Mixtape 117 • All Or Nothing
There is no shortage of consuming urgency to the sound of this UK trio called simply Shopping.
There is no shortage of consuming urgency to the sound of this UK trio called simply Shopping.

The pediatrician scrambled on hands and knees after the rubber ball. It deflected off the base of the Monument to Fuel Tanker, his imperturbable brass cheer completely unaffected by the collision. The interlocutor looked around surreptitiously. Their aim was to provide some normalcy to the fact that two people were hanging out near one of the lowest-ranked attractions in Grodno while the sophisticated electronics built into their footwear communicated with the satellite and sorted out the problem with the statue. But maybe this game of jacks had not been the best idea for cover.

The Sasha river was running dry, and the aerialist maneuvered his craft to take advantage of the fact. As they moved swiftly along the crumbling banks, exoskeletal legs easily scrabbling over the terrain in an unearthly three-limbed gait, they encountered sun-baked sections where a trickle fed a series of pools on the cracking river bottom, animals congregated around them in a temporary truce. They hadn’t seen a human since Saturday, a fact that concerned the actuary more than the dry river, and the attempted distraction of some Guatemalan gamelan techno was not working. In its steel box, the package of Peanut Butter Crunch patiently rustled and awaited its delivery.

The parade stretched through the downtown area, its colorful participants a completely normal distribution of small-town denizens. The statistician knew otherwise. They stood waving from the platform of the float, their flysuits carefully integrated with the diorama to give the appearance of animated mechanical humans. All they needed to do was get within twenty feet of The Mayor, and the technology built into the platform would do the rest. The imagineer adjusted the EQ on the float’s sound system, giving the Estonian techno which poured from the speakers more high-end sparkle. The crowd reacted favorably, some of them breaking out into dance.

This is the HALLOWEEN 2018 mixtape, seventeen carefully curated bits and pieces of spine-tingling scary and thematic. Yes, there was some Ministry. And some Throbbing Gristle, and others

It was a quiet night... I believe an unearthly materializing of liquid water from thin air had people on edge. Elsewhere, the phenomenon is so common it has its own word -- "rain" -- but here in the Grand Valley, it's so rare as to trigger suspicions of alien interference, chemtrails, or bitcoin market manipulation. Sometimes all three.

Time has not dulled the edge of this band. "Show Me The Sun" highlights their psychedelic side.