ARSWAIN - "FLAT TIME"

The “memeing of Mark Fisher” has been a really interesting, and some would say, inevitable micro-trend in the last few years. The explosion of the relevance of Fisher’s work as it relates to principles of cybernetics, cancel culture, capitalist realism, hauntology and the disorienting recycling of culture has seemed to be startlingly prophetic. Arswain’s engagement with Fisher’s idea in the context of an 11 minute composition that moves through various modes, styles and genres seems to make a strange bedfellow with Fisher’s ideas. We hear Aswain move between modes of Dubstep, UK Garage, vocal-focused pop music, noise, ambient passages and all shades in between. According to Aswain, “Flat Time” is my tribute to Fisher, who took his own life in 2018. In a digital age of social media, I often find myself associating with “nostalgic” modes of music, fashion, and film, simply because it feels like an harmless way to signal “coolness.” Millennials aren’t accountable for culture that preceded our existence, so we don’t need to justify our spurious association with it. We can simply hide behind its “vintage-ness” when we lack taste of our own”. A pretty fearless work that takes on Fisher’s ideas as fissures into the dislocated consciousness we feel as our lives are increasingly online.