1. |
||||
|
"For millions of people, 'wealth' amounts to little more than a few weeks’ wages in a checking account or low-interest savings account, a car, and a few pieces of furniture."
This is a quote from Thomas Piketty's book Capitalism In The 21st Century, whose many graphs illustrating inequality reminded me of the crumpled metal of a car crash. Capitalism and its ever-increasing concentration of wealth seems like one gigantic slow motion pile-up, hence the title of the album. (Any free market fundamentalist will tell you it's running fine, but like any car, it just needs a little maintenance now and again.) All the quotes on the album are voiced by text-to-speech robots to mimic the detached nature of financial markets. They are a reminder that capitalism is synthetic. What is missing from this quote is that even to own a car and a few sticks of furniture makes you wealthier than much of the world. Research by Credit Suisse in 2015 showed that to be in the world's richest 1%, you needed only $700,000. That would put much of the West's middle class in the 1%.
|
||||
2. |
Pattern Recognition
04:51
|
|||
|
"Do you see a pattern? I see one. Is the pattern really there? Can you make money out of it? Or are you imagining it?"
Everyone knows anti-capitalists are angry about being ripped off and they're generally seen by capitalists as a bunch of losers. ("Where are they winning?") What's tragicomic is that even people who buy wholeheartedly into capitalism are also being ripped off. Spotting patterns that may or may not exist is a booming industry. The financial media run graphs pointing out that this moment, right now, looks like that moment, back then, and if that happened then, then this should happen now. The tune's concept is influenced by statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, though I was too lazy to find an apt quote from him, so it's the only track on the album where the words are off the top of my head. This tune also plays on the notion of good dance music being predictable and following patterns, yet nothing in it quite follows a pattern and once you think you've spotted one, it changes. Yet it still manages to sound like a coherent whole, the same way random data may throw up a recognisable pattern, if you look hard enough for it. The riff is probably the catchiest on the album, but I made it by clicking a mouse on a virtual keyboard, which is kind of funny.
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
"Richness is a relationship between two people."
My favourite love song is "2 Of Us" - a dreamy, liquid jungle piece written by Jonny L about his girlfriend. Yet when Jonny's girlfriend left him, he remade the song as a beautiful, really dark, paranoid tune. I've always wanted to write a tune that would capture those two sides of Jonny, the light and dark. Then when I saw this quote, "Richness is a relationship between two people", in a book by John Lanchester it struck me as poetry. On the one hand it describes the nature of wealth brutally, so it has this really dark quality. Yet on the other hand it also describes love - what could be richer than that? The chopped break in the middle is my attempt to program beats like Jonny, though I deliberately did it with an obscure break, so the results are not as sparkly as a classic jungle break. To hear beats done properly, check Jonny L. His "This Time EP" is a good start.
|
||||
4. |
For A Fee
04:59
|
|||
|
“For a fee, the exchange will ‘flash’ information about buy and sell orders for just a few fractions of a second before the information is made publicly available.”
This is a quote from Michael Lewis's book Flash Boys on how the markets are rigged these days. The quote comes in partially with the words “for a fee... for just a few fractions of a second" before coming in with the full quote. It's supposed to emulate how the rest of the market only gets the full picture after those who have have had the forthcoming information "flashed" at them.
|
||||
5. |
Concentrated Wealth
03:42
|
|||
|
"Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence... some people imagine that it belongs to surreal or mysterious entities."
This is another quote from Thomas Piketty that speaks for itself, evoking millions of conspiracy theories. I ditched the regular jungle deejay-friendly 16 bar intro that makes tunes easier to mix as I doubt any deejays would play this album anyway.
|
||||
6. |
Exploit Investors
05:21
|
|||
|
“The new players in the financial markets, the kingpins of the future who had the capacity to reshape those markets, were a different breed... the Russian aerospace engineer; the Indian PhD in electrical engineering. There were just thousands of these people... Basically all of them with advanced degrees. I remember thinking to myself how unfortunate it was that so many engineers were joining these firms to exploit investors rather than solving public problems.”
