Are you sitting comfortably? Make sure you’re sat comfortably. Make sure you feel relaxed. Do whatever it takes to get yourself into a state of zen-like blank relaxation. Light expensive scented candles. Eat a brick of hash. Are you relaxed now? Good, I’m glad, because I need to tell you something and the something I need to tell you isn’t going to be easy to hear. I’m sorry. Forgive me father, for I know not what I do. Except, sadly, I do.
Here goes nothing: Electronic music is just a conspiracy to keep people high and make them drop out of the world. These aren’t my words, no. These are the words of Micky24242, as reported by Scottish super-producer Hudson Mohawke. Reader, I was as shocked as you were by what I’d read. Surely this was just the ramblings of one of the internet’s many conspiracists—a freckled loon with cornflakes in his beard and too much time on his hands cooking up wild theories. Oh how convenient that would be. How terribly convenient it would be to ignore this terrifying truth.
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Sadly reader, through intense and potentially dangerous research, this truth is now un-ignorable. You owe it to yourselves to know what I now know. Micky24242 was right. This is all a plot. All of it.
Yes, you read that right. Everything you’ve ever enjoyed about electronic music or club culture is, in fact, part of a highly complex series of governmental machinations designed purely to leave you, the listener, the clubber, in a near-permanent state of vegetation, desiring nothing more from life than a new mix by DJ Nobu, a fresh pouch of Virginian tobacco, and an 18″ deep pan meat-ball supreme.
Scoff all you like, scoff yourself silly, scoff so hard you inadvertently choke on your own tonsils, and see if I offer you mouth to mouth. While you’re scoffing I’ll let everyone else in on what I know.
In the early 1960s, operatives working for the CIA met with their English counterparts from MI6 at a truck stop in central Belize, around a hundred miles away from the capital city, Belmopan. They ate a traditional slow-roasted pork dish, and clinked glasses fill to the brim with Belikin, the country’s indigenous German style pilsner. The Pibil Four, as they went on to be known, consisted of Americans Chad Tullock and Barnaby Raddlestein, and their British cohorts Reginald Trotter and Derek Perrin. They had decided to stage their meeting in the Central American country due to its lax border security policies.
The man we believe to be “Derek Perrin” (via Flickr)
The dinner was the result of several years of intense and panic-stricken preparation by the twin intelligence services. The 50s had seen Elvis Presley fuck the teenager into being, and with the teenager came teenage rebellion, and with that came (eventual) adult resentment, and with that came the realisation that these new adults might not be so happy with the state of the world. This, of course, wouldn’t do.
In order to get them young, and sow the soon-to-be mighty oaks in the abdomens of adolescents, the shadowy forces of the world decided to harness everything that makes teenhood so exciting: sexual experimentation, narcotic dalliances, and fandom were all fair game. What Chad, Barnaby, Reginald, Derek and their vast network of colleagues had to do was simple—capture the attention of youths around the globe and offer them a numbing solution, leaving them wide open for all-consuming exploitation for the rest of their lives. So it was there in that truck stop a hundred miles away from Belmopan, over slow-roasted pork and German-style beer that club culture was born.
The plan was hatched: in order to crush any semblance of teenage rebellion, the agencies had to harness it, creating a method for controlling the youthful hordes that looked cool, trendy, and ultimately seductive and incredibly appealing.
The infiltration process was near total. Record labels, instrument makers, TV production houses, magazines, and pharmaceutical companies were all paid vast sums to propagate the popularity of electronic music. The aim of Project Paradise, as it was codenamed, was to create an ecosystem in which drugs and music went hand in hand, resulting—hopefully, theoretically—in the subjugation of generations to come.
It wasn’t until the mid-70s that things really started to take off. Disco had been willed into being and as planned, had been incredibly well received by the target audiences. Discotheques had begun to spring up around the globe, and nightclubbing as we know it today was finding its feet. The jewel in the Project Paradise crown at the time was Studio 54. Enlisting support from major celebrities was a masterstroke: youth will always be seduced by fame, and as everyone knows, early seduction has long lasting consequences. Horses, cocaine, and Andy Warhol’s blank visage were incredibly useful weapons to have in the armoury.
We have received information that suggests this is Barnaby Raddlestein, spotted outside a nightclub (via Flickr)
Disco begat house which begat techno which begat everything else, and with everything else having been begat, the dream that the Pibil Four planned meticulously all those years ago had become a reality. Every city in the world had numerous nightclubs, and nearly every patch of grass in the western world played host to a three day festival featuring multiple stages and an array of pop-up food options. The plot had worked: dance music had ensnared millions.
What, then, was the lasting impact of Project Paradise? Well, you wouldn’t be reading this without it for starters. Aside from that tragic thought, there are more serious and wider-reaching implications, obviously. All of us have been sold a lie, swallowing it wholesale in the process. We idolize and adore DJs out of all proportion; we spend good chunks of our lives and paychecks supporting an industry set out to rob of us freedom; we get angry on the internet whenever someone suggests that our favourite musician might not be as good as we’d like to think. They’ve won.
The DJs are in on it too. Skream? MI5. Nina Kraviz? SVR RF. Ever wondered why Daft Punk adopted the helmets? They’re a Brigade de renseignement et de guerre électronique invention that actually aids with the mind control process.
So next time you step foot in a warehouse on a Saturday night, stay woke. Remember that everything you say and do is being monitored and fed back to every intelligence service in the world. You are part of their system now, part of their game, part of their everlasting trap.
Our only hope now is salvation at the hands of a small band of rebels—property developers and local councils intent on bringing the international conspiracy that is club culture down from the inside. Until then, stay woke.
