Just finished reading some Peter Sotos and I'm honestly just sitting here trying to process it. It's not "transgressive" in that edgy performative way you see a lot of people try to pull off, it's more like being cornered by a person who has zero interest in your comfort or your morals. It reminds me of that specific hollow feeling in a Francis Bacon piece where the anatomy is just meat and the space is just a cage. There's no point or silver lining, he just forces you to crouch down in the dirt and look at the mechanical and ugly reality of how people use each other. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you're tired of writers who try to wrap human depravity in a pretty bow, his work is the absolute floor. It's rough, obsessive and it stays with you in a way that's genuinely hard to describe.
Decided to never waste another minute of my time on him after sitting through 2 whitehouse albums. Complete hack.
>>25233126"Never let a little thing like a complete dearth of talent and artistry keep you from realizing your dreams" - William Bennet of WhitehouseI unironically think about that quote from time to time.
>>25232995I don't like Sotos's work but do have some level of sympathy for it, I do think it's "misunderstood" by people who say it's just CSAM or whatever.That said, I've spent a good amount of time in the USA noise scene and I can't stand all these mfs who use CSAM and shit in their artwork and concepts. If confronted they'll claim it's to "raise awareness" or process their own trauma or whatever but really I think these people are just trying to make something fucked up looking. Shit is played out and gay. At least Sotos was original
>>25233269I mean, that's the aesthetic as I've always gathered. The "noise scene" kinda fascinates me in that it expresses the starkest possible confrontations of these kinds of subjects.
>>25233452it doesn't all touch on those notes but yeah, there's a good chunk of noise that does.The idea of confronting these topics just doesn't really accomplish anything imo, if you've spent time in that scene you've seen it all before. At a certain point people continuing to work with CSAM and violent imagery is just because they like how it appears, aesthetics wise. Nobody's getting anything new out of seeing it done for the millionth time. It actually is just edgelord shit at a certain point
>>25233126Plebs get filtered by the Sotos tracks
>>25233473It's just a true crime documentary without the video part
>>25233452It is the aesthetic of a small part of the noise scene. >>25232995I found Sotos to be fairly standard edgy transgressive, the only purpose he really seems to have with his writing (at least the early stuff, all I have read) is to assault the reader. It is kind of interesting but rather thin and gets old quickly. Occasionally I think about checking out some of his more recent writing to see if he ever developed as a writer, but I always lose interest once I open his bibliography.M. Gira does this sort of thing a bit better, he likes to structure his stories around something very simple and relatable like the home and our desire to maintain our sense of home; the assault becomes internal to the reader, we find ourselves understanding, empathizing and even sympathizing despite ourselves. Still a bit thin lit wise and only works on the first read when it is new, but has more to offer than Sotos. Kosiński's Steps might be the best of this ilk, pretty much softcore by comparison but it allows him to offer something more substantial than discomfort. Avoiding the extremes frees him from having to hold the readers hand, he keeps things relatable one way or another. Obviously the primary influence on Gira's fiction. Urs Allemann's Babyfucker keeps the extremes and is seriously lit, but relies on absurdity to keep those extremes within the understanding of the reader. Probably the most like Sotos of the names I mentioned in that he is very much assaulting the reader but he has a great deal more purpose in his assault than Sotos.Steps is the only one that has survived a reread for me. Babyfucker comes close and suspect it will if I ever get my German back up to snuff or we get a good translation. Who was that Canadian chick of this ilk? Remember liking the book of hers I read but that was years ago and don't remember much about it.
