Album cover by Isam Prado
Battleman Zero's Theme by Saskrotch
Track 9: Foam
The Whack had been torn down and asbestos warning signs had been put up in its place. Young scenesters stood on uneven chunks of cement wearing medical masks – punks and hipsters and goths and freaks and emo kids, all of them former regulars. Some had nosebleeds, staining the masks with strips of red, turning their faces into patriotic mixtures of red and white. A makeshift stage had been set up using wooden boards, the stage surrounded by power generators, speakers, woofers and subwoofers. Black monoliths circled the area. A tangle of cables and cords, in a mixture of greyscale and sunset colours, held it all together.
Koi sat drinking coffee with Ryan, Haskell and Trevor Noirchild at the Kappa Coffee across the street. They sat on stools facing the front window, watching the congregation that had formed at what was left of the Whack. Those at the Whack were waiting for Koi, though they did not know it. All they knew was that a special concert was to take place as a eulogy for the club. And Koi was nervous. And Ryan was excited, and Haskell was excited, and Trevor Noirchild held a certain coolness about him that could not be mistaken for anything other than cool.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ Trevor Noirchild assured Koi. ‘Everything you need is on the notebook. All you have to do is hit Play and pretend you’re turning knobs and pushing buttons. The most important thing is to look like you’re into it.’
‘He’s right,’ Haskell said.
‘Uh, all right.’
Koi downed the last of the powder at the bottom of his cup.
‘When do I start?’
‘You can go set up now,’ Trevor Noirchild said. ‘Just open your notebook and select a file I put on it called Sound Check. It’ll emulate the screeching and tapping sounds you generally hear at a live show. It’s something I personally use in order to prep the audience for the main show, so they know it’s about to begin; it also adds a human element to the mix, so the audience has a tougher time figuring out what’s pre-recorded and what isn’t.’
Koi stared at his empty coffee cup as he contemplated this.
‘Uh, all right.’
‘Ryan will go up on stage with you to help plug it all in. Then it’s up to you.’
Koi looked directly into Trevor Noirchild’s eyes for what felt like the first time. Trevor Noirchild’s eyes were bright and reflected Koi's. A car passing by flashed a shade of blue across Trevor Noirchild’s face, and it was in that instant Koi realised this person was as real as he was, another person with his own living, breathing thoughts, viewing the world as if it were his own.
Haskell squeezed Koi’s shoulder. Amazing that he could be touched like that.
‘Are you real?’ she asked.
‘Uh, pardon?’
‘Are you ready?’ she asked again.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ he answered uncertainly. ‘I, uh, must be.’
Haskell gave him a rare smile.
‘Then let’s get out of here.’
Koi tripped over the metal bump in the doorway and landed on the palms of his hands, the cement pushing skin into skin until the skin tore and pebbles lodged into the tender red beneath. Koi moaned but it could have been a frustrated sigh. He said that he was all right. The notebook had landed a foot away from him, but luckily it was all right – they had left it in standby and it turned on just fine. But those scars would never heal.
‘I’ll get you some cool stickers to cover up the scratches,’ Ryan said.
Haskell was the one who helped Koi up. He grabbed her wrists and just as quickly let go, giving her bracelets of faded red and common stone, and he touched his nose apologetically.
‘As long as your fingers are fine,’ Trevor Noirchild said. ‘Let’s get you to the stage.’
‘Yeah.’
‘As long as your fingers are fine. You won’t be able to type otherwise.’
‘What am I typing?’
‘He means pressing P,’ Haskell explained.
‘Let’s get you to the stage,’ Ryan said.
They crossed the parking lot, the street and entered the crowd. Koi nearly choked on the mixture of cologne, alcohol and marijuana. He coughed. He coughed all the way to the stage, Ryan helping him towards it, and those in the crowd who noticed them assumed Koi was having an episode, that he was being led someplace quiet.
Koi climbed the stage. He set the notebook on the singed pool table that had been set up for him, and then he and Ryan plugged everything in that needed plugging in. Caressing the touchpad brought the notebook to life, the screen flickering to a Zone of the Enders 2 wallpaper. Koi double-clicked on the Sound Check icon and every ear on the rubble pile pricked up, alerted to the high-pitched feedback that shot out of the speakers. Pops and echo and screeching bounced from one speaker to the next, tunnelling through the brains of those caught between, forcing some to cover their ears and others to grin idiotically. Koi looked at their faces, surprised by how much power he wielded through these simple sounds.
Haskell, Ryan and Trevor Noirchild all stood in the back, watching him patiently, expectantly; Haskell held her hips, Ryan stood with his hands in his pockets and Trevor Noirchild crossed his arms. Koi watched them watching him, mouth agape, and blushed at the pressure. He pulled up a minimised playlist containing a selection of what were considered to be his greatest tracks and pressed S. Nothing happened.
The audience stared at him blankly, the ensuing silence thick enough to suffocate.
Koi looked to his friends for some kind of support or explanation.
‘P,’ Haskell mouthed to him. ‘P, you idiot.’
Koi nodded. He bent down to the small microphone beside the notebook.
‘Uh, hi,’ he said, his voice ricocheting off the rubble. ‘I’m, uh, Wav Smasher. Or Excited by Ontario. I don’t know.’
Somebody shouted something to him. He pressed P. The eyes of everyone in the audience widened at once. Koi looked at his screen. Everyone looked at him: this short, amused-looking nerd, wearing a baboon-fur jacket, bobbing his head to a beat that was not the beat, blasted music that shook the ground they stood on, dislodging chunks of cement and forcing them to dance. The crowd became a sea of wild, absurd gestures, of bodies on fire. These were the type of people who would never otherwise dance, but they were dancing now, dancing with such intensity it was as if Koi were shooting at their feet, dancing as if, at that moment, dancing was the only thing that mattered.
Koi recorded the crowd noise with his microphone and played it back to them, and the crowd worked up the courage to acknowledge this as their reality. They danced.
‘I thought the point was not to dance,’ Haskell yelled into her brother’s ear.
‘Ridiculous,’ Trevor Noirchild said to himself, at such a volume that his words were drowned out by the music. ‘The point is to escape genre as much as possible. Calling this IDM is nothing more than a cop-out.’
‘How the hell did his melodies get so intricate?’ shouted Ryan. ‘He has no formal training whatsoever. I have no idea why this is so awesome.’
‘But it is,’ Haskell shouted back.
Koi's Story Continues In Track 10: The First Person
Track 0: Uh
Track 1: The Nerd Wave
Track 2: Playing Koi
Track 3: She had said the only words that could have affected him totally and truly
Track 4: A Sudden Loud Knocking
Track 5: A Two-Man Play to Be Performed on a City Bus
Track 6: Now It's Summer
Track 7: Study of a Drawing by Bobby Myers
Track 8: Loose Change
Track 9: Foam
Track 10: The First Person
Track 11: Please Be True
Track 12: Title Track