Daily Archives: April 8, 2020

Raise your hand if you expected The Orb to put out a kaleidoscopic set of music released under the banner of radical anti-monarchism. Because I dont think it was many of us, to be honest. Thats not an unwarranted surprise, either; for most, The Orb brings to mind the radical expansion of house music in the 90s that came in parallel to the first big push of IDM, exploring the headiness of danceable grooves and ambient chill-outs the same way that major IDM figures like Aphex Twin, Autechre and more were mapping the contorted mind that lingers somewhere between cocaine use and the autistic mind (speaking from experience there). Records like The Orbs Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and U.F.Orb are still considered high water marks of the genre, blending breakbeat, minimal techno, and heady dub into the worlds of house music and dub. What came after was no less compelling even if it did seem to penetrate other spaces less; they even released a collaborative space prog record called Metallic Spheres with David Gilmour as well as a full dub album called The Orbserver in the Star House with Lee Scratch Perry.

On paper, that should have acted perhaps as preparation for the vast range the group displays on Abolition of the Royal Familia, but its still hard not to be pleasantly surprised when the revamped 90s lounge techno-pop vibes dissolve into straight-up jazz before evolving by the records end into relaxed and euphoric dub. The sequencing helps here; the group has released rangey LPs before, but part of what would hold them back was a sense of each track being self-contained, not always creating that album-flow level of connective tissue that makes a full LP set compelling beyond just how much you like the individual songs. Abolition is paced phenomenally, each track feeling like a discrete development on the previous before seeding in new moods and emotional spaces for the next track to dive into.

The album peak is late-record epic The Weekend It Rained Forever, a beautiful and moving programmatic piece that seems to follow a descent into loneliness and isolation, but played as a positivist moment, one where the illusory shells and masks of the world fall away and we bear witness to the bare soul, radiant and unadorned. The restrained piano and guitars kissed with warm cavernous reverb against the sounds of rain and collected samples of thunder and news broadcasts feels at first like heartbreak, the way adulthood sees friend groups and time with loved ones winnowing away toward the abyssal years of senescence, before late in the piece strains of jazz break through like beams of light through storm clouds, offering some inward solace in the midst of isolation and pain. I cant deny that present conditions make that especially powerful, render me remarkably susceptible to those notions where maybe before they would have struck me as too on-the-nose with their cinematic conceit to really work. The Orb recorded this before COVID-19, of course, and couldnt have known the conditions under which this work was going to enter the world, but it feels eerily and necessarily prescient in a manner that benefits rather than robs the work.

Ill admit that this record has been a buoy of comfort for me in the past week. To get briefly autobiographical, I have a recurring lung issue that generates a lot of the symptoms of COVID but at functionally none of the risk; it once drove me to the emergency clinic on the verge of not being able to breathe only to learn it was functionally just severe allergy-induced asthma. Present conditions render that ailment a nightmare, an obscuring cloud over symptoms indicative of a killing plague. On top of that, I lost my job in the past week due to industry contractions from COVID, this coming after two weeks of me prodding at what our long-term plans and protocols were to no response. The entire atmosphere felt suffocating and defeating and honestly it has been near impossible to write, everything feeling useless and myself in particular feeling powerless and without value.

But I would put on this record to review my notes and soon I would find myself leaning back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling, not even trying to write but just absorbing it. Letting it make me cry. Feeling comforted and swaddled. That, I think, is the truer testament to this record; it will be seared in my brain as an album from times of plague, one that feels bloodily enjoined with them in the way that post-9/11 music did once or, for the British, art about the Falklands War. This is ultimately what ambient music is best at, these inward tunnelings, breaking down the emotional, rational barriers we place on ourselves to better navigate the world and instead opening us up to experience without judgment the stray fish that swim within us, lifting them up by the tails and naming them. The Orb have spent three decades and worked with absolute masters of the worlds of electronica, post-punk, prog, space rock, and dub; its no wonder they are so accomplished at this by now.

Label: Cooking VinylYear: 2020

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Apr 6, 2020Jeff Terich

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The Orb : Abolition of the Royal Familia - Treble

Contrary to popular opinion, slavery did not end with abolition in the 19th century. The practice still continues today in one form or another in every country in the world. It is easy to assume that slavery only exists today within war-torn, impoverished countries, but that could not be further from the truth.

