DECAYCAST#036: NIHAR BHATT :  V/A: ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE DJ Mix on RATSKIN RECORDS, 2017 

IMA “Meshes”
TERROR APART “Perfectly Nowhere”
BIG DEBBIE “E.P. Hypnosis”
AH MER AH SU “Write This Off”
SNEAX (LaTron + Obsidian Blade) “Till The End 100%”
Piano Rain “Last Year” Remastered
PRIST “Still Movin'”
FORBIDDEN COLORS “Green Smiley Face Sticker”
BONUS BEAST “Direct Dive”
ZEEK SHECK “7777-01-07 Son”
JOSHUA KIT CLAYTON “Morning Rasp”
HIROSHI HASEGAWA “Homeobox”
MALOCCULSION “Walk Of The Dead, Part One”
S.B.S.M. “Godzilla”
POD BLOTZ “The Current”
MOOR MOTHER “CTM Five”
BRIAN TESTER “Chrono People”
GOLDEN DONNA “Wired For The Worst”
THE CREATRIX “D B No Moral Universe”
CIARRA BLACK “Don’t Say It, Volume 1”
RUSSELL E.L. BUTLER “Technofeminism House”
ZANNA NERA “In My Veins”
JASMINE INFINITI “Scratchy A”
ELROND “Hart Start”
DIMENTIA “Specimen Identity”
PARALYCYST “Untitled”
SHARON TATE FETUS EXPLOSION “Personal Brand”
V.E.X. “Ride The Time”
arc “Breathe Couplings Undulation Map”

On The Origin Of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse: About two weeks to the day before Ghostship, we returned home after days of protests; as always feeling defeated, BEING defeated another day of violence enacted upon the communities’ consciousness; Witnessing the beautiful families of oakland wading through never ending rivers of trauma enacted on all marginalized communities through state sanctioned violence and racism in Oakland, and the Bay Area at large. A compilation will not solve this, a thousand compilations will not solve this, but we have done nothing to combat this and we have to start somewhere. ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE is an uncertain yet thorough attempt to demonstrate to propose a restructuring of how artists, labels, promoters, venues and other “institutions” and INSTITUTIONS use their privilege, time, talents, and resources. But before we could do that, and begin to unpack the complexities around all of these issues, in one single night, the community lost thirty six souls, including founding members of our collective, artists on our label, family members, and so much more in Ghostship and then months after RP/GC was released, almost a dozen more in the San Pablo Fire months later which displaced hundreds of longstanding Black members of the community, and lastly the North Bay fires. There is only so many ways to process or not process this stuff, but we came up with a compilation. We weren’t sure how long it would be, who would be included, how we would present it to the public without exacerbating the commodification of grief, and without taking visibility away from traumas enacted against the Oakland community at large, outside of the “artistic” community. We weren’t really at all sure how we would divide up the money, how we would promote it, but sometimes you don’t have any other fucking choice, even if it raised $100 you never know how far that could go.. Ghostship was, and still is a horrendous blow to our local creative community, many of whom had already been resisting against the structural wrath and chaos of a white supremacist, sexist, capitalist culture, and therefore already just struggling to create and survive, day by day hour by hour minute by minute. In short, many communities were fragmented and tormented long before Ghostship, and Ghostship, for many of us, brought a blade of mass trauma slicing through reality, grief, chaos, distrust and confusion that uprooted the community in so many different ways. The Immediate Fire relief fund literally saved people’s lives by the way and all the love should be given to them and those working on the periphery as well.

What was crucial for us was linking in those deeply affected and lost in Ghostship fire while also keeping the financial and conceptual focus on the organizations we chose to support before the fire, Black Lives Matter and St James Infirmary in San Francisco. Before we knew it, it was out. It was like the best and worst possible distraction, and in MANY ways, postponed a lot of the mental and physical healing that members of the collective needed to do for ourselves but at the same time it was, and still very much is an entry point for beginning the process. For me personally, this has easily been the single most important release I have ever been a part of for numerous reasons, but the single biggest reason is because it saved my life, literally, so many times I cannot even count and it did that by showing me the undeniable ferociousness of our community. Every track on ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE, came as a blessing, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, but also they came as weapons, one hundred and eighty seven weapons, and we couldn’t be happier with the finished offering, as it strives to demonstrate the unrelenting power through all of the trauma and grief that our community and the people of Oakland, through various intersections possess and present with every moment that they exist. Nihar’s essential, heartfelt, and nearly perfect distillation of the thirteen hours of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse, carefully and masterfully sharpens heavy stones of grief into razor blades of warmth, love, creativity, and determination of our community like daggers to the throat of a broken, corrupt system. Every tear shed will eventually freeze to form an icicle to thrust into the socket of a system which has cast away so many amazing, beautiful, creative, people.

This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.

This mix is one  for  everyone who has  lost a loved one  at the  hands of  systemic violence. Your  tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.  

Follow Nihar’s projects NINE, \ LEFT HAND PATH & SURFACE TENSION

The physical edition of  ROGUE PULSE   / GRAVITY    is SOLD OUT  as of  Today, but the  digital download is  available HERE ON BANDCAMP  via RATSKIN.

-MD. Dec 1, 2017