#bush hates borf

[hyenarena]

i miss borf ❕

[dustedmagazine]

Borf — S/T (Lower Class Kids Records)

Borf - S/T by Borf

Borf’s self-titled debut cassette commences with a brief track called “Carseat,” a post-industrial shuffling beat that fades in over ambient metallic jangles and clicks. It’s a 4-am-in-the-deserted-warehouse-district sound, a Robocop-meets-Near Dark sound, throbbing through a sort-of-seductive, sort-of-dangerous 50 seconds. Just as you’re settling into its moody groove, “State” arrives; the jangle becomes a beatdown, the metallic tone shifts from a suggestion of texture to an aluminum bat applied directly to the bridge of your nose. As “State” suggests, Borf works the overlaps among metalcore, powerviolence and psychotic noise rock (think Unsane, during their “Vandal-X” and “Concrete Bed” period), demonstrating a durable appetite for explosive mayhem and a desperate need for speed. Once you’re past “Carseat,” the rest of the tape motors along like the muscle car in William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971): raucous, relentless and recklessly homicidal.

Indeed, Borf’s music seems a lot more interested in wild affect than it is in any sort of ideological discipline — though to be fair, the lyrics’ incomprehensibility makes that a hard call; it’s tough to tell what language the Portuguese band works in (though song titles are in English…), much less what they’re yelling about. The cultural phenomenon the band name-checks is a different story: Borf was a politically savvy, early-21st century graffiti-and-art collective, established in Washington, D.C., when numerous “Bush hates Borf” tags started appearing around the city. The tag spread, to NYC and Frisco and at least as far afield as Rome (did it find its way to Porto?). When Obama took office, the tags changed to “Obama hates Borf,” in accord with the taggers’ strong anarchist stance. Borf was many things (see the 2006 “Borf Communique,” which includes a fairly entertaining manifesto: “Borf is the war on boredom. Borf annihilates. Borf hates school. Borf is a four-letter word for joy. Borf is quickly losing patience. Borf eats pieces of shit like you for breakfast.” And so on, at some length), but for sure Borf hated capital, and because Obama has always been capital’s friend, he was as ripe a target as anyone on the spectrum running from liberal to so-called “progressive.” 

Does Borf the band subscribe to any sort of politics? Song titles like “Idle,” “Sleep” and “Placeholder” signal an aversion to activity and meaning; those symbolics suggest a blank stance, and such blankness stands in opposition to the aesthetics of the band’s music. The songs themselves are all manic motion, pyrotechnic spaz-outs, fields overstuffed with information. In that way, they resemble the big concrete walls on which Borf’s messages were encountered, tagged up and graffiti’d with multicolored figures and dayglo messages. They vibrated. “Endeavor” strikes a different tone, semantically, and is among the tape’s most shaped songs. It cycles through a number of grinding riffs, shifting from a dead run to a trot and back to a sprint — maneuvers that some other songs on Borf also execute. But there’s more attention to the sequence of sound, and less of a sense that a few ideas have been quickly sutured together. It can be cool when the sutures show, too; scar tissue and suppurating wounds are ready symbols for the pain and social chaos Borf is clearly responding to. But the best graffiti takes the exuberant violence of the street and stylizes it. “Endeavor” is the sound of that stylization. It’s pretty good. 

One wonders: Does Biden hate Borf? Time will tell. But it’s highly likely that Borf hates Biden.

 Jonathan Shaw

[totallyrealhoroscopesdaily]

11/10/2017

Aries: There’s a red carnation in your mailbox along with another unreadable note. Behind you, over your shoulder, one of the shadow people seems to have buried their face in their hands while shaking their head. You are so confused.

Taurus: The multi-colored grass on your path is definitely melting and the bushes are starting to as well. You step in puddles of rainbow goo and, every once in a while, some sharp droplets from the bushes. The upside-down trees rattle like they’re going to fall apart. This has nothing to do with you. You feel like you might have walked this path too much.

Gemini: Relax on the couch with Kcirederf. It’s become the perfect place to watch either the stars or traffic since you removed the paint and pushed it up to the roof. Kcirederf likes to count the blue cars while laying on your chest. It’s a nice night.

