Wednesday, May 2, 2012

new filmclip on its way

We're currently about 1/3rd of the way through filming our next filmclip, for the track "There's Nothing Here And It Screams". If you're not familiar with it, you can hear it here:


It was a motherfucking grueling 12 hr session to get what we've got so far, massive props to Niik from Zen for spending the day helping us out. (btw, if you're a Melbourne vocalist looking for a band, do hit them up).

Here's a still from the clip so far...i severely doubt we'll be able to get this aired on australian tv, but who knows? Courting dead media ftw.




xero

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

freedom from/freedom to

"There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it." - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaiden's Tale.

Freedom from. I thought about that on the train, sitting across from someone with headphones blaring the most dull minimalist techno I'd ever heard. Doof, ka, doof, ka, doof, ka forever, listening to a metronome counting the seconds til death, doof, ka, doof, ka ugh. The premier floated the idea of creating special "quiet" carriages on the train a few months back. If you hopped on the very front carriage of a train, you'd be required to sit in silence. No talking on the phone, no obnoxious music blaring from thimble-sized speakers, freedom from noise, freedom from Those Inconsiderate People who come into Our environment and dare to behave in a way We don't appreciate. When questioned, he answered that the policy would be enforced by officers wandering the trains, ready to turf out anyone deemed inappropriate for the bubble of peace, quiet and civility that had been constructed within the carriage. The ever-present threat of violence to allow Us freedom from.

That policy is yet to be implemented.

A similarly great idea of the premier's was to put officers on every platform at every train station, from dusk until early morning. This is to provide freedom from the drunks and hobos and ruffians and ne'er-do-wells that occasionally haunt public transport... frightening Us by their coarse language and volume, their aggressiveness, and the threat to Our safety that their behaviour implies. Those Inconsiderate People threaten Us by their presence. However, the policy goes, this can be countered by giving the officers guns. As guns are generally illegal here, the officers will be able to out-threaten Those People, and scare them away from the trains, issue fines for whatever they like, it doesn't matter, just give us precious freedom from Those Horrible Fucking People. Obviously We will be safer in the presence of officers who are acting in our best interest, and can threaten more violence to the hooligans than the hooligans could ever return. And if someone's daughter gets shot, or someone's parent spends a night in jail, or gets beaten or tazed or falls in front of a train...that's the price of freedom from. They're doing it in Our best interests.

Twice now I've had the pleasure of seeing these officers in training (aho), wandering around the station, being instructed by a real live police officer. Shown the ropes. And on both occasions they picked a commuter to "investigate"... calm, quiet individuals, travelling alone, which would be fine, but they were also non-caucasian and wearing relatively cheap clothes. Cheap clothes = not commuting to/from work = probably unemployed = probably a druggie dole-bludger = probably one of Those Inconsiderate People. We are white and professional and law-abiding. They are not Us. It was a pre-emptive strike in the name of freedom from. Nevermind if they mistakenly grab the occasional doctor on an afternoon off, international tourist, or son coming home from visiting their parent in hospital. These things happen, and are a price worth paying again and again. They're doing it in Our best interests.

Except that it's lullabyes for bearded infants, a last cigarette, death-bed platitudes to bloodied gods, but much more dangerous than your standard paedophilic role-play between consenting adults because *this immediately fucking hurts people*. You're grabbing any motherfucker who applies for a low-paying job, and giving them the oh-so-specific task of "find Those Inconsiderate People and seperate them from people like Us". Then you're giving them a gun because that's how authority works.

It's immediately obvious to all but the most willfully ignorant that "freedom from" is impossible. You can (and will) give a "license to kill/taze/imprison/bash" to as many people as you like, but the second your back's turned, I'm going to go on breaking whatever laws I disagree with. This always has and always will be the case. Freedom from implies coercion, freedom to implies cooperation. At the moment, everyone has the freedom to stop what they're currently doing, walk up to someone in the street and stab them to death with a kitchen knife. But we don't because of the social contract which says "I don't want you to kill me, so I won't kill you". It *is* a social contract because within a couple of minutes, everyone can think of a way to kill someone without getting caught - coercion from the state has nothing to do with it. And we manage it exceptionally well - at least 60% of all Australians who kill people are doing so officially on behalf of the government *. Evidently we could teach the people who want to coerce us a shitload about not murdering people. (cutely you've got around .00000035% chance of getting murdered per year...slightly less than winning Australian powerball on any given week, which is .00000036% chance). **

This is something that I'm optimistic that we'll eventually realise though. Originally currency had to be based on the gold standard because otherwise, who would trust that money was worth anything at all? Eventually it was realised that people are happy to play along with the idea that money's worth something - regardless of whether it technically is or not - so they got rid of the gold standard. Morality used to be "enforced" through the myths that there was an omnicient entity following you around 24/7, who would cast you into the pits of hell if you did something naughty. But thankfully that mindset is rapidly disappearing...we've realised that you don't need a god (or "The god") to behave like a decent human being. I cannot wait until it's realised widely that you don't need thugs with weapons to "force" you to treat other humans with respect - that it's something we can generally figure out and go along with by ourselves.


