Autumn Chrome

It’s the first of October but the weather is all wrong. Here in the Middle West, it’s been endless sunshine with temperatures twenty degrees above normal. Meanwhile, our government shut down last night because we’re ruled by bullies and cowards who’ve been brainwormed by the internet. Each day brings inventive forms of idiocy and degradation. Feels like something’s got to give but nothing does.

So I’m looking elsewhere for reason. I find myself hunting for patterns and signs that the universe still contains reason and decency. Perhaps I’m getting mystical in my middle age and becoming a man who believes in gut sense and patterns, the information encoded in the hairs on my neck.

I’ve never given the Mariana Trench much thought, but it entered my life three times last week. First, a friend in Las Vegas told me about the delights of hollow earth theory. Apparently, the Trench is the door. The next day, a friend in Minneapolis mentioned helping his kid with a school project about the Mariana Trench. That night, I finished the last chapter of In the Dust of this Planet, which recounts an anonymous poem called “The Subharmonic Murmur of Black Tentacular Voids” that, according to certain corners of the internet, causes metabolic changes if you recite it aloud. And so, Stanza IV:

Increase with depth of the deepest site…
Moritella abyssi 2693T, Mariana Trench, Popt = 30MPa
A life form in dynamic, cosmic equilibrium
With its environment is dead.

Why deny myself the pleasure of coincidence?

Because when I try to imagine a divine intelligence that announces itself through geographies casually mentioned on the telephone or obscure internet poems, it’s alternately comic and horrifying.

In On the Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle writes:

It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small… Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case.

Last night I became unexpectedly emotional about the lost future of Mercury and the horrible weather on Venus, thanks to BBC’s The Planets. The Late Heavy Bombardment (which seems like a good name for this decade) obliterated life on Mars and was likely Neptune’s fault. Each night I fall asleep to this mayhem at 65% speed while I patiently wait for this year’s episode of Fall of Civilizations to drop.

Even though it’s far too warm for the first of October, the night continues to inch closer, which means it’s chromatic season.

The Chromatics have always been an unlikely proposition for me. I prefer my songs scuzzy and reverberated, whereas their music is so sleek and glossy it’s almost lacquered. It’s pop music from a neon world where Ruth Radelet’s frigid voice sings fabulous things like my leather glove grips the wheel. In 2017, they appeared on Twin Peaks before abruptly disbanding for reasons I don’t care to discover. Aside from rattling around the algorithms of streaming services, they've become a ghost—it's impossible to buy their music, and their Bandcamp and record label websites lead to 404s.

During their ten-year run, the Chromatics released only three proper albums but my library has over 250 songs. Drumless versions. Extended mixes. 8-track versions. Alternate takes for fictional movies. The same instrumentals reappear with different vocals and new titles. All these variations leave me wondering about the line between chasing perfection and forever relitigating the past. As if adjusting the variables enough times will finally yield the Platonic synthpop song. All of which makes finding their best tracks a daunting task, so I’ve made a megamix of ten favorites, including three of their covers.

If you like the Chromatics, this is the place to be tonight. And if not, even better: hopefully you’ll start.

Lady Night Drive (Cherry, 2012)
The Page (Kill for Love, 2012)
Stiff as a Board (Faded Now, 2020)
Running up that Hill (Night Drive, 2007)
The Sound of Silence (Closer to Grey, 2020)
Back from the Grave (Kill for Love, 2012)
Yes (Symmetry Remix) (Love Theme from Lost River, 2007)
Headlight’s Glare (Night Drive, 2007)
Disintegration (Running from the Sun, 2012)
Into the Black (Kill for Love, 2012)

Listen below or download tonight’s chromed-out mp3. And because I take listener feedback seriously, even when they’re complaining about the difficulty of right-clicking and saving a high-quality audio file, I’ve adopted the latest state-of-the-art podcast technology. We’ll see if this works. Or lasts. Or if the Chromatics get back together again to sue me.

Thank you for listening (and caring enough to suggest new audio formats). The request lines are open. For my part, I’m requesting a proper autumn that chills America the fuck out.