The Pitchfork holiday party was weird. At least it wasn't held in the office. But Schreiber wouldn't pay for train fare and Chicago was fucking freezing and I got so many dirty propositions that the walk felt like the Senate antechamber. I wasn't interested in Martin(a) and her "package deal," though, so I ducked into the VFW Hall. All the new kids were gathered around the punchbowl, making small talk and ladling nervously. I circled the room, browsing conversations: Richard-San was pitching the fork like a grizzled sea veteran with Paul Cooper nodding politely, Sage was pouring liberal amounts of scotch, and Buckman and Leone were talking gibberish about "Yamatsuka" and "Kawabata." Ethan P. was up in John Dark's face about something, but I didn't want to get involved. Someone was missing, but I couldn't remember who.

The party improved after alcohol was drunk and Avalanches were played. Fueled by some gin and too little tonic, I started to wander. Turning the corner, I came face-to-face with some indie kid-- the cocked eyebrow, baggy trousers and tongue poised to spit words like "motorik" marked him as from either the Fakejazz or Splendidezine conventions down the hall, for sure-- but we passed with little more than the "industry nod." Down in the next wing, the strains of some sick sound caught my ears, like a ghost bored into domestication. The sign on the door said "International Association of Muzak Licensers and Muzak Engineers: Annual Meeting." I slipped inside and stood up against the wall.

"Are your clients tired of traditional Muzak? Need a new way to capture your customer's brand loyalty? Gen-X has been tuning out our messages for years; it just isn't receptive to edutainment anymore. But there is a solution. La Makita Soma is Muzak for the filtered generation, designed specifically to rock out and yet keep the profits rolling on in. I understand they call this 'post-rock' here in the Windy City. You've got jolly little keyboard melodies, merry vibraphones humming in time, and drum crashes in all the right places. Every sound is carefully leveled out in the production process, leaving the results smooth and synthesized. And darn if that guitar solo doesn't match the best Muzak classics-- I'm hearing Santana's 'Everything is Coming Our Way!'"

Oh god, it was awful. Kraftwerk posing as kinky robot fetishists was one thing, but I've never heard a group of musicians so pleased to sound like a Casio keyboard demo. It was like they'd boiled instrumental rock down until anything remotely lively and threatening had evaporated, and the distilled essence of suck just oozed out of the speakers like medicinal syrup. The pseudo-psychedelic jam on "Glossalalia at 47th" made me wonder if I'd downed a valium. The entire Prozac Nation might still be bored by this roofie-rock. Oh yeah, and there's a sample of kids playing at the beginning of the title track. Kids. Playing. I was just coming to understand the need for mood medication when I heard it: dink dink dink.

"That's right, folks, 'The Makita Five' even comes up with a new musical genre! We call it 'electroniska,' because it has the lilting upbeat of ska music. That's a twelve-minute song with enough wild solos and calm segments to satisfy consumers and investors alike! After all, there's nothing like a little reggae to spruce your step when you're 'Lost in the Supermarket,' eh? Get it?"

The ska riffs stabbed into my mind on and on and on, but they were far from halcyon. The label reps kept referring to Brighton Park as techno, but it sounded like the downfall of western civilization to me. They'd used pedals as general anesthetic, delay and reverb and wah-wah all combining into a soupy mixture spilling out of the busted cornucopia of third-rate Tortoise bargain basement jams. Then a woman asked a question:

"How will La Makita Soma affect the market in light of the new wave of recordings? We're nearly finished with the Specials' Gangsters. Will the release of Brighton Park hurt our Return-on-Investment for Rat Race?"

The guy chuckled. "La Makita Soma cares about demographics, ma'am. That's why we've included a rapper on 'Spaceship.' Hi-Fidel will broaden your outreach sector when he talks about 'Reptiles armed with projectiles/ Criss-cross in the night sky like African textiles.' There's your urban and science fiction markets in one verse!"

I spun and ran back to the welcoming arms of Daft Punk or whatever it was the staffers were playing. Brent Sirota looked me right in the eyes and shook his head. He knew, and maybe O'Rourke did, too. The new year didn't look so bright anymore.

-Christopher Dare, January 2nd, 2002