The tape cut-up process is a very versatile medium of magickal expression that can be used to focus one's intent and expand reality beyond the pre-programmed limitations of our societal focus. Resisting The Viral Self cut-up COUNTERACTS CONTROL in two major ways. In the instance of a mangled Pepsi commercial, the cut-up seeks to disfigure brand recognition by deconstructing, destroying, and abstracting their messages. Other elements are interjected as a necessary balance, a conscious message of hope, intended to counteract the spiraling effect of such media desperation. Mass media produces epidemics of schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, insomnia, and stress manifest cancer. Mass media also produces a general nihilism in the youth. Due to programming, many young people feel nothing anymore is sacred and they curse their mother Earth with littered minds. We go beyond re-run logic canceled program mind, we quit the rat race. Grow a little broccoli next to gun smoke. It's just that easy folks, everything’s a cut-up, and reality is exactly what you make it: so design away. Designers welcome. A necessary growth forever reaching.

Cut-ups are a cure for poison programming and mind traps designed to resonate with captured meaning. Beyond these walls the lights are always luminous, not bleak, and the tired speech they force upon us has no meaning. Cut-ups are a form of mental healing. Anyone can exercise this technique so do it NOW. Try to live in a reality outside the box and see what fruit will grow. New seeds need planted. New ideas, new words are needed to speak with.

One universal truth that cut-ups reveal to us is that everything is one and the same and because of this all things exist in relation to one another. The multidimensional nature of our existence is fully illuminated when we fully engage in the cut up process and produce results thru directed focus. Directed focus can break down the barriers of routine and even give sight to the blind when necessary. Just because you don't get results the first time doesn't mean you don't keep on trying. Action alone produces results, so stay in motion, keep on doing, and remain receptive. Things are changing even if the change is gradual and slow. The magickal process can resurrect the civilized mind from the decadent burial of modern routines: hospital beds / post office windows / grocery stores, all the same representational focus. Engagement with the light of truth is necessary to dissolve such meanings. Cut-ups could be viewed as a dissolving medium; cosmic compost heaps renewing structures of the mind in solid form.

Resisting The Viral Self cut-up was edited from much larger sections of raw tape cut-up. Once edited it was further layered and condensed in various ways digitally. The tape cuts were divided into one hundred unique sections and then numbered accordingly. We then numbered one hundred squares of paper. We placed the numerical scraps in a drinking glass full of Kombucha residue and allowed them to be charged in the sun. The sun's energy symbolizes the masculine role of creation. The Kombucha residue and the sun charged the numerical scraps with the powers of creation. This was a very necessary balance with our sorcery, because at times the cut-up process can be very destructive with all the force and passion of creative ends.

Tape cut ups are a general link to the subconscious mind; they deal with the manipulation of time and space, and the manifestation of our intentions whatever they may be. This manifestation occurs in the timeless time of all time. We must always cut with absolute generational abandon. A time rift could be created, an earth quake, a garden; limitless possibilities exist on the same level playing field. All possible circumstances have invested chance and rarely outside of time loops do the same events occur over and over again. I propose that the corporate time loop represents the strangled mind. It exists as the ultimate barrier now to human progress. The intention of the cut-ups produced and associated with the Evolve project is to obstruct mind control devices and compositionally break down corporate time loops of every size, variety, and shape. They also demonstrate the schizophrenic, chaotic, maddening nature of mass media, advertising, and television. If the television becomes nauseating after listening to large portions of cut up, then they have worked their magick, continue focus. Through discipline and focus the mind can become liberated from control forces in total form.

Our primary method of working with these tape cut-ups is to randomly generate videos on Youtube and then cut them up using the pause button on an old tape deck. All cuts are random. The cutter does not watch or listen to the video as they cut. We also use radio. We use Jim Swill's poetry cut-up. We view society’s mind as a battle ground, they wage war against our cultural expression, there's an eject button on the tape deck so we push it. Youtube is essentially utilized as an icon generator. It is a way for us to engage with our collective experience of cultural mass media. We use it to access old commercials and cartoon shows, things that are locked inside our subconscious minds and still to this day instigated as systems of control and manipulation; conforming the mind to corporate modeled expressions and catch phrases. We are attempting to short-circuit and defile media manipulation by investigating our subconscious relationship with their control. Cut-ups are one way we gain liberation from the shackles of corporate normality. Escape from a twisted ozone bleaching white. We can project into a new reality as just another cut that’s made the ultimate expression of a dissected universe, no repeat.

