The Black Dog - Neither/Neither (2015)

We live in dangerous times. We are blinded by control vectors that separate us from reality. And The Black Dog returns with a viral antidote: an album of de-programming material which they’ve called Nether/Neither.

This record continues the work they started with Further Vexations and Radio Scarecrow. Burroughs was right: we are now living in a world that is nothing short of a total information war. We are neither one thing nor another, endlessly on the fence in the face of an onslaught of disinformation. Non-linear hypermedia systems are openly used to control us, their operation being totally exposed, mocking our impotence, yet complete in their power. We are all proles now; all are expected to maintain a mental state of Neither/Neither, of uncertainty and inaction. Even in a world where anyone can be an instant expert on any subject in a single click, we find that all our knowledge is a mere replay of someone else’s script.

We are surrounded and occupied by systems of platitude generation that are empty and self-referential. All is surface and all is hollow. From the Tories’ election propaganda to David Icke, they’re all the same, all meaning filtered to nothing by a lack of substance, science and humanity. Falsehood becomes reason, no matter how ridiculous the proposition. They stand for nothing so they can have no questions to answer.