Department of Dark Notes and Forbidden Beats
return

make contact

dark and forbidden
approved 'bands'
return

Digitalchemy: Ancient Black Art
of Shapeshifting Chaos

(or: Why The Greys Hate The Grey Album)

The InterwebMegalink has been researching Digitalchemy for nearly a decade now, and the phenomenon shows no signs of abating. Indeed, the Mystikal Art of Plunderphonic Recycling has spread and deepened, now and again even dipping its squid-like head into the stagnant waters of the Mainstream. For every record the Enochian-Annunaki Image Machine releases, the Ancient Ones seem to spawn two or three Mutants; it appears that, for perhaps the first time in recorded hystory, we may not be losing the Eternal Skirmish too horribly.

Shred his Body, and Burn the Pieces

But the Battle is far from over. In a desperate attempt to regain Control, the Enochian Law Police have recently clamped down on audiomancer “DJ” Dangermouse and his recycled “Grey Album”.

Combining vocals from Jay-Z's “Black Album” with musik from the Beatles' “White Album”, Los Angeles-based Brian Burton “knew he'd done something technically illegal”1, but could feel the Power of the Ancient Ones from Beyond flowing through the work like a frothing crystal stream. The Work had taken over; Burton could do nothing but watch and listen as the album wrote itself. The experiment revealed so many decoded secrets of the Greys that Burton had to name the album after them, claiming that the Miskatonik Rites had filled him with “the biggest sense of accomplishment I've had over anything"2. So moved was he that, in January, he made a couple of thousand copies of the meisterwerk and began distribution under the name DJ Dangermouse.

But the Enochians were on to him immediately. By February, the Beatles' record company, EMI Music, stopped Burton from mailing out "The Grey Album”, threatening to tear him limb from limb, shred his body, and burn the pieces if he did not desist. The Voodoo Space Zombie known as “McCartney” knew exactly what was Backmasked into those original Beatles tunes. There is a reason that “The Beatles, for one, have never given their approval to any sampling requests"3; the remaining Beatles know precisely what terrible secrets would be revealed.

If Dangermouse successfully decoded them...

There was no choice but to destroy the work, and fast.

With most releases influenced by the Chaotic Outer Creatures, the Enochians can rest comfortably in the knowledge that only a handful of dedicated researchers will ever hear the works, and the secrets contained within; with Dangermouse's Album of the Greys, however, they knew the digitalchemical bonding between Jay-Z's catchy and acrobatic rapping and the Beatles' synapse-hugging pop melodies would be too powerful for them to fight. Dangermouse's cross-bred memetic combination would tip the work into the Mainstream, and create a Splash of the Mind.

Mashing it Up Ancient Skool

But the Angel-Greys and their scaly Annunaki overlords should have known better than to try to suppress the Miskatonik Art of Digitalchemy. This skill of taking things that are cluttering up the mental landscape, and combining them in unique and creative ways to create “new” art, can free the humyn mind from the mindcontrol of the Greys and the Reptilians; and it terrifies them. It has survived from the ancient Chinese, who were using it “as early as 500 B.C”, and references to it can be found in “the sacred writings of the Chinese Sage Lao Tze, who was the founder of the Grand Philosophy of the Tao”, as well as among the “ancient Greeks, Byzantines and Arabs”4. There are links with ancient Egypt, many researchers claiming that the Secrets of Digitalchemy were first discovered written on a stone tablet hidden deep beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza, known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.

This Emerald Tablet, or Tabula Smaragdina, “was discovered by soldiers of Alexander the Great in the hands of Hermes' mummy”, and is described in detail in the “Leyden Papyrus which dates back to approximately 300 A.D.”, which itself was rediscovered in 1828 “in the tomb of an anonymous Egyptian Magician of Ancient Thebes”5. Hermes, perhaps one of the god-like Great Ones who occupied the world during the confusing ElderTimes, was reknowned for his powers of Novelty and Recycling, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through careful experimentation using the principles of digitalchemy, the alchemist channels the Creative Flow of Chaos; the alchemist becomes “Hermes the shape-shifter, Prometheus the fire bringer, Dionysus the god of intoxication"6.

