A Favourite Aside From My Other Book

At least I partially healed (for a while) as much as I could by torturing my throat through a bizarre, inaccessible, disturbingly scary, utterly uncompromising cathartic diary and sonic autobiography on abuse and pain disguised as an 'old-school' Electro-Industrial music project which I titled "Vore Complex".

Taken at face value, Vore Complex summarises an intricate aggregate of interwoven themes concerning various aspects of hyper-consumerism and overconsumption and the bourgeois futility of 21st Century Western society, all Keynesian mass-production, globalist advertising, atomization, and the cult of the TV, and with a particular aghast disdain - bordering on consistent pessimistic cynicism, more cynical then than now - for a world increasingly made fake, shallow, and ultimately disappointing, all numinous spirituality, intelligence, beauty, and love sold-out or torn away, to a backdrop of lost friends, thwarted dreams, and my then severe Autophagia. Aside from this basic thematic framework, one may have to plough through a great many about obscure war crimes, human trafficking, and the seedy doings of many a Western government, managed from a perspective that is both campy in places and also exceedingly grim.

The despair, coruscating pain and bleakness exhibited in those tracks is genuine. You can hear it in my voice. It's the voice of a torture victim. I gave a copy of one of my 32 full length Vore Complex albums to a previous Pakistani psychiatrist who informed me that he didn't listen to "immature 'Heavy Metal' noise" and name-dropped Rachmaninov at me, whom he had encountered musically at a recent conference.

You know he listens to ethnic Islamic music at home, though, if he listens to music at all, it generally being an obsessive habit of Europeans, much as white musicians are not particularly favoured by the barbarity of the music industry's comprehensive anti-European black Rap interests. I've heard Middle Eastern and Bengali stuff playing quietly in some of their private upstairs offices.

I assume someone intimidating and influential had tipped him off about the Russian composer at that staff conference, and he was keen to sound the part, as he otherwise came across as a moron and could barely speak English outside of his repetitive professional jargon. As I find always occurs with others, he had made the usual mistake of assuming I have any legitimate interest in looking for pleasure or civilisational high cultural worth in degenerate music entartete, unaware that what I composed for bitter catharsis and what I listen to for pleasure and appreciate in my own home are entirely non-overlapping.

Also, as seems reasonable to note in context, I couldn't imagine this bare, puffed-up overseer gaining very much from the complex, sublime drama, vivid harmony, and intense textural poetics of that brilliant, violent, late-Romantic master's frenetic, technically daunting Op. 39 piano etudes. Does he fling them on in nonchalant reverence as he's hastily mass-sigilising his unrecognisable name-squiggle onto the standard spaces of a grey, industrial block of Mental Health Act Section 3 request forms, grunting over the desk to retrieve the stiff, rubbery egg and mayonnaise sandwich he had his secretary deliver to him from the patients' canteen next-door, feeling so very, very real?

As it stands, much as he's correct on the primitive vulgarity of the sounds alone, I see he couldn't look past the nasty noises of my project and notice – not even for a polite minute or so –  what I attempted to express in the subtext, and what I was openly communicating the entire time in shielded language.

VC is not a sound I imagine anyone would ever listen to if they didn't want to console themselves following their hellish lives or wonder what stressed me out. It's firmly modernist, dissonant, and expressionist, but not the sort of thing you could dance to in a disco or club or play on a radio. I made a conscious, concerted effort with the time signatures, verse and chorus phrasing, and drum beat rhythm patterns to try and dissuade the milquetoast underground dance scene from commercial reactions, even before the samples and the lyrical themes were noticed, and despite the Gothic Industrial Techno superficiality.

I like to hope your average music fan could be surprised. Aside from the main title, this phrase acts as an introductory multiple-choice cryptogram providing the hints needed for what I had hoped was the decipherment key for a basic Vigenère cipher variant, albeit with the subsequent letter transposition. One can find, for example, that the letters spell 'Poem Lover' (CX), indicating that one could lay out a cryptographic alpha-numeric chart with C shifted to X, and the same with the additional 'Complexer', where O shifts to V (or vice versa for further variation), before perhaps applying one or another of these developments to the band name letters again and taking the total of the numbers then finding and splitting the divisors… and various other steps I won't spoil as I think I've forgotten the majority of them. For example:

Take A = 0, B = 1, C = 2, … Z = 25.

Apply “Poem Lover” (C → X) substitution.

Thus, A = 5, B = 6, C =7 … Z = 4.

Apply to “Vore Complex” as a whole word.

