The Hyperbolic Ransom Corp Internat’l Destruction Dance Band
A Tribute

The Destruction Band, Performance art theater meets industrial punk poetics, Fall 1999 to September 2000.  A six piece summit of creative energy telling stories and making experiments inside a belly of noise and underbelly of the promises of the technological age. The HRCIDDB was only getting started. Members: agent mT, Loki Kevorkian, Sean Clute, David Jellyfish, Kelvin Daly and John Sully with featured appearances by Chris Doorley, Lips Johnson, Zemi17, Dok Amoeba and a brief, fortuitous appearance as communion priest by Tony Torn. The Destruction Band first performed at the loading dock during the DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL in the Fall of 1999 then several times at the Frying Pan, at Rubulad, The Cave, The Dumbo Theater and as a feature in the Augenblick before Ransom Corp members departed for a 13 city two month Sky Plots tour of Europe. The group never regrouped.

agent mT www.agentmtindustries.com
Loki Kevorkian www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxoiaOGw_RM
Sean Clute www.seanclute.net
John Sully www.johnsully.org
Kelvin Daly www.kelvindaly.com
David Jellyfish Siegel www.limitlesshealthinstitute.org

Featured & Special Guests

cSAGE Doorley https://doorleytherapy.com/
Lips Johnson https://soundcloud.com/lickablelife https://vimeo.com/4644305
Dok Gregory https://plan23.net/
Tony Torn www.tonytorn.com/
Zemi17 www.zemi17.com

Destruction Band songs were strange flowers that bloomed in improv alchemical style from lines of a poem, an idea, a single sound. There were pick ups wired to typewriters, rock-n-roll guitar, fire spinning, fire breathing, Theremins, poem duets and triplets, saws, everything is a drum, sledgehammers, destructions, game playing, a capella techno, storytelling, dynamite. The audience brought to the edge of nowhere, to the outskirts of town, to an intimate and unpredictable theater of destruction.

The original three song set and unfortunate rubber glue computer fire evolved into a 10+ Destruction Band Song Set. Songs included hits (ahem…): “Some girls are better than other girls,” “Waking song,” Speed of Light “Bumblebee,” “Undulation Song,” “Ministry of E,” Hell Pilot Chasing the Expanding Universe aka Helicopter Song, “Farm Animals,” “Meat Bullet,” “Mood Roulette,” “Bach Interlude,” “Transportation Song,” “Theater of Destruction” (see below) and a cappella techno.

Join A Band……..

If you have to express yourself personally, join a band.

If you have to make a social commentary, join a band

If you have to make a political statement, join a band

If you’re looking for a higher power, join a band.

If you’re looking for self destruction, join a band.

If you’re looking to break the grip of conformity, sterility, repression, oppression, join a band.

If you’re looking for the meaning of it all, join a band.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond in his book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ credits ‘the band’ as the first ‘social’ structure formed by humans.

The ‘band’ experience has an advantage over more complex social relationships in that it is designed and created by it’s relative members. A band must continuously balance the dynamics of harmony and dissonance between members and the unified expression being created.

This intimate social process eventually presents itself as a performance at which audience and the band exchange instant emotional responses and feedback. The band has as its potential the power to repel or attract an audience exponentially. The audience has the potential to be completely transformed and engaged in the performance.

This kind of direct emotional social communication far exceeds an individuals expression within institutionalized mass cultural media. The experience of feeling vulnerable in the process of creation and performance enlightens the individual to a more visceral reality.

Playing in or hearing a band live is being alive. It’s how we gather as potential brothers, sisters, friends or enemies. It’s where we come to sing, dance, hope and dream. It’s an act of liberty, a fight for freedom, a mythology of monsters and heroes.

Turn on, plug in, turn up!

Join a band……….

–John Sullivan  1/14/09

DESTRUCTION BAND SONGS

SOUND CHECK SONG– Sound Check cacophony and banter between all members evolves into a listening zoo of warping, wobbling, naying, braying, shouting, acknowledging, attuning, humming. A sonic threshold.

WAKING SONG– This song inspired by the sounds of my father waking. It starts with a small yawn and grows into a massive yawn the expanse of a lion’s mouth. The body movements go from small stretches to gigantic full limb and spinal stretches. The layers of sound follow this inkling of sound to giant roar. The world wake up. Audience is invited into this movement which tended to happen spontaneously.

COMPETITION SONG aka “Some girls are better than other girls.” What starts sounding like a rumination and beauty pageant judge’s comment follows with an improve of comparative motifs in all directions. Some days are better than other days. Some bombs are better than other bombs. Until the song reveals itself as a reverberation of comparative mind refraining back to some girls are better than other girls. 

