The slow-roiling noise cauldron “Postcript on the Societies of Control” first appeared on mostly-anonymous industrial duo All Are to Return‘s second EP, II (review here, late in 2021. Surely you’ll find it no less festering for the passing of time as it digs into your brain as the minimalist video premiering below plays out alongside. It is harsh, caustic in its presentation. Sparse but not still. Unkind in a way that feels like it needs to be.

And as regards the theme, I guess my only response is, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Like if this really was the aftermath of capitalism — as in, it ended — and that oppressive powerstructres were somehow pulled apart, maybe violently, and the bright future offered through mid-20th century science-fiction could at last be brought to bear. Oh we’d be writing fucking poetry on a terraformed Mars by now if it weren’t for this pesky internet making it so easy to fill our days with buying or otherwise engaging with stupid, needless bullshit. Happy birthday. My condolences. So cute! Fucking kill me.

But the boxes we live in, literal and figurative, persist. The spread of communications technology has allowed for the illusion of a democratizing effect while reinforcing traditional power structures. Facebook knows when you shit? Does it matter? I don’t know, and if it ever did, it probably doesn’t anymore, because part of this whole thing is human thanatos actively working to kill our native habitat. Circling the drain, people jerk each other off for agreeing about minute garbage while overhead the same five white shitheads who’ve controlled humanity for the last 2,000 years decide to slice the throat of another brown baby to drink the blood. Cha-ching. Cash in the bank. Happy war, Israel and Palestine! You’re pawns too!

No answers here, just noise, and maybe that is the fucking answer. I like “windows without sky” below. Seems like a metaphor born in an apartment. Oh yeah, and the rent’s too damn high too.

Fuck it. Enjoy.

All Are to Return, “Postcript on the Societies of Control” video premiere

All Are to Return on “Postscript on the Societies of Control”:

Spaces of work and habitation – enclosed, yet open to the decentered power of capital and its handmaiden the state. Enclosures are molds, controls are modulation. Networked feedback controls operating through our devices of connection, endlessly tracking behavior, feeding correcting algorithms in the data-flows of intimacy – desire coupled to market logics of infinite demand and controlled scarcity. Windows without sky.

These are the Societies of Control.

All Are To Return is:
F: Bass, Drums, Guitars, Vocals, FXs
N: Synths, FXs

All Are to Return, “A State in Fear”

All Are to Return, AATR II (2023)

All Are to Return on Bandcamp

All Are to Return on Soundcloud

All Are to Return website