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January 12, 2021 in Article, Feature

D Howland Abbott

One night in the summer of 2000, I found myself standing in the corner of a tiny room which served as the broadcast booth for the college radio station at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. I had been dragged there by my girlfriend at the time, a woman named Bethany, who had developed a crush on the night-time DJ. It was 11:00pm, and as far as I could tell the three of us were the only people on campus.

“This is B.C. Sterret, and you are listening to Oddity Rock Radio on Weber State Eighty-Eight.” The DJ was speaking into the microphone, and partially obscured behind a wall of tape racks and soundboards. “Welcome once again to the single oasis in the vast cultural wasteland that we call the Beehive State.” I flinched. I had used those precise words in the moments before he went on the air, and he had stolen them.

The Hyperobject & the Artifice of Me

January 12, 2021 in Article, Letter from the Editor, Feature

Letter from the Editor

In this age of cultural criticism, punditry, general micro-blogging and endless gaffes, shock, and outrage on the Internet and beyond—although mostly on the internet, perhaps in part because it’s a place that exists nowhere, like the Na-koja-abad of muslim mysticism, the Persian term for utopia, which literally means, “the place that exists nowhere”—but also because it is currently the primary means through which we interact with our society and is furthermore the average American’s primary means for self-expression in general. This bodiless heaven, where we can instantly and immediately be gratified of any unbodily need we have while our actual bodies fester in the increasing hell of our actual room, is an interiority exposed and the internal uploaded into the closest our technology has come to mind, with servers as stand-ins for the more mundane ganglia of people and people as stand-ins for the more mundane mind of the masses.

White Stockings

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series

The Bedroom Theater Dispatch

During the Chechen Wars, stories began to circulate about certain snipers—blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cold-blooded female snipers called beliye kolgotki by the Russians. The White Tights (or White Stockings) so named because they were said to only wear white, were rumored to be contract killers paid by the Chechens on a kill-by-kill basis. These assassins are/were said to be from small Baltic States with a grudge against Russia and are/were said to be members of a bi-athlon team, trained to cross miles and miles of rugged terrain then successfully fire a weapon and hit a target. The story got a boost when newspapers reported the capture of several female assassins—from the Baltics and from the Ukraine. However, other papers reported that the stories were absolute myth, attributing the creation of these mysterious female assassins to paranoia and convoluted historical facts.

At our most recent Bedroom Theater, audience members read poems written by Lina Vitkauskas inspired and penned to this mythical team of sharpshooters. The recording of these readings can be found below, and her book can be found here.

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.

What Goes Up Must Come Down (Pt 3)

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Apocryphal Histories, Series

Gabriel Boyer

In the third part of this 3 part history within the larger Apocryphal History of the Parasite, we find ourselves in the minds of a seedy Brit hiding out in Southern China for mysterious reasons, a woman in a basement apartment full of holes, a teenage girl who is also a long-bodied lifeform flowering from one end of the universe to the other, the founding member of ELF in an interrogation chamber, and the younger brother of a dead man. They’re all being torn apart by something. What is it? Listen to Pt1 here and go here for Pt2.

What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.

Millennials, Insomnia, & Faith Healers

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Three Things

Three Things Episode 4

This week on 3 Things, we talk about millennials, insomnia, and healers in strange places. We continue to whine in the tradition of the aging everywhere. Keep listening! And watch Jacob’s Ladder! We may no longer understand what’s happening in pop culture, but … watch Jacob’s Ladder! And keep listening.

Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!

CrimethInc. Manifesto Part 72-A

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective

What is Crimethink?

Crimethink can be reached from the subway station only by means of a daring double somersault. It is only a multiple orgasm away from the checkout counter of the grocery store, and a mere lobbed brick distant from the witness bench of the courtroom, but it is much harder to access from the closed playpens of your homes, schools, workplaces, and punk rock clubs—only a mystical revelation or masterless revolution will suffice. Crimethink riots rather than diets, so as to love itself body and soul.

