When I was walking the poorly lit streets of Hackney Wick area towards Bloc – a club I’ve never been to but heard a lot about due to its Berlin vibes – to meet the experimental dark electronic duo AnD I didn’t know what to expect. It was my first time interviewing an industrial/experimental/dark techno act, but when I’ve called and met Dimitri Poumplidis and Andrew Bowen we ended up having a quite intense, yet fun conversation on the current state of the world, Rage Against The Machine and their new album ”Social Decay” available on vinyl here.
Your new album ‘’Social Decay’’ was my first incursion into your world, and honestly, it was a fucking sick, both socially and sonically intense experience! What was the idea behind this album?
Dimitri Poumplidis: The album is basically our stance towards the Zeitgeist.
Andrew Bowen: The world is a fucking melting pot, everyone is obsessed with themselves, there’s no compassion. People never stop to see around them and understand what’s going on, their interest is focused on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, to the point when it’s more important to have 25K virtual friends than 5 real ones! The album is exactly about that, all these frustrating situations that you notice all the time happening around you, the record is gritty, harsh and in some way terrorizing, giving the listener some food for reflection!
DM: I wouldn’t say better, man! Social decay… everything is superficial, there’s no substance left.
AB: The titles of the tracks also give you hints on several things like ‘’Disturbed Reality’’, you can feel that’s something is not right. Shops are closing, people can’t afford to buy homes anymore, there are more homeless people on the streets than ever before! It gets quite scary, the way the cities look, the way environment feels, it’s getting to the point when people maybe need to change something.
DM: I hope people can correlate titles with what’s happening right now.
”It gets quite scary, the way the cities look, the way environment feels, it’s getting to the point when people maybe need to change something.”
Do you think it’s efficient to exorcise society with sonic violence?
DM: It is in my opinion, I’m not a very political person, but I’m fully aware of what’s going on! For me, in terms of music Rage Against The Machine was a fucking revolution! You know them?
Yeah man, they’re sick. I didn’t hear that new project Tom created with B-Real and Chuck D, Prophets of Rage or something…
AB: Is it good?
I don’t know, I saw their promo posters around Bethnal Green area!
DM: You gotta listen to RATM lyrics man, they wanted people to fight and to make a revolution!
AB: I really like the way they put their energy out, so people can use it!
DB: The message is really important…
AB: Prodigy they were also advocating for something they believed in, they wanted to share a message! We don’t do anything unless we believe in it, we always want to make a statement with every single piece of music we put out there. We are not that political, but we do listen to the people, we are aware what’s going on around us and we put it in our music!
I hear you… Andrew, what is your relation with art, you did the cover for ‘’Social Decay’’ is your art somehow connected with your music?
AB: I actually paint while listening to our music, I don’t use paint brushes or anything… I paint with flat edges of my hands. Then I use a marker to paint over them, then I take photographs, then I digitalize photographs and transform them into animations, I take screenshots and finally vectorize them. That’s the process!
Bloc. Party People
Listen to ”Taking Control” below:
