Letter to Mondo 2000 in 1992

THE SHAMANARCHY WAVE

Dear Mondoids,

Why do you guys persist in promulgating the fiction that the UK House Music scene was killed off 2 years ago?!? (Last 2 mags and now the User's Guide to the New Edge).

The currents of pop House, the necessary first shake-it-all-loose stage of Rave Culture, already swirl undeniably round America's ankles. But in Europe, still 3 years ahead, the next tide, the Shamanarchy Wave, prepares to finally swamp America and then the planet in a brand new cultural glue that has the potential to stick all the disparate parts of the revolution back together.

Dare to believe it! Or read on to be convinced.

The fact is that the UK Rave scene, far from getting bashed out of existence, actually got pushed underground, which is a totally different thing. With their bucks no longer guaranteed, for example, the trendy big money/fashion promoters got squeezed out (several chased the Godalmighty Dollar to California) thus purifying and further advancing the scene here. And so, underground and mostly illegally, the real Acid House scene has continued to expand, massively, and has now birthed a "festi-rave", "Hippy House" crossover counterculture that is rapidly becoming radicalized, politicized, ecologized, culturally rooted, hedonically opened - and all within the current and deepening Slump & Final Collapse of the Old System etc.

DEMAND AN ALTERED STATE!
Our latest album release, Shamanarchy In The UK, is so-called because the 2 current frontiers are not VR and Nanotechnology on their own but Shamanism and Anarchy PLUS Techno (consciousness-raising and a new organo-tec society based on personal freedom). Saving our planet doesn't lie in new tools but in who gets their hands on them and for what.

Or to put it another way, Mondoids: if a new culture doesn't make its appearance soon to connect us all into a movement that grabs back control of the planet, then all the techno in MONDO's pages will ultimately only maximize the killing of Iraquis or economically enslaving Russians.

The whole Shamanarchy culture consists of people living and working communally, as posses of urban nomads, illegal tribes of techno guerillas, but in such increasing numbers that they are starting to explode onto the overground - raves being the cultural flashpoints. Even the overground has spotted the phenomenon and is now scrabbling like crazy to mix into their stuff some "ethnic", some "message", some "revolution" etc.

Spiral Tribe, Eat Static, Tribal Drift, Irresistible Force, Astralasia - they're all on Shamanarchy In The UK and they're all going to be the mega House bands of the Ô90s. The Shamen, who are now starting to break in the US, are merely the final ghost of corrupt ol' Rock'n Roll ripping off, as ever, an alternative lifestyle they still haven't dreamed of living.

And yet it's poetic, goddess, what fun it is to be alive today - Big Music Biz building the bridge to its own final demise! - the Shamanarchy scene clamouring behind it, whose participants are already living the much much more hugely exciting lifestyle which will dominate, restructure and relaunch us after the collapse of the Competitor System meme. And watch out, America, for the news is genuinely more scary and blissful than you can imagine!

Hang very loose is the only rule from here on in.

And remember: the Last Left Standing Wins!

Luv, Fraser, that "True Believer & Sometimes Slightly Fascistic Cultural Troublemaker From Way Back Whom You Can't Help But Love" (as your New Edge manual so endearingly describes me!)