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is observed annually on the 2nd of December to focus on the elimination of human trafficking, child labour and other forms of modern-day slavery. Slavery has evolved and manifested itself in different guises in the modern world. The UN human rights bodies have documented the persistent old forms of slavery that are embedded in traditional beliefs and customs. These forms of slavery are the result of long-standing discrimination against the most vulnerable groups in societies, such as those regarded as being of low caste, tribal minorities and indigenous peoples.

RELATED: Sex Trafficking Is Still an Issue in 2015

The focus of this day is on eradicating these contemporary forms of slavery. Modern slavery involves one person possessing or controlling another person in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal. It contributes to the production of at least 122 goods from 58 countries worldwide. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates the illicit profits of forced labour to be $150 billion a year. From women forced into prostitution, children and adults forced to work in agriculture, domestic work, or factories and sweatshops producing goods for global supply chains, entire families forced to work for nothing to pay off generational debts; or girls forced to marry older men, the illegal practice still blights the contemporary world.

The 2014 Global Slavery Index (GSI) has been published by the Walk Free Foundation, a global human rights organization with a mission to end modern slavery in a generation. The report looks at prevalence (the percentage of a countrys population that is enslaved) as well as the total number of people living in modern slavery in each country. It estimates that over 23.5 million people in Asia are living in modern slavery.

While Indias economy is booming in various industries and sectors, it is also home to more than 14 million victims of slavery, ranging from bonded labor to prostitution. The index found India had by far the greatest number of slaves of the 167 countries surveyed.

This report by ILO reinforces the GSIs findings:

Indias modern slavery challenges are immense. Across Indias population of over 1.2 billion people, all forms of modern slavery, including inter-generational bonded labour, trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced marriage, existThere are reports of women and children from India being recruited with promises of non-existent jobs and later sold for sexual exploitation, or forced into sham marriages. In some religious groups, pre-pubescent girls are sold for sexual servitude in temples. Recent reports suggest that one child goes missing every eight minutes; it is feared that some are sold into forced begging, domestic work, and commercial sexual exploitation.

Most of us are aware of the exploitation that exists today, but we either turn a blind eye or dont see how we can help. The truth is, we have more power than we know. Here are some ways people have been doing their part to help abolish modern slavery in India.

Criminal Justice Reforms

Criminal justice reforms specific to human trafficking are the strongest component of Indias response to modern slavery. In 2013, the government amended the Indian Penal Code to include specific anti-trafficking provisions. In 2014, the government expanded the number of police anti-human trafficking units across the country to 215 units, aiming to establish a unit in 650 districts. The judiciary and over 20,000 law enforcement have received training on victim identification, the new legal framework, and victim-centered investigations.

Free The Slaves

Free The Slaves is an NGO organisation that works on global advocacy for victims of modern slavery found in Asia, Africa and South America. One of the means of banishing slavery emphasised upon the is a need for rights education. Educating those in bondage about their rights, and showing them how others in similar circumstances have successfully reclaimed their freedom, is the first step.

Jagrutha Mahila Sanghatan Empowering Dalit Women

Jagrutha Mahila Sanghatan is a Dalit (Dalit, meaning oppressed in South Asia, the self-chosen political name of castes formerly considered untouchable) Womens Collective NGO that aims to empower Dalit women and children through leadership building. Dalit Womens Collective also focuses on community building to increase social consciousness and secure education rights for children as part of their list of objectives and successful campaigns.

International Dalit Solidarity Network

International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) addresses caste discrimination as a critical human rights issue. Their network produces crucial input in the form of documentation, strategic interventions and lobby action and also supports lobby activities on a national level. They provide international support for the work of national advocacy platforms as they promote Dalit rights and call upon the Indian government to live up to their obligations under national and international law.

Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi

Some of you may recall when young human rights activist Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan shared her Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi. Satyarthi was jointly awarded the prize for his remarkable efforts in fighting for the rights of all children to obtain an education and lobbying against the suppression of children and young people, over the past three decades. The grassroots movement founded by him, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Children Movement) has liberated more than 84 000 children from exploitation.

These are just some of the many networks that strive to eradicate the dated traditions of forced work and servitude in India. The police and legislation often do not take cases reported by Dalits and the NGOs that serve them of importance and many rescue missions implemented end up thwarted by red tape causing the perpetrators to reclaim their workers and unleash punishment on them for daring to complain. With local and global organisations as well as dedicated people like Yousafzai and Satyarthi, the world is finally starting to recognise that slavery isnt just a thing of the past.

