39 Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotics 2

Once or twice I prayed to Jesus

Never heard a word back in plain English

More like signs or advertisements

Telling me to be keep consumerising

The Fields

Firstly: No, I’m pretty sure ‘consumerising’ isn’t a real word

Secondly: capitalism really won’t leave anything alone, will it? Won’t let anything just exist if it isn’t somehow commodified. And maybe I’m only really able to remark on this because no fucker reads this blog, it doesn’t make me any money at all, so I’m not even reaping the benefits of my own commodity. I’m instead producing excessive amounts on Content™ for WordPress and then sharing it on X (formally known as ‘X formally known as Twitter’) so it can be a small piece of those companies’ endless churn of millisecond flashes of dopamine hits. And then the lines of code scrolling past people’s eyes on the screen are commodified and sold to advertisers as proof of ‘engagement’. But only after these people have logged into the site using their name, address, phone number, bra size and blood type, ensuring that their very existence as a statistic can be commodified and sold to people who need to know the exact sample size of people worth advertising their new bracelet that’s designed to work well with a AB RhD positive blood type, as it cascades across it from a slice made on the wrist. It’s fucked up, is what I’m saying.

We lie to ourselves that thing’s aren’t commodities. Because we love them so much and commodities are so lame! I love my boyfriend (met on Tinder after Charlie invested in a Tinder Gold subscription and was able to specify he was only interested in Asian chicks that weighed less than 6 stone) so much (the algorithm has noticed this and popup adds convinced me to buy Charlie a Lego Hogwarts for £250), and what we have is so much more than that (correct to an extent: we spend a lot more now, including purchasing an Oculus Rift VR headset so Charlie can watch Ghetto Gaggers without me knowing)! But we live under capitalism, where things can only exist if there’s some sort of profit motive.

“It’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine“, the social fascists* say, “Just concentrate on the good capitalism! All we need to do is ask capitalism really nicely to work against its own mechanism, like that time we convinced gravity to stop attracting bodies toward the centre of the Earth simply by signing a petition! You know Google has a woman on its board of directors now?? Or one of its boards, anyway. I think. Have you watched Black Panther?” And even I – a literal card carrying Commie – always acted like I was doing the same.

(*the second post in a row that I’ve mentioned social fascists! Is that going to be a running theme?)

Remember how it used to be on this blog. “Errrrrrrrrr, I’m ACTUALLY only going to link to the artist’s Bandcamp page, becaaaaaaaaaause support artists and #Feminism” Or something. Then, because a lot of readers were complaining that the Bandcamp links were no way near easy enough to work out as a simple Spotify embed, I caved in a little – I compromised with the social fascists!! – and included an embedded Spotify link alongside a link to the artist’s Bandcamp. But I was still fighting the good fight! Bandcamp was the good capitalism! At least artists got paid decent amounts for their music and it should hopefully play a part in making music something it’s still possible to do while not starving to death! Hey, capitalism, I’ll meet you halfway: how about we compromise and agree that art is still a commodity and only has worth in actual monetary figures, and in return you… maybe… pay smaller artists something… close… to a living wage…?

And Bandcamp was absolutely a good thing for independent musicians. It’s paid out close to one billion pounds to independent musicians since it started in 2007. For comparison, that’s enough money for record company executives to buy the silence of almost seven underage victims of sexual abuse! Bandcamp also had an extremely strong editorial team, and its writings and recommendations on music you would be extremely unlikely to hear of anywhere else* made them probably the biggest advocates for independent music, as well as its biggest store front.

Then something odd happened.

(*which I would listen to, nod my head approvingly while furrowing my brow, then just buy the new Nicky fucking Wire album)

In early 2022, Bandcamp was bought by Epic Games. You know, Epic Games? They’re most famous for being the label that launched that famous musical artist Fortnite? Only Fortnite isn’t a musical artist it’s a video game because Epic Games make video games and they’re worth about $28bil. Epic said that “Bandcamp will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more”. Which… OK… Still don’t understand what’s going on, but you go off. Epic reportedly paid $273mil for Bandcamp. I’m not an artist on Bandcamp, so I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure none of that money was paid out to the people selling music on the platform which actually made it a success. Just like when Twitter was sold: I’m sure that you, along with my 192 followers, will agree that my lighthearted bonhomie on the app forms a vital part of its success, yet how much of that $44billion did I receive?? $820’000. Which isn’t that much at all in the grand scheme of things, is it?

