking teeth. I have no plans to make this part of my creative output any less brash or in-your-face, good taste be damned.

You should join our mailing list because I’m sending subscribers art and a snippet from the next story on Thursday night, you won’t wanna miss that.

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Til next time, get fucked.