Postmodern hip-hop with an edge: The Ownership Society | The Seventh Sun

MUSIC

Postmodern hip-hop with an edge:

The Ownership Society

by Surfdaddy Orca

Surfdaddy Orca is Editor-in-Chief
of The Seventh Sun and an avid
SL surfer. He did the initial site map
for the Diegoland sim and
enjoys building and scripting.

"Everything begins with an idea. Man can create anything he can imagine”

So begins “Progress” from Second Life resident Helmholtz Beerbaum’s new 2007 release, "The Ownership Society." (Beerbaum is also known as Main Sequence of Bridgetown Breaks Records.) This could easily be an advertisement for Second Life itself where, after all, it is “Your World. Your Imagination.”

The term “ownership society” was used originally by President Bush as a phrase to rally support for his tax-cut proposals. The idea is that individuals can control their own lives and wealth, rather than relying on government payments.

From 2004, Bush supporters characterized the ownership society in much broader terms, including specific policy proposals concerning medicine, education and savings.

Beerbaum’s CD explores all sides of this issue with hard hitting hip-hop, experimental electronica, trance, and ambient tracks using a collage of old radio, film and television voices. His style and presentation has been compared to DJ Shadow’s famed Entroducing. Reports Casey Jarman of Portland Oregon’s Willamette Week: “Sequence uses disembodied voices to cut through spacey, soundtrack-worthy instrumentals.”

The CD’s imagery and thematic development can be characterized as “movies for the ears.” No TV or 5th generation video iPod is needed to visualize the 15 tracks that make up The Ownership Society. Tune in, turn on your MP3 player, and zone out into a vivid dream-like aural landscape.

1.	My Unpatience Self	Each track tells a unique story using multiple sampled and sequenced layers with heavy use of beats. The richness and variety of the content is not unlike Second Life. The content of the CD circles around questions concerning the ownership society. In “Guilded Age,” which has begun to receive airplay, we hear: “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; but a government of Wall Street by Wall Street and for Wall Street...” A recent meeting of the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) raises many questions concerning government in Second Life. Of course, any form of organized government in Second Life is subject to the Terms of Service (TOS) of service provider Linden Lab. However, some residents believe that a Second Life government could take the form of an elected parliament; others that a new hi-tech form of democracy may be possible that has not yet been imagined. The SLLA consensus represented in a recent strategy paper by Keksakallu Klata is that representation should be on the basis of universal suffrage with no Real Life user able to vote more than once.
2.	Suburban Interlude
3.	Mannhandler
4.	Atlanta
5.	Fader
6.	Goodnight Mr. Ludd
7.	Look (Featuring Loc Thiese and Ro)
8.	Light and Sweet
9.	Progress
10.	The Guilded Age
11.	Untitled
12.	C. Northcoate Parkinson
13.	Belmont
14.	Satisfaction Interlude
15.	Pay to Play (Featuring Loc Thiese)

Beerbaum explores the theme of good (and bad) government on several tracks. Nevertheless, the Ownership Society features songs that fit in a variety of genres, with each song thematically unique. “Belmont” (track 13) is an electronic instrumental with a beat, “Fader” (track 5) is a dance track, an homage to the music of the South, both past and present, and “Pay to Play” (track 15) is hard-hitting hip hop, featuring friend and veteran Compton, California underground MC, Loc Thiese, furiously ranting about our national priorities.

Perhaps Jarman best captures Beerbaum/Main Sequence: “Puppeteer. Maybe that’s the best title for Main Sequence, who speaks vicariously through his splintered, sound-bitten victims, transforming them from forgotten fragments of pop culture into unwitting spokespersons for the coming revolution.”

And the revolution is here in Second Life, and it will not be televised.

The Ownership Society and Jarman’s full review are available at www.bridgetownbreaks.com.

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