Best of the Music, Youtube, and Deaths of 2016

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Three Things

Three Things Episode 3

This week on 3 Things, we look at the top 3 musical acts of 2016, the great youtube enthusiasts, including MRE food critics, rat feces infested TV repairmen, and true macguivers with elaborate means for making fire, as well as the best deaths, because, if there’s one thing you can say about 2016, it was a year of death! For a complete playlist of videos and music discussed in this podcast go here. Also. Apologies for the pops and blips! We had a few technical issues this week.

Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!

Falling Boxes

January 12, 2021 in Product

Outside the Lines Music Summer Project

Falling Boxes is the product of a summer spent in a circle making sounds with drums and boom sticks and piano and keyboard and recorder and harmonica and meshing all these sounds together into a single larger hodge podge of sound. It is a collaboration of very different hands and a chaos only barely twisted into a variety of shapes. Mutable’s own Gabriel Boyer worked with the men and woman at Outside the Lines Studio to record covers from the distant past and the recent present, as well as extended freak-outs that sometimes went nowhere, but every once in a while went somewhere amazing! This is a sound collage of raw material and it is yet another unusual weird-o masterpiece, with all proceeds going to the Outside the Lines Studio!

Outside the Lines Studio is a day-program for developmentally disabled adults, in which persons create works of art that then go on sale in the gallery attached, and this sound project is no different. All proceeds will go back to the program itself. We here at Mutable are very proud to have had the privilege of working with the artists at Outside the Lines Studio and are excited for you to hear the wonder that was made there!

Music by the Outside the Lines Summer Music Project
Produced by Gabriel Boyer

Recorded at Third Life Studio

Cover image by Sylvia

Falling Boxes by The Outside the Lines Summer Music Project, released 11 December 2015 1. End of the Line 2. Fallen 3. Gabe's Final Piano Recording 4. Lean on Me 5. Sylvia 2 6. Stay with Me 7. Sylvia's Rough Beach 8. Sylvia 1 9. It's Been a Long Time Coming 10.

1. End of the Line
2. Fallen
3. Lean on Me
4. Sylvia 2
5. Stay with Me
6. Sylvia’s Rough Beach
7. Sylvia 1
8. It’s Been a Long Time Coming
9. Sounds in an Ecosystem
10. The Boxer
11. This Little Light of Mine
12. Sylvia 3
13. One
14. Wade in the Water
15. Sylvia 4
16. Round
17. Sylvia’s Piano 2
18. Week 3 Piano 1
19. Sylvia Singing Final

Digital album available to stream or download now!

Listen

Video: Body Positions I

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series

The Bedroom Theater Dispatch

The performance showcased below was part of a larger evening called Women’s Inaugural Ball, an event dedicated to women artists and their work on the day of the Women’s March, and after the inauguration, January 20th, at Brickbottom Studios in Somerville. The performance artist, Jessica Lu, lives and works in Brighton, MA. Keep posted for more dispatches from the on-going Bedroom Theater happenings!

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.

Sorry, Kale Drinkers: Trump’s Rampage Isn’t a Resurgence of American Bigotry or a Reichstag Fire—The Problem’s Less Sexy, More Fundamental

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

Thalatta Twice

The Praetorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction.

At the Sunshine Retreat Center

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Apocryphal Histories, Series

Gabriel Boyer

In this first apocryphal history of the parasite we find ourselves at a retreat in the Southwest and some strange goings on, as the residents grapple with some incomprehensible force creeping in from the beyond. What it is, and why it is here no one knows, but it is invading our reality.

What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.

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HBD Katharine

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature

Mutable Sound of the Month

Mutable’s posting a little early for Valentine’s Day. This lovely ballad by Mutable’s own Animal Hospital is one of a series of songs Micka has recorded for his one and only Katharine. For more from Animal Hospital you can go here and for Good or Plenty, Streets + Plenty, out now by Mutable, you can go here.

I write and record a birthday song for Katharine every year.

