Add N To X Avant Hard

[Mute; 1999]

Rating: 4/5

Styles: electro, dance-punk, rock
Others: Neon Hunk, La Machine, Trans Am



It begins with the Bazooko Circus at closing time. One man with runny face paint works a mop with a medium sized clown head spinning on top of the handle. There are blinking lights, but they blink slow and out of sync with one another.

The scene changes and we're in the skinny core of the big fat apple. Manhattan on a sunstroked day. A rogue parade float holds up angry traffic. A guy actually manages to raise the volume of his car horn by striking it with a hammer. On the float are two rotating drum sets flanking Ann Shenton, Barry 7, and Steve Claydon. They are obliviously striking keys and twiddling knobs in the heat with hot-ass chain mail armor on. Soon they sweat into the machinery and the sound is saturated but throbs on.

A man with a broken neck nearby is break-dancing. Without a neckbone he is able to perform astounding feats like spinning on his torso while his face greets the crowd, tongue lolling wily-nily. For the finale, he stands up and whips his neck rope around until he floats away like a tetherball helicopter.

In a nearby office, the Boss Baby munches on a bucket of cigars and pink fluoride. He is a big baby, so Johnson is afraid of him, but not too afraid to lose his job. He tells Boss Baby to eat his tiperillo because he's been with the company since he was… since he was a much smaller big baby. Boss Baby fishes around for his pacifier, which doubles as a switchblade, and plunges it into Johnsons eye.

This is where things get ugly. It's TMT Magazine headquarters, located below a secret hatch in a park fountain. Having brought back only Slush Puppies and no coffees for lunch, Amneziak is jammed into the fax machine that nobody knows how to work. Keith Kawaii and Mango (the_starr) can only fit him half way, so they leave him like that and make do with slush. Mr. P strokes a conch shell that he sometimes cries into and chuckles non-commitally. Leveer says I told you so when as the power goes out. When it flits back on Amneziak is gone.

The music reviewer emerges from another fax machine at a dance party HQ. Lots of places make the claim, but this is the official headquarters for boogie and headbang and shebang and shimmy and convulse. Though paper thin from going through the fax machine, Amneziak manages to warp to and fro to the manic beat. The DJ leads everyone in a chant of "Buckminster Fuller, Buckminster Fuller, Buckminster Full-eeeeih, Buckminster Full-eeeih!" and then the crowd hunkers back down. There's even cowboys doin line dances and keeping their shiny leather boots clean. Amneziak finds crowd surfing effortless in his new paper form - and the HQ never shuts down, never slows down, so he's golden. The girls are golden. The boys are crispy. The trannys are original recipe.

The queen bee of NYC stands in her invisible levitating fortress in the clouds and pines for an old York, for a York so ancient it might have brontosaurus taxis. She dips her stinger into her pitch-black liquid tar spa and eases in for a thorough soaking. Her abattoir is sparsely decorated with the limbs of worker bees from every era of her reign. She begins to sing of her plans to descend on Manhattan with a full, poison teamed swarm. She rises in crescendo, black tar dripping from her body, and the glass rattles with her powerful pipes. Alas, this is a daily routine with the queen. She can never quite make things happen.

Martina is in the middle of a day-long robot dalliance. Klor-77 has penetrated her in ways she never dreamed possible. Her nostrils sore, she playfully smacks Klor on his metal posterior and kisses him passionately about the sensors. Klor isn’t programmed for foreplay (or afterplay) so he hoists Martina into the air, and extending both his arms and his metal member high, brusquely fucks her on the ceiling. Martina moans with pleasure, even as she notices a competing thumping, coming from the floor above.

An old man stomps violently on the floor until he winds himself. He was listening to his phonograph, playing his the last utterances of his prized equestrian, backed by Wendy Carlos. When he feels his bloodflow constricting a piercing ring fills his ears and he collapses to the floor. When he awakens, it's always to the sound of more robot sex downstairs. He resets the needle and the cycle repeats itself.

As the day winds down, a young couple strolls through central park, enjoying a dispassionate argument about nothing. They secretly hope someone will interrupt them so they can have an outside source to both agree to be annoyed at. As twilight washes over the scene, the couple begins to dissolve. Rather than becoming one, as they'd always hoped they would, they just turn into pixels that sashay listlessly onto the ground, pounded into the cement by joggers and power walkers. "Love does conquer all", the air says and then has a laugh. "Even itself."

Back at Vegas, it's a sunny day and all Bazooko employees are gearing up for another circus. Tamec just moved from a critic's job in NYC. He is new in the place, so he has to clean the ten foot high toilets in the infamous bathrooms of the circus. The 15-foot curved walls are encrusted with tiny mirrors save for two holes to the left and right that emit wacky, random synth squiggs via speakers. Tamec curses these digital gremlins as he balances himself on the john to get at a particularly stubborn urine stain. Guffaw the Clown then busts into the rest room to take a whiz. He aims his balloon erection skyward and explodes a cloud of glitter, hooting and snorting with laughter. "How's it goin, new kid?" He says as he climbs the adjacent toilet. "It's Albert." Says Tamec, trying to control his anger over the glitter that he will now have to clean up. "Right, sorry Marvin. Y'all take a listen, you'll hear a deep sound comin' down outta Guffaw the Clown!" Guffaw let's out a deep moan of pleasure as he releases his water. As it continues to flow, Guffaw takes a glance at his watch and smiles dumbly at Tamec. Tamec thinks "fuck it" and sprays his cleaning fluid into the clowns eyes. Guffaw sends a pinwheel of urine through the air as he topples to the tile floor and splits his head open. Tamec shrugs and gets at the last of his urine stain.

1. Barry 7's Contraption
2. Robot New York
3. Skills
4. Steve's Going To Teach Himself Who's Boss
5. FYUZ
6. Buckminster Fuller
7. Revenge of the Black Regent
8. Metal Fingers On My Body
9. Ann's Eveready Equestrian
10. Oh Yeah, Oh No
11. Machine Is Bored With Love