SPEED OF LIGHT– Approaching the speed of light, an piece based on the poem by KBN Loki Kevorkian riffing on approaching the speed of light as entering an entirely new frame of consciousness.

HIGHWAY aka TRANSPORTATION SONG– agent on mic tracking through crawling to walking to bicycle, rollerblades, skateboards, subways, cars, airplanes. Everyone enters the HIGHWAY HIGHWAY HIGHWAY. Sound builds to roarring beeping picking in comes the bass crescendo. All at the MIC: EVERYBODY STOPPP!!! A total halt Coda. agent: 10987654321 The Band faces to the right, to the back, to the left, forward 10987654321 Full resumption of sound to a united finish.

UFO/ RADIO SONG– Sully’s theremin opening space communications and the static of AM radio with various vocal snatches and sounds all varying in what is at the fore and what is at the background until there is a refrain message, a call to take the sacred sacred of communion

COMMUNION– All audience is invited to come forth for the communion rite led by a member of the band or special guest in appropriate garb. What is the sacrament? This is a closely guarded secret. Perhaps it is a placebo…. a homeopathic remedy… a gift from outerspace?

TYPEWRITER SOLO– Mic’d typewriter taps and clacks and fills and interlude….

UNDULATION SONG – An instrumental with sound described in the name. The sounds rises and falls from thin to grand, from loud to soft. The main movement motif is the undulating belly, an agent mT special that becomes and entire spinal wave from toes to head. 

E SONG or SONG in E – Every instrument must be in E at all times. .Loki continuously reads words and makes sentences with with words starting with E. He can use a dictionary in whatever language. Gregorian chanting led by Clute in E comes in and out. Then the “ministry of E” starts its incantation: “I want happiness, I want serotonin, I want love, i want more music, I want liquid waves of light, I want… ) We call in the spirit of the letter E … E… E… E come E, emerge EEEEEEEE

THE WIDER SONG–aka Istanbul Song – From claustrophobia to becoming as wide as the room the room growing to the size of the globe and to the farther reaches. Music is led by handmade instruments of Kelvin and the Saw resonating at the outer edges.

ARTAUD aka THEATER OF DESTRUCTION I AM HAVING A LOVE AFFAIR – a rock opera ballad by agent mT. See below.

MOOD SWING ROULETTE– Jellyfish’s piece where a giant die is tossed and spun in a huge roulette wheel marked with different emotions at each edge. Wherever the die lands is the emotion the band plays and the riff of sensation and poetics that Jellyfish leads. 

BARNYARD or FARM ANIMALS– Everyone chooses an animal and stays in that animal, an actual or mythological beast and makes it’s sound and moves like it. One by one each band member becomes that animal till we are all braying, hee hawing, slithering, awing etc then one by one each translates that animal into their instrument till we are ll the electronic version of our animal coming through the amps and microphones– a wild barnyard on a full moon. This segues into…

BUCKWILD– A Clute original guitar and computer grunge wild extravaganza … the wild dance of a free spirit

BUMBLEBEE– KBN Loki channels the spirit of the bumblebee in bumblebee costume flying to and from the stage to the audience never stopping but sinking into the succulence of the contact the music layers in BUZZ and HUM

HELICOPTER CHASING THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE aka Helicopeter Hell Pilot Song Notes Destruction Band– Spoken word agent mT story of a pilot who wakes up in the middle of hell, boards his helicopter and, blades ablaze, lifts off, chased far beyond the borders he makes for the edges of the universe. agent mT enacts the rite with fire spinning, from lying on the ground, poi hovering in copter formation just a couple feet off the ground to full overhead while standing. Music has the sound of chapters and repeated incantation. See lyrics. 

MEAT BULLET Loki on lead vocals doing his spoken word piece. Sully on snare driving. Jack, special guest on assist, slowly wrapping Loki, standing in a narrow stance, from the feet up in large sheets of aluminum foil. He becomes the Meat Bullet.

BACH INTERLUDE – Professor CLUTE solo on guitar boldly bringing forth a BACH Cello Sonata.

SAME DANCE DJ SONG aka CATS– DJ Sully takes over as band starts a certain kind of dance. Introduces this dance to the audience unit a critical mass is in on the dance. Lights go into DJ mod. Meanwhile, at least two performers move into a circle and play like cats tagging each other and rolling. So there’s the SAME DANCE and the crazy cat play going at the same time. See what happens.

A CAPPELLO TECHNO – as it sounds. All band members off instruments at mics. Either agent mT or, more famously, Zemi17 steps into the conductor role and orchestrates a vocal techno score that breaks into outrageous persistent danceability.

somewhere within this brigade …. a destruction and, regrettably, often dynamite.