Cut-ups can be similar to hypnosis techniques where one enters into a past experience and uses this to change the memory of what actually happened. This can permanently alter the circuitry of the brain. It can be a very useful technique for those who have been molested or exposed to other such monstrosities. I propose that our minds have been molested by corporate identity forms and patterns of deception that need not repeat. Mass media is a monstrosity and exists simply as a reservoir of pain; a gathered suffering that extends to us with hands. Through internet channels like Youtube we are granted access to the history of mass media. We can access both past and current experiences of mass media. Take something like a Burger King commercial, cut it up, and then listen in a new way. Listen over and over again to the cut-ups if necessary. Listen for new sounds that you are creating. When we access new sounds and new ideas, we abstract the recognition of corporate identity and this of course is no small matter. The reason big business spends so much money advertising is that they need to keep their unreality constant. It's a form of primitive hypnotism and never forgets this. Brand recognition is essential to corporate success. If we all instantly forget then they can no longer maintain a system of control. Control so McDonalds sponsors the Olympics, cruelty is just another tax write off, cooperation and unity are laughed at in the boardroom. There are fast food restaurants in hospitals where people are sick with heart disease. The church doors are locked at night. No one trusts each other anymore. All we can hear is canned laughter from the 1950's. Dead men laughing on tape playback. It is for these and many other reasons that we must take back control of our own lives and our sense of community that seems technologically obstructed by CONTROL.

The best way to maneuver thru time and space is to interject one's self directly into the medium of now. The past can be used to bind us to illusionary realities of regret which could be likened to the Christian concept hell. We are also manipulated by the promise of a big feast in the future. The idea that we can achieve great rewards by obeying authoritative systems of control can be likened to the christian concept heaven. Heaven and hell are instigated as systems of control within the populist mind. It is best to be outside such conceptual limitations in the timeless time of all time to create THE NEW, THE NOW, THE ONE. DO CUT-UPS. Resurrect the mind from routines of boredom. When we surrender to the now, we make connections with the universe's guidance, and obliterate distractions that would prevent us from accessing our true human potential.

Cut-ups are a definite tool used to contact the subconscious mind. They allow us to form new realities and new possibilities through the combination of chance and magick. Cut-ups allow us to access the universal guidance we are all so desperately seeking. Cut-ups can be used for divination. They can be used in the same way as other subconscious processes like the casting of runes, the reading of tarot cards, the I-ching, or even the simple flip of a coin. Anything that surrenders one’s potentiality to the universe is a prime decision. Cut-ups are simply an updated form of magick, a semi-technological magick if you will. To participate in a process of divination simply pose a question involving a future reality and form a cut. (television, radio, and Youtube are all excellent sources for magickal exploitation) Finally listen to your cut. What does the cut-up reveal? What words pop out or what new words form from the deconstructed syllables of former words? Cut-ups comprised of many past realities will inevitably project the future. The future is formed from the compost of past realities. By focusing our attention NOW we can truly form a future beyond these walls. There is a conscious future, a brighter future that we all can willingly create together. The barriers of the mass-media-mind need deconstructing and thus the cut-up process, etc. and so on. Cut-ups for a new reality. Cut-ups for the mind and for the future. We can, all of us, permanently obstruct control. We can live beyond the corporate modeled nonsense logic… beyond the mass media infection of the mind. - Evolve 2009

POST-SUICIDE INERTIA! by Robert Inhuman

NO JOB BUT I WANT TO WORK HARD

Most of the lyrics I made for this record were written before, during, or after shows on tour. I guess it's because I am touring a lot and the shows are my most readily available social situations to observe and react to. I would like to be more careful not to limit my social experiences to just things related to being in a band, but for the time being it's just very directly how I survive; it's my job; it's A job. In April of 2006 I embarked upon the experiment of wanting to make records and travel instead of be pinned down for the remainder of my youth in more conventional government-regulated forms of employment. It has been shaky at times, but determination combined with the miserable memories of uselessly demeaning jobs and the idea that there are very few things this world has to offer that I am interested in paying money for, has turned this experiment into an increasingly longterm (and awesome) venture.

It seems like every year I tell myself I will not need to be on the road so much, especially after 2007 when I accidentally ended up playing over 100 shows in a year. But like most career paths, some type of annual expansion ends up being needed, either to survive the current economic circumstances, or just to keep things challenging and not dull for the audiences who allow me to continue on this chosen path. Sometimes I do not like being on tour. Even through the grueling year of 2008, especially as I was first setting out on a 4 month all-summer North American tour, I did not especially "feel" like being in public every day, with all its persistent anxieties and social frustrations. Why should I do something like this if I don't really feel up to it? Aside from the fact I was homeless at the time and needed a way to avoid acknowledging it, there are more significant reasons that have been revealing themselves to me over the past couple years...

DEPRESSION CONQUERED THROUGH SELF-SACRIFICE

I have a lifelong history with depression. For most of my youth it has romantically, numbingly, and unfortunately dictated many of my decisions and basic abilities to function or feel compassion for myself. Though in my stronger moments I feel an impulse to create or endorse things that are positive and life-affirming in any variety of ways, suddenly for reasons clear or not I emotionally feel like I'm trying to walk through a tar pit, as anyone fluent with depression can probably understand. I was always really beat down by the fact that depression stops me from being good to myself, from living my own life in quality, but it wasn't until the past couple years, as Realicide has placed a higher priority on the propaganda of youth outreach, I finally started to realize something that has led unexpectedly to a way out of the crippling effects of depression. I finally realized that depression doesn't just fuck up my own life, it also prevents me from reaching my potential as a servant to the people I care about and the world that is gracious enough to let me inhabit it.

