copyright is theft

The troll you see on the picture is Anne B. Ragde, norwegian hack writer, and media personality. Why is she there, you say? I'll tell you why.

A new ad hoc movement of culture peddlers is festering in the norwegian public these days. A petition with 1600 signatures demands that norwegian politicians do more to stop illegal distribution of intellectual property. Ragde is one of them, and one of their most visible contributors as such. They were on the boobtube yesterday, and when I woke up today the troll was rearing its fuzzy head in the various newspapers too.

Their argument ofcourse is entirely economic. Understandably so. These people have long since stopped producing for the pure passion of it, and "are only in it for the money" as Zappa put it, ever so honestly. They have especially selected the norwegian liberal party as their opponent, as well as the Socialist Left and Red, while citing that only the conservative party has been clear in the defence of traditional copyright laws. It's quite ironic that these people, whom by norwegian standards can probably be considered intellectuals should wheigh their support in favor of their traditional oppononents. Norwegian intellectuals and culture workers are traditionally quite left leaning. But lately we have seen that the classic division between left and right is becoming blurred, especially with regards to this subject, and integration/immigration. (Amusing really. It is becoming increasingly evident that whether statism is left wing or right wing, doesn't really matter that much. The real issue at hand is fear of the individual's opportunities, and rights, to self expression. But that is a different blog waiting to happen.)

Anyway, copyright. My sympathy for these people, and their self rightous indignancy is next to none. I personally chose to give away all the music I make, and anything else I should happen to create. It enriches culture because it provides a low threshold access point to expressions, and contributes to a dynamic cultural development. If you like what I do, you can use and spread it, and even create your own works with basis in mine. But these statist/capitalist propertarians don't really care about that. It's jost a job to them. Their hours are capital, in the marxist sense, not a way of furthering human development, be it social or otherwise. I chose to work full time in order to maintain an income, and produce music in my spare time. These retards are unable to do that, or atleast unwilling. Of course I cannot demand, or expect, that all people should view all their actions in a larger ideological perspective, but I can certainly look down on them for their lack of long term perspectives and insights.

I can see their argument, in the sense that they want some sort of compensation for their efforts. But it falls short of any real logic, besides an exclusively materialistic one. Their compensation should be access to a rich and free culture. But I guess money is more important to them than any sort of cultural experience. But what can you really expect from hack writers and musicians whose highest aspirations are to be picked up by a Coca Cola comercial?

Property is theft, and that goes for intellectual property as well.

I'll finish this blog with a quote, taken from a truly GRATE band. ;)

She wants money.
What she wants?
She wants money.
What she wants?
She wants money.

I have been struck down...

I have the strain of influenza commonly known as swine flu.
Came down today, after my girlfriend caught it a few days ago.

And people, I'm not going to die. Well, not today anyway, and not from this.
Nor am I a victim of evil illuminati, or similar organizations.
I am not being sacrifized to prepare the general populace for mass deaths.
I am not being used as milking cattle by the pharmaceutical companies.

I just happen to have caught a fairly mild virus. It's similiar to virus infections I happen to catch about every other year, except that this is even less lethal.

Despite this people seem to have gone stark raving mad with conspiracy theories and media panic, and other such nonsense.

Anyway, seven days sick leave. Could be worse.

Piledriver

Piledriver is not just a fun social activity, if your girlfriend is feeling acrobatic, or a machine that punches columns into the ground. Nor is it just a way to hurt your wrestling partner. It's so much more than that.

Many years ago, by mere chance, I discovered a band from Oslo named Piledriver. (Not to be confused with the rather infantile canadian metal band by the same name btw.) At the time I was 15 years, and Piledriver was some of the heaviest music I had ever heard, and in addition it had the digital edgy drum beats I so craved at the time. Piledriver managed to combine naive synthesizer melodies, dry unemotional drum beats and punk guitars in a most abbrasive way. The uniquely hard core aggression of Are Kleivans vocals completed the package. I remember all too well when they played in Arendal, in 1996. I have never since taken out so much energy in one evening, and I certainly had the black and blue marks on my body to prove it. Thinking back now, as an over the hill guy with a growing belly and gray streaks, I wonder how I survived. Absolutely one of my best musical memories.

Their name was an obvious reference to the way their drums sounded more or less like the industrial machine by the same name. Piledriver started out sometime in the first half of the nineties and released a very dark 7", before finding their unique style and releasing three full length albums and participating on several compilations. They also collaborated with Egil Hegerberg on his anti tagging song, and toured with the most superfluous hip hop act of all time. Sindre Goksøyr also played in the seminal norwegian "dønk rock" band Gluecifer for a while, before they turned into a pop group. They dubbed their way of playing "dunder disco" (thunder disco) and mixed equal doses of anger, humor and great music.