Mutable is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. Send tracks to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

Brain Theory, Dugin, & Japanese Ads

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Three Things

Three Things Episode 2

For this week, we discussed crazy ideas about: the voices inside our heads, Alexander Dugin, aka the “Rasputin behind Putin”, and the amazingly bizarre Japanese Ads of 2016 (a selection of which can be found here.) Mutable’s curmudgeon’s got deep, got dirty, and got a lot more than they’d bargained for this week.

Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!

Ground Mouth

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series

Bedroom Theater Dispatch

In this original play by Ben Segal, two men have a short conversation. Written specifically for Bedroom Theater, it is our pleasure here at Mutable to share this delightful drama with you.

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.

My Asinine Life: Fake is the New Real. Watch as it Eats You!

January 12, 2021 in Article, My Asinine Life, Series

Gabriel Boyer

As abyss has come calling on your doorsteps this holiday, and your openings are twisting into the most convoluted of holiday shapes in their efforts to disguise themselves as the non-sacred things that have replaced their authentic originals—as what we thought was a thing is now transforming into a much older more disgusting thing—as there is no more time left—as time is always running out—as we move without clarity of vision into places without clear contours where the weak among us can be feasted on by bodiless persons as if these bureaucracies could sing in the spirit of the stars, when these are paper card constructions, built of paper so as to maintain their fully paper empires.

The Wes Letters: Ben, Letter 2

January 12, 2021 in Excerpt, Story, The Wes Letters, Series

Ben Segal

Dear Wes,

Will you ever go bald? Do you worry about it? Do you worry that people won’t want to work with bald Wes Anderson, that they’ll see balding as a sign of antiquatedness, that your career might be divided between the haired and hairless eras?

I worry about it, but then again I worry about almost everything.

Vore, Virtual Reality, & Druggie Dentists

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Three Things

Three Things Episode 1

isten to our three experts pontificating this week on these three issues of sexuality, reality, and dentists on drugs in the 21st century for the first in our series of 3 Things. Mutable’s favorite three curmudgeons are giving their two cents on issues you had no desire to ever know anything about! Check in regularly for more 3 Things!

Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!

The Incorrigible Michael Lewy

January 12, 2021 in Article, Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

Michael Lewy’s art exists in spaces that are often bare of even desolation, and utilizes common usually office-related objects to then re-interpret or re-examine them in an abstractified way. There is something very etherealized and conceptualizing about his CGI interpretations of office environments and other equally meaningless spaces, and something appealing too, but my favorite of Lewy’s works always have some sort of story to them—a simple image that suggests some larger story we are missing or a video project that is much about the back-story of his trapped minuscule double for example. (I am thinking of the video projection piece in the City of Work series, that gives us a glimpse of a minuscule Lewy in a CGI workplace dealing with his solitude poorly.)

Her Holiday Walk

January 12, 2021 in Story, Feature

Sayuri Yamada

Wendy McDermott was walking by a lake. It was her holiday. The sun was shining. She was happy. Her new white t-shirt and her new white jeans. Her twinkling blue eyes. Her bouncing brown hair. Her slender legs. Her long fingers. It was a nice sunny day.

There was nothing she had to do. She didn’t have to go to work. She didn’t have to ride on a crowded bus. She didn’t have to say, ‘You look nice,’ when her colleague asked about her new hair style. She didn’t have to smile at her boss when he told her that her report was full of holes that were big enough for RMS Titanic to go through. She didn’t have to say, ‘Sure,’ when snobby Jackie asked her to have lunch with her. She didn’t have to do the washing-up after supper in her small kitchen. She didn’t have to clean her room with lots of knickknacks.

There were many things she wanted to do. She wanted to drive around and park the car under a big tree and have a nap. She wanted to walk around and sit on the top of a hill and have a nap. She wanted to sleep in as long as she was pleased. She wanted to be up as late as she liked to. She wanted to watch TV if she woke up late at night without worrying about the next day.

The Hedonistic Imperative

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

David Pearce

A B S T R A C T

This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.