Mystery, or uncertainty, is in the air, alley, and ether in “Saw 13 (äNACRUSä remix)” on the Remixed Ambience Wars compilation. The air smells of metal and silver. An ethereal mist stipples and outlines ancestral figures. Day or night, the alley stays dark and silent. We detect the danger: it lurks, attacks, and leaves no evidence. The alley is as clean as an operating table, sterilized after the surgery, still warm. The surgical tools are placed in a cold stainless steel container, which also house organs beating “heartily.”
The remix conjures scenes of tragedy, of violence and victimization carried out swiftly by moonlight, lacking the celebratory nature of a public execution, reported and printed next to apple pie recipes as matter-of-fact news blurbs in a high-numbered page of the morning edition. The scenes are commonplace, due to their frequency, but not common. They are composed of supernatural and abstract elements. One blurb reads:
We are halfway through viewing a film in a half-finished attic when the film pauses itself; the film’s protagonist jostles on the screen, in his seat. His tie bends, and his face is washed-out to the point of erasure. His hands, as equally pale and “rubbed out” as his face, wobble on a tabletop. We lean forward and squint in order to examine a nickel that spins near the eastern edge of the table. We pause, frozen with the film, in suspense, hypnotized by the nickel.
Searchlights, hot enough to bleed the pores of the wall, announce the arrival of the midnight paramilitary. We hear them draw their swords and feel their blades on skin, muscle, and bone. We are dismantled, folded neatly, and placed underneath the film’s tabletop, out of the frame, off-camera.
• äNACRUSä: http://anacrusa.bandcamp.com
• Luscinia Discos: http://luscinia.ruidemos.org