When I first started making music on my own several of the tracks contained obvious references to Piledrivers way of arranging music. I used high pitched repetitive melodies over industrial drums, but without the guitar and vocals. Unfortunately (or perhaps not) all these tracks have been lost by now. But still, Piledriver was one of the first underground acts I heard, and I still love their music.

If you like industrial metal or hardcore Piledriver is worth checking out. Probably not too easy to find though. Piledriver remains one the least known treasures of the norwegian hardcore underground, and as industrial metal goes I don't think most people in the scene have discovered them at all. Hopefully, this will be rectified at some point. Sadly however, they disbanded in 2002 and there isn't much hope for a reunion.

Sleepchamber Tribute and animal rights

It's not often I would call upon you to purchase music for money - even though there is nothing wrong about doing just that, but this time I have a real treat for you.
It's part one of a Sleepchamber tribute, where all the proceeds, and I mean all, go to freethebears.org. 8$ (pluss shipping) is not much, and you're helping an endangered (and fantastic) species by spending it. In return you get a cd packed with wonderful cover versions of sleepchamber material, titled That's Romance.
I have allready heard the material and it's certainly worth the money. (Especially the tracks by Batcheeba and Grammal Seizure.)

You can purchase it here: Kunaki.com
Or read more about it over at Brad Millers place

Number two should be out shortly.

Exciting guitar textures

Hipp Priest is a guitar based noise duo from Norway, consisting of Jubal Death and Death States. Well, I'm not sure if it's really noise, but I don't know what else to call it. Their myspace page says Psychobilly/death metal - but that is most assuredly a result of their somewhat strange sense of humor, not the music.

Their tracks range from toned down guitar textures, to ear wrenching overdrive, all with a humoristic twist that constrasts starkly with their rather dark soundscapes.

As far as I know their music is only available on myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/hipppriest

More politics, and a movie too.

Many years ago, when I was in secondary school, our teacher showed us a film called the Wave. Many of you may have heard of it, or even seen it.
It's about a school teacher who more or less unwittingly manages to create a fascistoid movement out of his students, in an attempt to demonstrate just how a totalitarian regime arises.
It has recently been remade as Die Welle (2008), but assumptuous as I am, I hazard a guess that the original still packs enough heat to be worth your attention. Despite being from 1981.

The film is even based on a real event. How much of it is dramatized I don't really know. Regardless it's a decent exploration of the dynamics of a totalitarian movement. Expecially its analysis of how the movement can supplant other needs for some people, who otherwise wouldn't fit in. (You can read more about the real life experiment at wikipedia.

Enough yabbering. It's not very long, and you really should take the fifty or so minutes it takes to watch it. Here it is, in all its glory, courtesy of Youtube:

My Moral Dilemma

It's election time in Norway, and as you all should know by now: I am an anarchist. I am opposed to the state, and I seek to abolish it.
However these goals are not entirely realistic, not in my lifetime anyway, and thus people seek to influence me to vote for some party or another in this election. As they have done so many times before. I certainly see their point: it would be nice to be able to participate in some way to make the world a better place.

Let's sum up the status quo of norwegian politics.

Norway is a parliamentary democracy with a puppet king. The power lies with the parliament, and it's power is divided among (currently) seven political parties. Three of these have allied themselves and formed a majority government. The Socialist Left Party, the Labour Party and the Center party (rural interest party really). These three parties have highly varied ideological platforms (no you dumb yankees, not all socialists are the same), ranging from semi revolutionary socialism, via centrist eurosocialism to reactionary isolationist nationalism. It's a small miracle how they manage to work together.
The opposition, consisting of the remaining four parties contain the Christian conservative party, the Social Liberal Party, The Conservative Party and the right leaning populist Progress Party (liberal party as they would call themselves - and again for the yankees, look up Milton Friedman and liberalism. You'll see that what you call liberal is a far pitch away from historical liberalism).
In addition we have two smaller parties who might win a seat in the coming election: a communist party called Red, and the Coast party, a strange party whose single real issue seems to be killing more seals and whales.

In reality, post election Norway will one of two governments: a collaboration between the conservatives and right wing populists (with a serious racist policy attached) or a the current coalition (which includes the wolf killing center party and the quite racist labour party). Fat chance I'll support any of those. So, how about the smaller parties?
Christian Conservatives? No, not likely.
Liberal party? Not really. They have an anti urban platform, are euro-sceptical, support ambigious nationalist language policies and are generally strange.
Communists? I'd rather emigrate?
Whale killers? Hahahaha.

I can't vote for any of these idiots. Even if I wanted to vote my choice would be between nine evils, out of which even the smallest evil is such a far cry from anything I support that it would burn an eternal stain on my very soul. All of these choices will make the world a worse place to live in, and I can't support that.

I'd rather have an unblemished moral than support any of these filthmongers. Retardcracy is for retards.