Document 0: Welcome to 'Kill The Switch'
"Life is lowly, lowly anonymity."
In 2004 the post-hardcore screamo band Circle Take The Square released their debut studio album As the Roots Undo to virtually no audience, and anyone who would even know about such a band wouldn’t care to listen to it anyway. An unrelenting and genre transcending album, As the Roots Undo is an entryway into a portal that you didn’t know existed: music as fractal sonic assault. A review of the album isn’t what this seminal introduction is about. Instead it serves as a landmark and a jumping point for what this Substack’s purpose is and how it will utilized. ‘Kill The Switch’ is the name of the penultimate song and 9 minute masterpiece of As the Roots Undo. Upon first encountering the album, I was baffled & confused at what I was hearing, not able to process the poetic intensity and fierce abrasive onslaught that is Circle Takes The Square. My only reference point were other bands who did something similar in their respective niche genres, but something stood out that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I’m not one for lyrics, never have been and probably never will be. My brain is too musically inclined, lyrics go in one ear and out the other for me. I know: I’m in the minority of people whereby this is the case. I still don’t know the lyrics to albums I have listened to thousands of times — odd isn’t it? However, with the song ‘Kill The Switch’ my ears perked up and I scrambled to find the lyrics that I had just heard. They seemed to resonate with me beyond the brilliance of the music and the all-too cryptic & flowery lyricism of the rest of the album. The key section can be read below:
Life is lowly, lowly anonymity
In the space of a smile, I found sleep
I know its all been done before, I want to do it again, I want to do it again (x3)
Life is lowly, lowly anonymity
In death, a noble prose, a Marat David
Life is lowly, lowly anonymity (x4)
In stillness, absence, sorrow
In silence, I pick sorrow
In stillness, absence, sorrow
This night our journey’s through the dark
Kill the switch, kill the switch, a welcome comatose, tonight we journey through the darkness (x4)
This night our journey’s through the dark (x3)
As in sorrow, so shall ye weep, as in reason, so shall ye sleep (x2)
What can be made or produced that hasn’t been done before? That question has plagued me ever since hearing the song. No doubt new mediums of expression have and will continue to be made. But the inclination and acknowledgement that There is nothing new under the Sun, as wise King Solomon once said, is painfully accurate. This is what Kill The Switch is about: what can be said that hasn’t already been said before, what can be written about that is truly ‘original’, what can be experienced that is wholeheartedly ‘new’? I know its all been done before, I want to do it again, I want to do it again is a rallying cry, a formulation that posits: ‘I know that nothing I contribute to the world is going to be profoundly new but I’m going to try my damn hardest in spite of that realization - because for me it’s my first time, for me it’s worth giving it my all, for me there is nothing else I can do but dutifully try again and again and again’. But it is inherently a paradox: newness is found in the recognition that there is nowhere else to go and all the terrain has been thoroughly trodden before. However one must still keep walking, keep striving, keep forging ones own path despite everything that has come before. How could such an album have come into existence without that mentality? Could Circle Takes The Square have known their album was going to reshape and redefine screamo music for years to come, some would say indefinitely? Did they change the entirety of music: no. It is merely just an album after all…
Kill The Switch is not about abandoning an attempt at the new and regressing to the old in some form of comfort and solace in tried and true tradition. It is about switching off ones preconceived notions of what is ‘good’, what is ‘true’, what is ‘moral’, and what you’ve been taught to think about any given subject matter. It retains the punk and DIY ethos of where it gets its name from. Discovery and being open to the attempt at newness is encouraged, shutting down simply in knee-jerk reaction is not. Once you kill the switch in your own life, whatever that means to you, you can embark on a journey that never stops - and why should it stop? Why stagnate when you can grow? Why cut yourself short when you can stimulate transformation? I hold myself to this standard and will fall short more often than not. But at least you know the trajectory I am aiming towards and where I am willing to go.
The topics discussed and presented will have no general theme and will be wide ranging. As things progress, categories will be made and organizational structure will come into fruition. The unifying theme will be: shed that which is not beneficial, consume that which is. Discernment is an undervalued and often dismissed virtue in the modern world. Lastly, the documentation process for Kill The Switch is inspired by another screamo band Pg. 99 (pageninetynine) who named all their 14 albums in sequential order (and happened to make an album with none other than … Circle Takes The Square of course!) - a unique and intriguing concept that I’m unashamedly plagiarizing for the purposes of this Substack.
I do recommend you listen to the song or at least read the lyrics in full to ‘Kill The Switch’. But moreover, I urge you to discern what switches you need to kill in your life, what steps need to be taken, what can be discarded and what should remain.
I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running-“if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
— The Art of Expressing the Human Body, Bruce Lee & John Little