*Sources (1 and 2). Unfortunately it's really difficult to get accurate statistics on police/soldier murders, so this is a guesstimate but seems plausible to me...we know that in just over 2 years, Australian troops in one country killed 1474 people, while the average homicide rate in Aus sits at ~260 a year. So that's 3 times the number of people killed by the state...without including people from Iraq or anywhere else killed by soldiers, and also without including the numbers killed by police officers. So even if literally noone was killed by Australians outside of Afghanistan, or domestically by police, the vast majority of murders are still committed by government representatives rather than civilians.

**Source for homocide above, source for powerball here.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

the path of least resistance

i received an ad in the mail today, images of a grinning buffoon drinking wine and laughing at nothing, a rose (of course!), and a pretentious dessert. In bold lettering underneath, the words: LIVE! LOVE! LIFE! LOVE! LIVE! YAYAYAY! LOVE AND LIFE AND YAAAAAAAY!

Don't think! Life is wOnDeRfUl and BLISS, especially if you don't analyze it! Who needs to understand anything, when you can just BE HA HA HAPPY and FLOWERS U SEE and STUFF!!!! Also, now that you've turned your mind off and are LOVING EVERYTHING please please please buy our shit, BECAUSE...LOVE, U SEE!!! THINGS = LOVE = LIFE = GIVE US MONEY PLSKTHX

what sort of simpering, shit-covered dunce, what fucking syphillitic machine-animal, what rage inducing, redneck, wormbrained *moron* could possibly find such an ad inspiring i will never know. It must be a christian thing.

(ad people make the worst dionysus ever)

But it's so easy you see! and this is the first and final trap - the unthinking comfort, the enveloping warmth, staring at the pavement, smiling at the pavement and following your footsteps follow everyone else's. As automatic as electrons following the only path they'll ever know.

"I've been workin this job for 10 years! I mean, the pay's not great, and the boss hates me, and i think my coworkers spike my coffee with nuggets of their shit, but what can you do!" WHAT CAN YOU FUCKING DO "If i didn't have my job, i wouldn't know what to do with myself! I mean, i do the work i'm told to do, buy the things i'm told to buy, go the places i'm told to go! But without the STRUCTURED LIFESTYLE OF A SERF i'd just be bored!"

no wonder so many people need religion - they're so scared of having to make their own decisions that they're willing to believe *anything*. OH GAWD, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DOOO! WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME, A HURPA DURP! COMMAND ME PUH PUH PUHLEASE!!!!

staring at monitors, counting seconds as a wave of information flows past us, blinkers on, so scared of independence that we turn Ourselves off and jump social hurdles when the whistle calls. I taught my dog to do the same thing.

Fuck this. I will scream and bray and run my face into brick walls until one of us breaks. I will run and run at everyfuckingthing drawing whole universes into my spidery lungs.

"if you stop, you die" - jodie christ

a hymn:

LET ME RESIST
WHEN MY SKIN IS ON FIRE AND I'M CHOKING ON BLOOD
LET ME RESIST
WHEN I'M MORE SCAR TISSUE THAN HUMAN BEING
LET ME RESIST
WHILE MY LUNGS SEIZE AND MY HEART CALCIFIES
LET ME MOTHERFUCKING R E S I S T


xero

Friday, July 1, 2011

new dropbunny plushies!

WHOA!

one of our newest noisemakers, Blackjack, has created some gloriously creepy dropbunny plushies - a range of rabbits 100% money-back guaranteed to bring their owner erotic nightmares forever. They're really quite exciting! These rabbit dolls are hand stitched and come in three different sizes, and will make a grotesquely cute addition to every cot. You can check them out at the dropbunny shop. We'd like to thank her very heartily for this wonderful contribution to the dropbunny trip.

In other news::::

We go back to the studio mid July to finish off the last 6 tracks of the album, and are hoping for an August release. This waiting is painful but unfortunately can't be helped. The db videogame is going through beta testing at the moment, and should be released within a month - it'll also be included on the new album's CD (for those that get physical copies instead of digital). It'll also be up on dropbunny.com for you all to enjoy.