V   O  R   E   C   O  M     P   L    E   X

 0  19  22   9  7   19   17   20  16    9   2

Add the decimals to find total.

= 0 + 19 + 22 + 9 + 7 + 19 + 17 + 20 + 16 + 9 

  + 2 = 140.

Find divisors of 140:

1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14, 20, 28, 35, 70, 140.

According to “Poem Lover”:

1245       7101        4202         8357       0140

WXZA CWVW   ZXVX      DYAC     VWZV.

Repeat Process with “Complexer” (O→V).

Divisors: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128.

Construct more alpha-numeric tables.

Key: WORD 1 W→X, WORD 2 Z→A, WORD 3 C→W, WORD 4 V→W, WORD 5 Z→X, WORD 6 V→X, WORD 7 D→Y, WORD 8 A→C, WORD 9 V→W, WORD 10 Z→V.

LETTER 1 J→K, LETTER 2  M→Q, LETTER 3 J→O, LETTER 4 L→K, LETTER 5 O→M, LETTER 6 J→K, LETTER 7 [no shift].

Or: Consider binary sequences from base 10 to base 2.

Just as a further practical example, just one of the many different approaches I attempted to waste my time with, and completely at random, take the first twenty words of the poem I wrote at the back of this book (title included), stripped of all punctuation:

A POEM IN MEMORY OF THE GERMAN WAR DEAD AN AXLE SNAPPING AND THE WHEELING SUN HURTLES TO RUPTURED EARTH

Apply ‘Poem Lover’ word key:

Z QPFN CH LDLNQX QH RFC LJWRFS UYP CDZC ER ZWKD TOBQQJOH UHX SGD YJGGNKPI QSL  MZWYQJX RM QTOSTQDC IEVXL

Split into 7-letter groups:

ZQPFNCH LDLNQXQ HRFCLJW RFSUYPC DZCERZW KDTOBQQ JOHUHXS GDYJGGN KPIQSSL MZWYQJX RMQTOST QDCIEVX L 

Apply ‘Complexer’ letter key:

YMKGPBH KZGOSWQ GNADNIW QBNVAOC CVXFT

YW JZOPDPQ IKCVJWS  FZTKIFN JLDRURL LVRZSIX QJLUQRT PZXJGUX K

Split into 4-letter groups:

YMKG PBHK ZGOS WQGN ADNI WQBN VAOC

CVXF TYWJ ZOPD PQIK CWJW SFZT KIFN JLDR URLL VRZS IXQJ LUQR TPZX JGUX KVGB

Compose generic rhyming stanzas utilizing the 4-letter groups as the first letters (or third letters/final letters):

Yesterday we stumbled to the ugly sea

Mad with the mourning echoes of the gull-grey breeze

Kind words washed over but the deep screamed loud

Grim on that ghastly stretch beyond the crowd

Pebbles skimming on the seething waves

Blunted diamonds poured down an unmarked grave

Hard as granite, bright as the midnight stars

Kind words could not redeem these silent scars.

Etc.

(save ‘spare’ letters for any subsequent lyrics, picking up – on and off – where the initial message left off, using any relevant song titles to switch the code.)

I put in a little bit more effort than this, but you get the idea. There are some more steps in the middle somewhere. I have no clue how easy it is to decrypt and haven’t had time to test, although Chapter 3 of the book Codes and Ciphers by Robert Churchhouse provides a helpful solution to the general Vigenère cipher.

A few years before properly commencing my Vore Complex writing, I had a genuine interest in military-grade cryptography, to a William F. Friedman degree (if not competency), and had in some fashion taken the approach of a destitute man's Cicada 3301, sequestering my most private thoughts far behind the surface, much as that surface is informative enough. I'm very sure I messed up my ridiculous superenciphering logic following the initial sonic and chromatic steganography, a few metadata experiments (as is the conventional definition!), and the polyalphabetic substitutions and key rhythm repetitions in some of the instrumental work as well, conveying abstract numerical and binary analogues, inspired a little by Philip Thicknesse's harmonic alphabet. I also had to memorize the book cipher externals, which was a long-term pain, but at least those eccentric tomes are sat safely on the rabbit room shelf behind me. "Eccentric" - that sums this project up well.

Listeners would be best off lingering with what is merely apparent, but I had forgotten that they're all activists in the underground scene these days anyway. Thus, I'm probably too 'offensive' for them somehow (not that I can deny that the sound of Vore Complex itself is offensive to anyone who appreciates genuine music). I was never too interested in making my little experiments super-smart as it's very much 'keeping up with the Joneses' these days in modern cryptography, and I wanted something a little more obscure and anachronistic, on the off chance that older techniques by human effort have been forgotten to some degree, what with all the post-quantum textbooks and pseudorandom computational reliance.

A last, benighted trip to London's Slimelight Club in 2018 to test marketing potential in an environment I was fondly familiar with as an immature adolescent established the futility of my work resonating with this withering crowd regardless. I wasn't sure what to wear either as I tend to dress in conventional attire, with hair shaved short or combed back or into a side-parting, and black synthetic office shoes or reserved ankle boots, all dark cotton long-sleeve shirts and suit trousers, or navy blue work-wear, usually with my 3/4 length Crombie thrown over the top, or various high collared military peacoats, and my dark grey M65 field jacket, or indeed the occasional Hawaiian or floral short sleeve. I look geeky in my glasses.

I wearily exchanged a curious home business card with someone as I stood in the queue, struggling to initiate and maintain a polite conversation with her but determined not to stand there waiting in silence. I was passionately informed at length about the revolutionary artistic genius of VNV Nation. I knew I was damned at that point.

I don't think a taste for raw, angry, bitterly dark 'underground' Industrial has survived, a white modern primitivism. There's been nothing experimentally interesting or philosophically challenging to any of it. Neither is it genuinely controversial, artistically provocative, or opinionated even - not anymore (if ever, realistically). I remind the world regularly that though I composed these projects as potboilers to some degree, I solely listen to Classical music at home and am pretty selective even within that. I don't like popular music, no matter the 'genre', even if Europeans make it. Abby still insists on listening to some 25-year-old :wumpscut: discs in the car (it's generally that or the threat of Limp Bizkit otherwise, or indeed Kasabian), and I am 100% barred from playing my Classical CDs on her vehicle's stereo as she tells me she needs the hard rhythmic kick beats to concentrate whilst driving. I weather this (although it can be perceptually nauseating).

After all, as a Gothic teenager, I listened to that German producer's earlier albums, much as I find them all very wearisome now, terribly simplistic, conceptually trashy, and lyrically subversive. His grim aesthetics and moribund tone aren't that different from my VC work, albeit nowhere near as severe or realistic, as I routinely 'break the third wall'. Recently, I've found Abby's become quite fond of Dunkelwerk (another grim German electronic dance project, yet one which at least doesn't come across as sleazy or cynical to quite the same degree, though it remains a horrendous listen). The best I could tolerate was accepting the Nordic Folk group Danheim in small doses.

Many established Vore Complex songs are closer to archaic war dirges and laments, audible Slavic darkness in the slower tempos and instrumentations, all ponderous drums and horns and organs, or something resonating with Wilfred Owen. Extended philosophical and spiritual poems from another age. The themes are realistically macabre and very harrowing.

In my music listening, much of the 20th Century is shied away from by me; at least once, atonal composition, Jazz, and hideous postmodern Dada start to pop up, and anything goes. Blues and Rock music infuriates me beyond compare. I've recently become fond of the wonderful energy of Alexander Scriabin's Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (with the allegro featuring chords made of fourths in a precursor to some of his ‘mystic’ works; tension maintained by a switch between two beats per bar and three - 6/8, the incongruity of an angular trumpet motif, that dominant G transforming via the intensity of a frankly divine violin solo, and of course that clarinet solo carrying on from the first movement, with the haunting strings of the tempestoso sounding almost Wagnerian).

I also listen to Josef Suk's A Summer's Tale (losing myself in the blazing, sinister Pagan atmospheres with the flutes, and bassoons, bass drum, and clarinets in a hymn to the sun, and then the harp, violin, viola, and cor anglais and the romantic intensity of the fourth movement leading to a contrapuntal trumpet melody scherzo and eventually a tranquil thematic resolution). Still, most of the time, I'm trying to relax to the delicate string quartets of Bedřich Smetana or reading against the side of Józef Wieniawski's Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Minor Op. 24.

Anton Arensky's Piano Concerto in F Minor, Op. 2 tends to accompany me as I'm having dinner or a selection of Niccolò Paganini's solo violin Caprices, much as I occasionally vary these with the fantasia appasionata by Henri Vieuxtemps. It was nice to discover some of Nietzsche's little piano pieces, much as his thinking is better than his compositional skill. They're still fascinating enough and profoundly moving. The pianist on my recording brings something out in him that I have always wanted from Debussy but have never been satisfied by in the latter composer, whom I do not listen to—some readier relation to Chopin.