Cancer: Turns out the bake sale really didn’t help all that much. Apparently, it did raise a lot of money, but the cash turned out to be one of the objectless objectheads’ object and no one had the heart to separate them from their new head. Sometimes these things can’t be helped, they didn’t mean to cause trouble. A car wash is being held to help remake the money that became a head so they can help other objectless objectheads.

Leo: You are a lot calmer today. You don’t wanna go out today, though. The foot thinks the skirt looks cute on you. It does, doesn’t it? You’re gratified. It’s one less worry as you brush your teeth for the tenth time.

Virgo: It strikes you how unfamiliar returned affection feels. It feels nice and you like it and you adore Baxter, but it’s so unfamiliar. Why is it unfamiliar? It should be familiar, but it’s not. They were very dear to you, so it’s not that. If you were dear to them, shouldn’t this be more familiar? You want to say you were dear to them. You want to say that so bad, but each time Baxter shows you a new drawing or hugs your hand or click-beep-whirls at you it feels so special, so new, so unfamiliar. You want to say you were dear to them. You don’t think you can.

Libra: You have a feeling you should have had to restock something by now. You haven’t. You aren’t going to question. Well, you’d say that, but you aren’t the one eating the candy. Okay, you aren’t the one eating most of the candy. That’s the kids and you’ve already covered that you’ve grown way too attached to the kids, probably because of the previously mentioned habit of the parents for leaving them with you. So you can’t be accidentally feeding the kiddos poison and you don’t know what the heck (you’ve started censoring yourself because children) is in the magically reappearing candy. You write a letter to the unidentifiable being about this. Also to squeal about how cute the little’uns are and the antics they get up to.

Scorpio:

Sagittarius: You’ve got some weird little viewing party going on on your front porch consisting of you and all the not-lemmings watching everyone else go into the hole. Someone ran down to the corner store and brought back a pack of beer. There’s a couple betting pools going on. First, the biggest one, what in the actual fuck is happening. The bets range from aliens to sinkhole to brainwashing to demonic overlords, but since no one has come back out of the hole yet it seems its gonna take a while to see who gets that pot. You bet on the old woman, and everyone laughed at you, but they haven’t met her. The other betting pools are mainly how the next person is gonna go into the hole. Will that woman do an Olympic dive into it? Will that man just keep walking with no pause off the edge? One came in at a sprint, did several cartwheels, some back handsprings, and finished it off with a triple flip into the hole. You all just kinda sat in shock for a while after that one.

Capricorn: ...35. Fluffy does this weird little borf noise after a nap. 36. Fluffy dug up your neighbor’s tulips and you hated that neighbor. 37...

Aquarius: You get up. You wear your favorite pants and the red sweater. You go to the gym, work out and shower. You walk around town. Wave to passerby. You stop to talk to the old woman. Her grandchildren are away at college but just sent her some pictures. She’s knitting as usual. You finish your walk. You go home. Sit in silence, near perfectly still in the center of the floor, until it gets dark, You go to the gym. The owner lets you in, shows you where the key is for the future. You wipe down the machines. She asks if paying you every Sunday is okay. It is. You go home. You lay down in the corner behind the counter in the dark. You try to sleep, sleeping is normal. You don’t quite manage it. This is your routine, it’s almost normal.

Pisces: Stay up late tonight, dear daughter. Auntie Luna is in the sky tonight, nearly full. Our mother is a practical one, she doesn’t understand your guilt when you did what must be done, when you were kinder than you had to be. Our father is harsh, he gives tough love, light that gives us life but also could hurt us, he doesn’t understand why you feel guilty. Our Auntie Luna, however, she understands. She knows the sensitive heart, the illogical emotions. Our mother comforts with tools we could use to help ourselves, she doesn’t know how to coddle. Our father comforts with warmth, but this doesn’t help if you’re burning up. Luna, she knows to listen. She knows not to judge. She couldn’t keep you warm or feed you, but her gentle light comforts the soul, soft and sweet. She’ll be the one to help you with your guilt.