We're still hunting for a new guitarist to replace the ever-talented Refund, as he's looking to focus more on his electronic compositions. His last performance with us will be August 3, at the Espy, so feel free to come along and throw fruit at him. He's made an enormous contribution to our new album, so hopefully you'll see his hand in our future noises, even if you can't admire his lovely beardy face anymore.

the new members will be introduced soon, suffice it to say that db's likely to be an 8 piece before we launch the new album.

WHOA!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Response to Lilly in the media

The following's an open letter in response to the recent reports about our book Lilly.



As you may be aware, the was some discussion in the media yesterday about our book Lilly. I would like to correct some of the gross misinterpretations which were reported, and clarify both the intent and content of the work.

To start with, it was repeatedly stated in some publications that Lilly "encourages students to murder police”. This is absolutely ludicrous and could scarcely be more contradictory to the intention of the book. As should have been clear by the concluding sentence, the moral of the story was to encourage people to “treat people like people” - regardless of profession, or age, or anything else. But more importantly, it was meant to encourage a more nuanced discussion of the role of police in society, without resorting to unhelpful simplifications of the institution being either perfectly good, or perfectly bad.

The story relates three recent, real-world examples of children being subjected to disproportionate use of force by police officers. These examples were taken directly from articles in the mainstream media over the last two years (see links below). The story simply reiterates the content of those articles, albeit in a different format. However, despite this, some reports expressed outrage that such graphic scenes appeared in the book, while pointedly ignoring the actual events which prompted the creation of Lilly in the first place.

These are issues which should prompt a critical discussion of what we expect from our police force, and what behaviours we are prepared to allow. Too often these incidents are relegated to small, back page articles (with Tyler Cassidy being the notable exception), while the main public discourse continues to assume an unbelievable level of infallibility from police officers as a whole. Tellingly, the Police Association spokesperson was quoted saying "These twisted morons can sit around their marijuana-fuelled campfire telling each other their twisted tales” - heavily implying that anyone who chooses to criticize the police is necessarily a criminal. This highly offensive suggestion is unfortunately commonplace in public debate around policing.

One point which never seems to come up is the disparate expectations we have of the level of accountability of police, versus other care-providing institutions in this country. Teachers, as one example, are not only required to look after troubled teens as part of their daily duties, but are held strictly responsible for the welfare of their charges. We would be mortified if a teacher were to taser a violent student – we require them to resolve these situations diplomatically, even at risk to their own welfare. This is as it should be. Nevertheless, we allow police officers to resort to violence to resolve confrontations with minors, while being appalled if any other members of the community were to behave similarly.

Lilly was not written as an excuse to stereotype police officers, but instead to show that the stereotypes we do apply can have significant negative impacts by preventing balanced conversation. Policing is a profession like any other, and as long as we continue to hold the people in that job as beyond reproach, we're going to continue to see abuses of police power against the most vulnerable members of our society.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Lilly - the children's book that's too difficult for the media to understand

It's come to our attention that a number of newspapers (here, here and here) have heard about Lilly, and completely (wilfully?) misinterpreted what the children's book is about. Lilly very clearly discourages violence at all, and how anyone could interpret the farcical ending as "encouraging violence against police" is absolutely beyond me. The book shows nothing but real reports taken from mainstream media sources, of police violence against children. Where the protagonist, Lilly, decides to attack a police officer, it's showing how counter-productive it is to allow police officers to commit acts like this with minimum accountability. The police force can only work if they have the trust of the public. Violence promotes more violence. It's really very simple!

Still tracking down the last of the three articles we referenced in the book, however the episode of the girl being tasered because she wanted to stay with here sick friend is related here, and there's a wealth of information online around the horrendous death of Tyler Cassidy

For a look at Lilly, head to our literature page.

studio update#2

pitow!

We've just finished mixing the 14th track...the end is so close i can hear it wheezing. We're hoping to have the album out in about a month, but these things always take longer than you'd expect. Rest assured it's still progressing well, we're very excited about the results so far, and think this should be a significant step towards...something....

Tracks so far:

Plummet
Irredeemably Fucked
Can't Do Anything
Some Say He Was A Shithead
The Nightmare From Which You Cannot Awaken
Lost Kid
Exit Sub
This Relentless Momentum
Gimp Man
Beat
Pentagonal Plywood Prison
Arch
The Architecture Is Wrong
Voices Insert
There's Nothing Here And It Screams

IN Other News::

dropbunny's Multimedia Department would like to announce the upcoming release of D.I.A.F. - the db video game. The game is nearing completion, and will be available on this website, as well as on the upcoming album. It is designed to send you mad. From what I've seen thus far, it looks likely to achieve that goal. More news/screenshots to come.

be lucky!