The longest quote on the album, also from Michael Lewis's Flash Boys. As with all the tunes on the album, there are arpeggios all over the place. The working titles of all the songs were Arp 1, Arp2, Arp 3, etc. I love arps. Though I used to play cornet in several bands as a kid, read music and have watched countless tutorials on music theory, I find it's better to just throw all that out the window and just play it by ear - or draw it in using the mouse in MIDI.
|
||||
7. |
Sell, Don't Follow
05:29
|
|||
|
"You make more money by selling advice than you do by following it."
I was originally looking for a quote from a certain book about Wall Street that my friend, a disaffected fund manager and Frank Zappa fan, gave me - Fred Schwed's Where Are All The Customer's Yachts? Yet nothing I could remember from it was as succinct as its title, which seemed too obvious. This quote from John Lanchester pretty much sums up the book.
|
||||
8. |
Luck Sold As Skill
05:45
|
|||
|
"There is one world in which... the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent... that is the world of markets."
A quote from stastician Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled By Randomness. The lead riff sounds kind of like a fairground or carousel ride, which I thought was an apt soundtrack to people being taken for a ride.
|
||||
9. |
Hero Among Monkeys
06:06
|
|||
|
“If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of... typewriters... there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad'... Now that we have found that hero among monkeys, would any [one] invest [their] life's savings on a bet that the monkey would write the 'Odyssey' next?”
A quote from stastician Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled By Randomness. People who get lucky in financial markets attract the money of the desperate, supposedly.
|
||||
10. |
Basis Points
05:10
|
|||
|
"Referring to basis points is one of the quickest and easiest ways of pretending to know what you’re talking about when it comes to money."
One percentage point is the same as 100 basis points, so instead of saying 0.62 of a percentage point, people in finance say 62 basis points. There's so much jargon in finance that to outsiders it's almost comical. This quote is from John Lanchester, who generously says the reason there's so much jargon is that people in finance need an efficient way of communicating complex problems fast. It's certainly marginally quicker to say one basis point than 0.01 of a percentage point. Those less generous may suspect the jargon is to keep out the riff raff. It's probably a bit of both.
|
||||
11. |
Heads Or Tails
04:49
|
|||
|
"If a man has tossed a coin 'heads' four times in succession, which do you think he is more likely to toss the fifth time, heads or tails?
A quote from Fred Schwed's Where Are All The Customer's Yachts? illustrating the dubious nature of holding up past performance as an indicator of future success. Today's financial heroes, revered as experts and attracting investors' savings, are tomorrow's unlucky losers. I chopped up the drum break in a different way to that on "Richness Is A Relationship Between 2 People", slicing it up and mapping it out on the keyboard, then rearranging the hits in MIDI.
|
||||
12. |
No One Understands
05:41
|
|||
|
"The... system... once gave us subprime mortgage collateralized debt obligations no investor could possibly truly understand[. It] now gave us stock market trades... at... unsafe speeds using order types that no investor could possibly truly understand."
A quote from Michael Lewis's Flash Boys, suggesting the same complex financial instruments that caused the Great Financial Crisis are emerging in different forms. Many financial experts say no one truly understands high frequency trading, which is so cutting edge that it's logical no one will know what each other is really up to or how far they've advanced. The background vocal has been reversed to show how your mind can trick you into thinking you know what's going on. We are terrified of having no control over what's happening in the world. Can you hear lyrics in it? Sometimes I think I can.
|
||||
Mat Ward Australia
Mat Ward blends future bass, drum and bass, punk and politics to come up with a different sound. He has released albums about financial markets, Apple, Elon Musk, surveillance, the media, Mars, protest chants and the climate. He also writes books and a music column that has been shared by the likes of Ru Paul, Chuck D, Tom Morello and Al Jourgensen. ... more
If you like Mat Ward, you may also like:
Teklife crew member Mel G showcases his love of footwork, jungle, dnb, and house music.
go to album
Nite School Klik EP
by Nite School Klik
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jun 9, 2015
go to album
THE LIQUID AMBER EP
by DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow launches his Liquid Amber label with 2 new cuts and a tasty Machinedrum remix of "Six Days."
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 19, 2022
go to album
All The Best Remixes
by Nikitch
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 9, 2018
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Sep 13, 2022
go to album
The latest from Fanu runs the spectrum: jungle, drum & bass, boom bap and ambient all brush shoulders on “Classy Coffee Cuts.”
go to album