But the Epic purchase was fine, wasn’t it? It was all going to be fine. Companies buy companies, it’s all good, this is just how this world that we all totally agreed to participate in works, if I don’t like it so much why don’t I move to [INSERT FOREIGN SOUNDING COUNTRY. IDEALLY IN AFRICA]?? And Epic itself said that they had “a mission of building the most artist friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money”, so nothing was really going to change? The great thing about capitalism is that it’s customer focussed! Essentially, it’s the world’s greatest and fairest democracy, since everyone is able to vote with their wallet! If – for some bizarre and unforeseen circumstance – we didn’t like how the Epic purchase was going we could just simply stop using the platform! Then, by golly, you can be sure that Epic would improve things pretty pronto! Or at least accept that they weren’t satisfying the user base (the customers and therefore the electorate!) and gracefully exit the stage, perhaps giving the company over to a workers’ union or collective community ownership or something.

And, for a while, the capitalism cheerleaders were proven right, as nothing seemed to happen. Until it all did.

In September of this year, Epic sold Bandcamp to some music licensing leeches called Songtradr. Songtradr cheerfully declared that they would “continue to operate Bandcamp as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share” while immediately slashing 16% of the workforce, like that slimy looking neighbour promising to look after your pet cat while at the same time tearing out clumps of its fur. It soon turned out that they really were on their (comparative) best behaviour initially, as a month after purchasing the platform they sacked half of its remaining workforce. It’s not too big a statement to suggest that Bandcamp is/was the very pulsing heart of independent music. It was still a business, of course – it was still about making profits and working out how much money they could get away with stripping away from the actual producers of capital – so this isn’t some misty eyed eulogy, but it’s importance to artists who aren’t Taylor Swift wanting to make a living from music is hard to overstate. It also claimed to be profitable since 2012, meaning the near immediate slashing of salary costs was not to ensure profitability, just to ensure more profitability. But it has also grown into one of the last potentially sustainable way of music making remaining viable, and also provided an outlet for freelance journalists and, as a designer claimed, one of the only music publications that commissions illustrators for editorial work. Now, it’s likely to be stripped for parts as the dominant become all the more dominant. The heads and shareholders of Spotify cackled. Before thinking “Fuck it, might as well?” and – a month after Songleechr’s purchase – announced they’d be paying even less royalties in the future than the risible amounts they already pay. It stinks, it stinks, it stinks, it stinks.

Oh, and message to everyone: I could not give less of a shit about your Spotify Wrapped.

So where does this leave me, the most important actor in this gross farce? Well, I’m still going to buy records on Bandcamp, as (lol!) boycotting it isn’t going to hurt anyone apart from the artists/workers themselves, and right now I still think it’s the most feasible way for making sure the artists whose work I love receive some proper financial incentive to maybe making more. Because despite decrying the fact that neoliberal capitalism has made monetary compensation the only mark of value, we still live in that world (I am very smart etc…) until enough people obtain class consciousness, and an artist as ingenious and creative as Nourished by Time isn’t going to get much in the short term from me attending a demonstration in St Peter’s Square, Manchester solidarity with striking Amazon workers. Motherfucker gotta eat.

Shit! Nourished by Time! That’s who this post is about, isn’t it??

‘Erotic Probiotics 2’ is class conscious, as Baltimore’s Marcus Brown engages with the struggles under capitalism and the market as our new God in lilting baritone. I may have praised the dedicated leftism of early Manics in my Nicky Wire review, but that band were never deft enough to paint a picture of never measuring up to a woman’s Sugar Daddy that the current state of latter day neoliberalism had forced her into the arms of “a real man she can quit that day job off”, as Brown does here on Daddy. ‘Erotic Probiotics 2’ is not just the name of that pill made from rhino horn you brought online from a Sri Lankan retailer in 2018, but it’s both a thrilling and solemn reimagining of early 90s RnB performed as bedroom pop. But like Prince would sometimes scale huge creative ideas back to their barest building blocks to emphasise their sensational building blocks, Brown dismantles classic RnB sounds to only the most essential composite parts. Snares. Hi-hats. Synth stabs. Bass, bass, bass, bass. Mr Nourished is no Prince, obviously. Yet. This is their debut album, and they share any of the same attributes, including making what was obviously carefully choreographed and specifically written music sound like one half hour jam session.

Given all the subjects we’ve touched upon, I feel we should leave the final word to Brown’s former music professor:

He would say that music for music’s sake is nothing more than deodorized horseshit

Yeah, there it is ☝️

Oh, and maybe think about installing Batchcamp and saving all the music you’ve purchased. Just in case.

Legit Bosses: 1