Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Even if you avoid social media, escaping talk about Taylor Swift, neo-liberal cunts getting tickets to her concerts, what “brat summer” means (I looked this up – slovenly female hedonism, imagine that being a topic worthy of debate), or that Sean Combs is in line to be the latest celebrity nonce, is tricky.

Maybe you truly capitulate by hate reading those thousand-word opinion pieces on whether a musician’s questionable politics means their work should be acceptable listening among your peer group. I’m not into Ariel Pink’s stuff, but I’m not listening because he’s a MAGA headbanger. Virtually all celebrity music culture is cynical, be it hype, boring moral posturing and journalise tittle tattle. But worse still it’s anti-meritocratic, essentially working to impede you from determining music’s value wholly on the “is it good?” metric.

But I realise I’m no better. My listening is dictated by forms of anti-meritocracy. I completely forgot about Welcome to Mikrosector-50 by Space Dimension Controller, aka Irish producer Jack Hamill. I haven’t listened to it in several years, in fact.

So, why the hiatus? By being the worst form of disgusting materialist – greed in consuming too much music and too lazy to organize my extensive digital music library. And as it gets larger the less likely it becomes that I’ll truly grapple with the task. In a sea of quality albums and songs it’s a shameful situation that I’m reliant on cycling through listening phases, with a bit of randomness, to dictate how long it takes for me to eventually circle back around to something*. Randomness rescued me in this instance, thanks to listening to Do You! radio (please subscribe). “The Love Quadrant” came on, and the charisma of it clapped me harder than a blind-drunk slapper.

*Not so quick tangent – this is why analogue will always be better than digital. Vinyl requires a higher financial investment, storage space and maintaining the record, including the ceremony of playing it. Downloading music is simply too easy and disposable, it takes true discipline, and too much for me, to be discerning enough. As for not owning Welcome to Mikrosector-50 on vinyl, I wasn’t exactly flush with cash when it was released in 2013. I’m also too chickenshit to check Discogs to see how much a used copy costs. When it comes to buying vinyl it’s good to utilise the same logic as buying gold or property – buy now, instead of paying more later.

Welcome to Mikrosector-50 can be considered a concept album – with a distinct theme and the music and narrative seamlessly interwoven. Concept albums tend to be synonymous with pomposity. Both musician and listener willingly enter into an agreement that the intricate formulation and execution of said work is to be consumed with equally serious endeavour. Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd is the exemplar – it feels wrong to have it on while ironing, cooking or cleaning out the car. You feel as though you’re missing out on its immersive qualities without conceding all your faculties to it.

The true concept of Welcome to Mikrosector-50 is as the antithesis of po-facedness, achieving this by unashamedly appropriating the cultural touchstones of ubiquitous TV shows and sci-fi movies related to space. The computer assisting the main protagonist (Mr 8040) is reminiscent of Hal from 2001: A space Odyssey, only this one’s benign and a bit clingy. It borrows the grandiose scope of Star Wars (I don’t mean the newer shitey movies), the campness and ludicrousness of sixties Star Trek, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s glibness, and our protagonist, surely inspired by MF Doom’s many comic book personas, has deep dulcet tones reminiscent of Barry White and the voice actor for DJ Oliver Lady Killer Biscuit, the radio station DJ for Fever 105 in GTA Vice City.

And that’s all fine, but the songs are a perfect cocktail of irresistible tackiness and eclectic references; it’s better than Discovery by Daft Punk, has a smidge of Carl Craig’s grimy techno and Convextion’s distinctive deep space techno features on the track “Rising”. Most tracks lean into the seventies nu-funk of Maze, Zapp, Kool in the Gang, Ohio Players and Parliament, with Blaxploitation-esque sleaze on “Quadraskank Interlude”. An audacious use of an eighties stadium rock guitar solo, reminiscent of Journey’s awful Final fucking Countdown, helps “When Your Love Feels Like It’s Fading” reach its crescendo. A frenetic space guitar lick transferring seamlessly into robot funk on “Welcome to Mikrosector-50” is a “let’s fucking go” moment. The Sugarhill Gang-esque rap intro on “Mr 8040’s Introduction” would likely curl the toes of the squares and bores. I loved it and I love it even more for it confirming I’m capable of inverted musical snobbery in the right way.

Speaking of snobbery, Welcome to Mikrosector-50 is also punching at expectations that the correct musical depiction for scenes of space scenes is orchestral. I understand the why the cliché persists, classical music has a vastness and the capacity to shift from serene to loud to menacing, representing both the weightlessness of zero gravity and the danger of space travel. Classical music is a lot of good things, but amusing it is not. For that you need a concoction of space funk and an intergalactic, time travelling, chasing the girl while keeping her away from your evil adversary narrative, that’s cheesier than a wheel of parmesan. This is gear that would lift the mood of a manic depressive.

It is depressing to think that if I had a vinyl copy of this record, I wouldn’t have forgotten about it for several years. But this rediscovery has provided two invaluable insights; that I’m better off if my listening is decided by cosmic spontaneity and not listening to certain stuff for a while may be necessary to make me appreciate it fully. I value Welcome to Mikrosector-50 correctly now, but until I purchase a copy on vinyl it’ll have to settle for taking its rightful place in my digital top album’s playlist. Mistake (partially) rectified.