Just thought I'd post this as I'd kinda been following it and thought it was interesting.

Basically, at the recent Kinetik festival in Canada Jairus Khan who does the act Ad-ver-sary was booked to play a set appearring alongside Antigen Shift. Khan was apparently in a dilemma because he was on the bill with bigger acts he had an issue with - Combichrist and Nachtmahr (both musically not much cop IMO). For those unfamiliar, Combichrist in particular are actually a pretty big act outside the everyday mainstream - like they've toured as Rammstein's support act. Khan by comparison is a complete nobody. Apparently he considered cancelling, but what he did was end the set with this track accompanied by this video directly attacking for invoking sexist and racist stuff because he didn't want to appear on thesame bill and not say anything.



This has triggered a debate on the industrial scene about whether he was right or not. I know a lot about that scene and I won't bore people with some huge essay about it. Khan wasn't accusing them personally and it's widely understood Combichrist isn't intended to be taken seriously - but it raising interesting questions about how certain imagery is presented as 'cool' and this is of course something directly applicable to other genres. Though the stuff about the Confederate flag can seem rather tenuous (Dukes of Hazzrd & all that) it raises the question about where that symbol is from and what it's historically represented and if people should think about that. Nachtmahr's militaristc, fascist lookin' imagery isn't new to industrial and that sort of stuff has been a matter of debate for years.
The guy behind Combichrist has basically said fair play and he intends to move away from that stuff. The guy behind Nachtmahr disputed it, but didn't do a great job of it.

Anyway, without getting into all the ins and outs concerning a scene I'm possibly the only person here who knows or cares about anyway, I posted it because I thought it was really interesting how a musician decided to call out much bigger acts on what they're doing at a festival, totally unexpectedly and not knowing what the reaction would be (apparently it was a mixture of cheers, confusion and indifference). By doing this, he's got people thinking about and debating the imagery they're consuming.
He's been accused of pulling a publicity stunt, but I think that's balls. I think it took guts to take that risk and he can't be bothered about selling records as he gives his music away for free anyway (something else I admire) -

www.ad-ver-sary.com/download/

Industrial is obviously a minority scene that doesn't have any prominence, but I thought the action was interesting and it makes me think about if this sort of thing should happen with other genres - people standing up and asking just what are you buying here? It's not a matter of whether he was totally right, it's that act of saying let's think about this stuff, what it's supposed to mean and why people buy into it.

I'd never have posted this on the DIF as I know what would have happened...

Well Good For Him. Too many people slavishly duplicate the imagery without one iota of what it stands for. D'uh. Maybe now the one or two potentially alive brains in the mobs out there will start to wonder what it does mean - what are they saluting and copying? And it might result in one or two less doing so.