Much as I fall back on late Romanticism for much of my attentive interest, there’s something elegant about Johann Hummel’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Minor that draws me time after time, more so even than with Schubert, the latter composer inspired by Hummel’s works. More so than this sumptuous master even, the early 18th Century concertos of Reichenauer captivate me intensely, perhaps my favourite composer. However, at the recommendation of an online friend, I am continuing to familiarise myself with the operas of Richard Wagner, taking a particular fondness to the Prelude to Parsifal (although so far I only own the Herbert von Karajan recording with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and am informed that there are much better recordings). Then there is the pure beauty of Medtner, particularly his Violin Sonata No. 3 in E Minor, Op. 57 (‘Epica’) and the 2 Canzonas with Dances, Op. 43. When I wish to startle myself I listen to the bleak, fatalistic overture (in B-flat minor – a dark key) to the orchestral suite of the tragic opera Kát’a Kabanová by the composer Leoš Janáček.

VC was not great music. Not in the slightest (in my mind, it's golden apples and rotten oranges, given what I confessed above).  It just kept me alive. It wasn't really intended as music at all, just 1001 interlinked shards of atrocious past life discomfort, and then an extended moan about the world, wrapped up in formal metre metaphysical poetry at some times, and decadence-era love-loss poetry, and gritty, complicated slam verses at others, a punkish confrontation, usually with quite a lot going on in them quietly and a lot of allusions and things to pull out at multiple levels, and sometimes to that over-thought cryptogrammatic cipher degree like a audiobook of the Voynich Manuscript, delivered at rapid pace in guttural, screeching, tortured rasps, and with a bit of sad and sinister melody, drawing from Eastern European influences and demented carnival organ themes and some very primal Bronze Age darkness at times, mingling with that groove of cyberpunk psychedelia nudging at militarian 'spy music', something pretentious like what Nick Land might promote, and thrown on top of a thick wall of ferocious mechanical punch beats and pulses and arpeggiated bleeps, and with the sort of lyrics that homeless drug addicts and psychiatric patients and pissheads in gutters and abused children running away to London might empathise with, carried to extremes in the extended slam poems of my ribald (cringeworthily rubbish) Skomorokh mini-project.

Something a bit different, candid, warts and all. I realised early on that no one would read it as pure poetry if I didn't add music. Then, of course, the poems had to be altered anyway, leaving me room to slip a few little subtleties into them. My cryptographic drives feature on and off throughout the project. Aside from everything else, it's just a phonetic pun on "Very Complex."

It's a pity no one actively listens to lyrics or reflects on them as pieces of verse. Given the stupidity of most song words, I can see why that is. It's more of a lucrative victory of computational linguistics than anything else. Still, they've all been encouraged to focus on the heady passion of the instrumentation and the polished commercial value, with the rest relegated to padding and entertainment over meaning. As I screamed in one of the songs, "Teeth against the afterbirth of everything you've missed."

I sometimes wondered if any of my distress could have been nipped in the bud if only someone professional had realised what the lyrics in VC were implying and trying to convey, shielded in artistic language. As it stands, they never had the time or the intuition to do that. They could not be bothered. As education levels go down, people are increasingly unfamiliar with my language. The archaic style I write my poetry in - and I think somehow, realistically, that the words are closer to grimly wrought philosophical poetry than a successful adherence to the conventions of commercial lyric writing, despite the naughty language, and the creepy bits, and that very unsettling delivery.

With hindsight, I should have named the wretched project "TL;DR^DL". Anyone who passed that listening and didn't assimilate anything in the first 15 seconds or thereabouts of escalating oddness, their fear of oddness driving them to click away, could be counted on not to wonder if that "L" implied "Love"—a succinct observation.

Further, with some experience on the matter, those afraid of, at the root – and before any descriptors are added to define what is taste – sound itself, familiar in the oddness of a natural world, and sometimes unexpected the while, cannot help address stressful situations effectively, if at all. A burns ward, say, or a battlefield.

I say 32 albums. I realistically have over 73 (and forget by how many more). I have never put some online and just stored them unaddressed on a series of computers and external drives. Some I have put up and torn down. Some I've deleted or lost. It's fair to say that I was addicted to writing music. I used to listen to my work non-stop, sometimes with a critical, tinkering ear, and sometimes to refresh myself. It also saves money if you write to entertain yourself or to process thoughts, like Chuck Noland devoting time to Wilson.