Amerika by Trevor de Brauw

Performed, recorded, and mixed at home April 2005.

This album was originally released on CD-R by Atomic Mouse Recordings under the artist name "Histoire" and album title "The Future of White America." It was intended as a caustic critique of the parasitic, destructive nature of white American culture, but in the many years that have passed I've become uncomfortable with how easily the title might be misinterpreted. I've also come to think of the album's central thesis as somewhat misguided - I believed that the work was somehow able to stand separate from the culture it critiqued, when in fact it is a product and perpetuation of it. In this sense, I was lacking self-awareness, but the visceral contempt that fueled these sounds was real and abundant and begged exorcism.

At any rate, the album's lyrical themes - that "American exceptionalism" breeds a destructive apathy that empowers the wealthy elite, who utilize conspiracy narratives to distract attention from the virulent actions they commit out in the open under the pretense of free market capitalism - feel (depressingly) even more resonant and relevant now than when the album was made. I've long wanted to make this collection more widely available under a new title and the country's present circumstances would seem to suggest now is as an appropriate time as ever.

The music was all recorded and mixed at home in Edgewater, save for the field recording (made on a shitty laptop microphone at six corners in Wicker Park) that forms the basis of the second song, and the entirely of "Conspiracy Culture" which was recorded at a practice space in Humboldt Park.