Hakim Bey - T.A.Z.

I've been familiar with Hakim Bey for around 25 years now, probably as a natural extension of studying anarchism in my late teens and early 20s. There was (and still is) something attractive about his running with Burroughs, his presence in far-left culture from Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery all the way up through Occupy, and his ability to draw links between politics, crime, and art. His pedophilia, once it became more public, put me off in a big way.

So why share "T.A.Z."? Well, it's a weird-ass artifact from the mid-90s. "T.A.Z." is a spoken word record, scored and arranged by Bill Laswell on his Axiom label (a sub-label of Island Records). Like Laswell's Material work, the music here is grounded in dub, but moves continually into Eno-esque ambience and drone. I don't love Laswell, but this remains interesting to me.

And that's because of the readings from Temporary Autonomous Zone that comprise the spoken word portions of the record. There's theory at play here that, in practice, can make life still worth living, especially as our national culture devolves into fascism. Bey once spoke about the energy having been spent out of American activism; creation of a separatist structure outside the boundaries of control can be a recharge to activism. By attaching a finite time limit to its existence, one can also avoid the depression of what is intended as a permanent autonomous zone being destroyed.

I dunno...that's what I'm thinking about right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll have some dick jokes and I'll write about some dumb punk rock record. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Discogs

Click here to download.