Just because I am not always quite so stoked on the whole "being alive" thing (GOTH AS FUCK) does not mean I can't still be a resource to people who have constructive potential in this world. By shifting the motivations of Realicide from simply self-expression towards more socially-edged aims, I inadvertently found a new instance of the 3rd function of art in my life. (Art's function = 1. byproduct of a life, 2. catalyst for dialogue, 3. distraction to save a life) By focusing on promoting positive ideas and ideals, even those I very admittedly struggle with in my own life, I felt the weight of depression easing off my mind and body a bit. Even in music that talks about intense personal struggling, it doesn't have to stay an endorsement of total sorrow. Of course people gravitate towards songs about things that are sad or enraging, but I don't want to just say "all this life shit sucks and it's just gonna be that way til you're dead so you might as well fucking die as soon as you can". I feel like Realicide is meant to be saying "Life fucking sucks. Why's it like that and what can be done about it?!" or ultimately just "LIFE SUCKS BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO." With courage and conviction I am finding that to be very true in many ways.

Note: Working beyond a paralyzing depression hasn't cured my rather vehement streak of misanthropy. Being a very convinced and unshakable misanthrope, I have found the best way to handle myself / my role in this world is basically the whole "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" thing. Not to sound dumb, I am just in a situation in which I have a lot of deep-rooted distrust for humanity, while I still feel an instinct to interact with people and do so in as positive of ways as I can. Maybe one of those will change over time, I am really not sure.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

It concerns me when people I meet on tour are overtly envious of someone who is in a different city every day, always moving, networking and hustling. Being in a touring band has been my ticket out of conventional employment, and the way I've met most of my closest and most respected friends, but this lifestyle is not without some drawbacks worth mentioning. When I am never in a city for more than a couple weeks, and often not more than a couple days, I lose track of something very valuable: what it means to be part of a community.

Realicide is intended to be generally against indulging in escapism. Ironically, being in a different city every day can quickly escalate from sampling the social climate of various regions to being just another way of running from reality and what it means to commit to a collective effort; to just know what it means to work through differences within a group of people day by day. This escape, like most escapist outlets, can be very addictive. It is hard to not be on tour after you've been out for months, sustaining yourself financially and riding the high of new people and experiences constantly. But there is something crucial about really KNOWING a place; not just catching a blurry glimpse. Also of course the issue of only being able to meet people directly related to the show we're in town for in some way. I have a feeling that there are a lot of really awesome, high caliber people in these cities that probably wouldn't come out to a Realicide show, you know? That's important to remember when your opinion of a place depends on how your band is received. The world is fortunately a lot bigger than any subcultural niche...

WE DON'T WANT FANS. WE WANT FRIENDS.

But not like on Myspace; that shit seriously does not count. We aren't trying to sell you records so that you'll follow another band mindlessly. These records are supposed to be one application of the 2nd function of art: something to start a conversation; talk about what you agree and disagree with or any questions resulting from either. Here is what we're doing; what are you doing? We leave the comfort of homes in order to enable relationships with people far away from where we were geographically born into; get a slightly wider perspective on the world and who is active in it. Fans are very seldom more than passive observers. A friend is interactive - always preferred. (Even enemies are better than fans or mere passive observers, but although we aren't going to deny that for one reason or another there are people who have chosen to be our enemies, we would really prefer friendships whenever the choice is up to us.)

THE FIRST PART OF "D.I.Y." IS "DO"

Anyone who does not have children or other dependents can probably do any of this D.I.Y. band stuff I've ended up doing. Some people with kids do it a lot better than I can even. In most ways I really have no business fucking with music. I obviously have very little understanding of it academically, not to mention a complete lack of natural musical talent. The more I hear young people, with nothing in particular holding them back from being in a serious band or doing anything else constructive with their lives for that matter, bitch about what they wanna do and why they "can't" get it underway, that old CRASS song really takes full meaning and becomes worth renewing as somewhat of a daily mantra... Take responsibility. Claim autonomy. Remember their old words of wisdom?

"...The problems that you suffer from are the problems that you make.
The shit we have to climb through is the shit we choose to take.
If you don't like the life you live, change it now, it's yours!
Nothing has effect if you don't recognize the cause..." (CRASS, from "Big A little A")

"The only thing that needs to change is what's inside of me!" Are you gonna wait for that mythical day in which all circumstances line up perfectly for you to actualize your goals with total ease and no sacrifice or risk? Wait like that til you're too wasted away in body and mind to do otherwise, or change what's yours to change while you still can and see if it might influence the world you're living in. "At least we're fucking trying!!!" AWARENESS DOES NOT HAVE TO EQUAL DESPAIR. RESIST THE VIRAL SELF.