Petals in The Dust: The Endangered Indian Girls

Featured Image:Randy Adamsvia Creative Commons

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International Day for the Abolition of Slavery: Modern Day Slavery in India - Wear Your Voice

Note: Spoilers ahead.

To flip an old clich on its head, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness may not be the television series we need, but its proving to be the one we want.

There isnt a single sympathetic major character in this seven-part Netflix extravaganza; every last one is involved in the abuse of animals, of humans or of both. The conscience of the series, if you can call her that, may have killed her second husband and fed him to the tigers. Or stuffed him down a septic tank. Or something.

Call it television for the pandemic. Were home, surrounded by death and disease in the news and, perhaps, in our own lives. Were scared of getting sick, scared of losing our jobs, scared because weve lost our jobs. Our cruel, incompetent president has been botching matters since early January and is yelling at us every evening about governors who have dissed him, journalists who have angered him and unproven elixirs he wants us to take because, as he likes to say, What do you have to lose?

Emerging from this vortex of insanity is the Tiger King, a.k.a. Joe Exotic, a.k.a. Joseph Maldonado-Passage, a.k.a. Joseph Schreibvogel, the gay, wildly extroverted, garishly adorned, country music-singing, political office-seeking, assault weapon-toting proprietor of the G.W. Zoo in Oklahoma a private reservation where adults and children can play with adorable tiger cubs, where underpaid, overworked employees are fed discarded cold cuts from Walmart, and where, as we learn, big cats that are no longer useful are shot and buried out back.

Maldonado-Passage is both paranoid and out of control and he is obsessed with a woman named Carole Baskin, who, along with her worshipful third husband, runs a sanctuary for big cats in Florida and who crusades to put Maldonado-Passage and others like him out of business. Preening before the cameras, Baskin is as self-obsessed as her nemesis, though lacking his talent for self-destruction. As for the destruction of others well, there is the matter of her second husband, whose 1997 disappearance has yet to be solved.

The filmmakers, Eric Goode and Rebecca Chailkin, present a veritable bestiary of other odd characters as well, including Maldonado-Passages three husbands (one of whom blows his brains out while on meth), an employee who returned to work just a week after a tiger bit her arm off and the owners of other big-cat exhibits all of whom come off as far more sinister and calculating than the star of the show.

The end game comes into view during the last three episodes, when a career criminal whod taken over the zoo, a would-be hitman and a government informant tell federal authorities that Maldonado-Passage had paid $3,000 to have Baskin killed. (One is reminded of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers threatening to destroy the world unless he is paid one million dollars!) Maldonado-Passage is convicted of attempted murder and animal abuse.

Did he do it? Theres no question that he often bragged on camera about wanting to kill Baskin, and he dramatized his wishes, as one does, by shooting mannequins and holding up a jar that appeared to contain her severed head. It seems likely that he was enticed into going further than he would have on his own at the instigation of his erstwhile business partner, who wanted him out of the way. But that certainly doesnt mean he was framed, as he claims.

Needless to say, the appeal of Tiger King is entirely voyeuristic. My wife and I watched the first part on our sons recommendation. She dropped out because she couldnt stand the animal cruelty (not really shown but ever-present as a background theme) and then came back for the last part because she wanted to see Maldonado-Passage behind bars. I stuck with it against my better judgment because it was like the proverbial car crash I couldnt look away.

Human suffering is dangled before the viewer like raw meat, writes the critic Doreen St. Flix in The New Yorker, adding later on: The documentary is a kaleidoscope of terrible taste.

Why do we watch stuff like this? Human nature being what it is, we want people we can feel superior to, who get whats coming to them, whose success is built on evil until, one day, it all comes crashing down. And I think we need even more of that sort of thing during a terrifying time like the one were living in.

We are now hearing that, because of Tiger King, the authorities are pursuing new leads in the disappearance of Carole Baskins second husband, and that, with Maldonado-Passages help, other big-cat exhibits around the country are being shut down. See? Some good is coming out of this freak show.

Perhaps. But I am reminded of a book that New Yorks Daily News published upon its 50th anniversary some years ago that included the famous 1928 front-page photo of Ruth Snyder being killed in the electric chair for the murder of her husband. The book piously claimed that publication of the picture led to the abolition of the death penalty in New York.

Maybe it did. But it also sold a hell of a lot of papers.

WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedys blog, Media Nation, is online at dankennedy.net.

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Bad Television For Bad Times: Why 'Tiger King' Resonates In The Age Of Pandemic - wgbh.org