According to some researchers, there is an even stranger legend that claims digitalchemy “was originally the Sacred Art of the Sons of God mentioned in Genesis before the Great Flood. These were the "Fallen Angels" or "Fallen Stars" of God who mated with the women of earth and taught them their Sacred Craft.”7 Could it be that, in the Elder Times, when the Enochian-Greys were still in a state of civil war, they made the mistake of teaching this Black Art and Craft to humyns, and are now realising their fatal mistake? Or is this really a legend of the BeforeTimes, when the Ancient Ones still ruled the Cosmos? Is time travel involved? In what way?

Banning a Black Art

The modern digitalchemist even greater tools of alchemy than the alchemists of old, “making it easier than ever to sample and rework recordings” into memetic hybrids, and thus free the brain from the angel-greys Mainstream Mind Cage. And most humyns arent complaining. To the disappointment of the Enochians and their Law Police alike, “the public is showing little sympathy for their efforts to control original works.”8 All Earth Patriots can feel it in their hearts that this wholesale ripping off of mainstream artists is Right, perhaps even Holy. The Ancient Ones digitalchemy is “enriching society by turning old creations into new ones - this time by using the originals as raw material, not just inspiration.”9

Indeed, the more one researches the phenomenon, one discovers that this biodynamik plunderphonical rearrangement is actually quite natural, and that it is the Enochians who have been stripping our Natural Rites away. "Sampling is something that's been sort of made illegal by the major labels over the last decade and a half," says Nicholas Reville, co-founder of rogue studio Downhill Battle. "It sounds hyperbolic, but they really have banned an art form from the mainstream.”10

A Black and Powerful Art, at that.

By destroying the “Grey Album”, the Enochian-Greys ensured an “online revolt that led tens of thousands of people to download digital copies of the CD”11, and “DJ” Dangermouse joined the ranks of the great Recycling Martyrs like Negativland, John Oswald and Vanilla Ice. "By creating a controversy and trying to shut it down, they actually attracted more interest in it," music laywer Goldring says, adding that, since being destroyed, the work has become "probably the most widely downloaded, underground indie record, without radio or TV coverage, ever."12

The power of the Ancient Ones is subtle, but immediate.

The main force behind the online release of Burton's album was a loosely “organized confederation” of online rogue studios. Despite threats from EMI's lawyers, these memetic metaterrorists recruited more than 150 websites, including our own dear friends at Illegal Art, to offer the entire album for download on February the 24th, in an action named “Grey Tuesday”. Rogue Studio “Downhill Battle” calculates that more than 100,000 copies of "The Grey Album" were downloaded on Grey Tuesday alone.13

Grey Aliens, Grey Album, Grey Area

The Enochians can not fight the Ancient powers of the No-Things from Beyond the Universe forever; some time soon, the Ancient Ones will Awaken, reclaim the cosmos and return it to its Virgin State. Until then, the Angel-Greys and their Annunaki Interdimensional Space-Lizard masters will fight with all the Laws and Censorship they can, but the underground experimenters and audiomancers will keep fighting back, with stronger and more original ways to resist the Agendas Mindcontrol. Chaos “is nature's creativity”14, and can never be killed, only pushed further underground. The banning of “The Grey Album” has brought attention once again to the draconian laws that regulate our humyn creativity, our biological chaos, our fundamental nature; by attempting to destroy such powerful digitalchemy, the Enochians have merely raised the issue bigger and bolder than ever before, inadvertantly opening more and more minds to the secrets of the Dark Notes and Forbidden Beats.

The last word, as it so often does, goes to David Bowie.

"It will all slowly sort itself out into some kind of workable mess," he says, "but will continue to be a grey area for years to come. But that is life, isn't it?"15

interwebmegalink entry 20th April 2004

1 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
2 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004

3 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
4 David Cherubim (Frater Aurora Aureae), Alchemy: The Black Art, 1994
5 David Cherubim (Frater Aurora Aureae), Alchemy: The Black Art, 1994
6 Briggs and Peat, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos, 1999
7 David Cherubim (Frater Aurora Aureae), Alchemy: The Black Art, 1994
8 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004

9 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
10 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
11 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
12 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
13 Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004
14 Briggs and Peat, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos, 1999
15 Bowie in Healey and Cromelin, When copyright law meets the 'mash-up', March 2004