Revisiting Roger Waters' Radio KAOS

There's new Pink Floyd boxset coming out. One of its selling points is a remix/rerecording of the David Gilmour's 1987 solo album A Momentary Lapse of Reason which exists because audience liked David Bowie's Never Let Me Down reimagining enough. So now AMLOR sounds less 80s bullshit and more sterile 10s shit.

So why not get back and revisit the other 1987 Pink Floyd solo album - Roger Waters' Radio KAOS.

For one reason or another, Roger Waters' solo career never really got much appreciation. Which is a damn shame because his 1984-1992 run was a worthy continuation of latter day Pink Floyd vibe with intrinsic concept albums and biting social commentary.

His official solo debut, 1984 The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking suffered from the comparison with Pink Floyd's The Wall (just like The Final Cut the year prior). The other strike against P&CHH is that it was originally pitched to the band with the Wall and the band passed on it - this fact created a general perception that the album just wasn't good enough. Which is not true.
P&CHH is very different from The Wall and can stand on its own. This album is much more self-aware and tongue-in-cheek affair than its more celebrated relative. It is cheerfully stupid and embracing the camp of its vaudevillian overcomplicated "it is a dream" plot.
The older i get the more i can relate to its haphazard narrative and decidedly glorious lack of coherence.

Then there is 1992 Amused to Death which is Roger Waters blasting out the lost Pink Floyd album he had in himself. The Bravery of Being Out of Range and It's A Miracle stand as all-time greats. It is weirdly prophetic album about media reality warping and information oversaturation that messes the lives of simple men.

In between these two albums is 1987 Radio KAOS. The best way to explain Radio KAOS worth is by comparing it to AMLOR.

Released at the same time as David Gilmour's A Momentary Lapse of Reason, it had a strategic disadvantage of not being labelled a Pink Floyd album (unlike David Gilmour's). This resulted in lower sales, biased reviews and low tour attendance which seriously damaged Waters' career prospects.

The other problematic point of Radio KAOS is its overproduced 80s sound. Just like David Gilmour's 1987 effort, Roger Waters tried to modernize his sound with then-fancy fairlight synth aesthetic. However, Waters leaned too hard on it and instead of augmenting his sound, he made it tacky and dubious at times.

At its worst, the album production sounds like a generic boilerplate synthesizer schlock - far cry from Waters' extravagant soundscapes of The Final Cut or Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking. But the production is just one of the facets of the creative work - it is the songs that make the wheel turning.

In contast, the biggest problem with David Gilmour's A Momentary Lapse of Reason (or his other solo efforts) is its abysmal songwriting. The man can play guitar, but songwriting is far from his strengths. He can write a terrific song once in a while, but he can't carry the load all the way through.

Even though the music is mostly fine with some exceptional moments (Yet Another Movie is a great song despite some lyrical hiccups), the lyrics make your ears bleed grey goo. The Dogs of War might have been a great song by the Bad Company ten years prior, but the band called Pink Floyd could have done better any day of the week. Even album highlights like Sorrow or One Slip suffer from being littered with the most generic lyrical cliche imaginable. As if there were no cliche David Gilmour didn't liked.

On the other hand, Roger Waters knows a thing or two about writing songs and making them work on their own terms and within an album context. Radio KAOS shows Roger Waters trying to make an accessible record with a message and for the most part he succeeds.

The album is a great showcase of Waters' narrative skills. He tells a simple story about dealing with global bullshit with some extreme prejudice. Each song explores different aspect of the narrative and progresses the story. It builds to a culmination and concludes with a message of hope with so much cheese and tongue-in-cheek - you can't help but smile in the end.

Story-wise, the album is rather mean dig on The Who's Tommy. Except this time "the shit is real". It also revolves around paralyzed wheelchair-bound protagonist. But this time, his name is Billy and the boy can hear Radio Waves. And he is Welsh. He has a brother Benny, who works as a miner during the Thatcher years, so you know he's screwed into backside netherrealm.

After another pub crawl Benny gets into trouble for dropping a concrete block to an overpass which resulted in a driver's death. Benny's sent to prison while Billy goes to their uncle Dave who lives in California.

Uncle Dave is an interesting fella. Back in the 40s he worked on The Manhattan Project, and this experience made him quite matter-of-fact about life and stuff. Billy is miserable in California (probably because he happened to hear LL Cool J "Going back to Cali". This thing is a serious PTSD generator) and he is generally upset by the state the world is currently in. In other words, Billy's world weary with ennui and nonesuch sehnsucht.

During his stay at the uncle's place, Billy learns how to use a cordless phones and contacts local Radio KAOS DJ Jim Ladd who plays himself. They start to talk and Billy shares his thoughts regarding the modern world and where it is going. He is really upset about happened to Benny and what is going on in Wales. And he is really pissed off at the politicians who just go sweet fuck-all about it.

The accumulation of frustration results in Billy decided to teach a world a lesson in humility. With his new skills in manipulating cordless phones, he orchestrates a simulation of a nuclear attack. At the same time he disables all the retaliation mechanisms of the opposing forces leaving them defenseless helpless chums - so that "this time" it will be one and done waltz. Given the build-up and knowing what is going to happen, everybody shit their pants. Billy's "operation" results in a global blackout which apparently brings the world to senses and creates a semblance of hope.

That's quite a story, right?

On the other hand, the songs work well as a standalone pieces. While the production is deeply rooted in the 80s synth-laced mainstream rock, it benefits the songs with clear-cut structures with punchy rhythms and catchy hooks.

Radio Waves is punchy album opener. The story opens in medias res with Billy meeting with Jim Ladd. The song wastes no time to get to the point and its hook is really infectious. Radio Waves sets the scene and setting of the whole story. On the other hand, its sound shows how Billy perceives radio waves and what kind of excitement it brings to him.

Who needs information slows things down and starts to flesh out the narrative. It is an anthem of a working man cornered by the absence of future prospects. It gives you a sneak peek into the world Billy lives in. Narrative-wise it is a flashback to the inciting incident of the story - Benny's getting into trouble.

Me or Him is about the consequences of Benny's act. At first there is an attempt to justify his actions, then to comprehend what happened and then somber coming to terms with the state of things.

The Powers That Be is another high octane rock piece. Unlike cheeful Radio Waves, it is a rather dark song about those in power and the way they apply it to everybody. Verses of the song are constructed out of generic marketing cliche wrapped into hard boiled twang. It is like an optical illusion. Chorus goes in reverse exposes the absurdity of this mirage.   

Sunset Strip tells about Billy's stay at Uncle Dave's. It combines shiny imagery of the California with the longing for home. Billy does not belong there and he is very uncomfortable. He is trying to get a glimpse of home via radio but it is futile.

Home is an album's centerpiece. This song marks the breakdown of Billy and his decision to take action. He can't take this anymore. It starts off relatively calm mid-tempo but soon enough it starts to unravel until in the end it goes out of control and spuns into the despair of the next song.

Four Minutes depicts Billy's fit of rage and desire to right the wrongs of the world. It is less of a song and more of a happening - it ebbs and flows with the impeding doom getting closer. The highlight of the song is the end part where Claire Torry sings "Goodbye, little spy in the sky". It is really tearjerking despite being an eulogy for spy satellite.

Despite the promise of burning the world down in flames, the story ends with the fake out. The Tide is Turning was born out of Waters' change of heart after he saw the social impact of Live Aid. For a moment even such cynic as him started to believe there is still some good left in the world. In the context of an album this song works a sticking out tongue and saying "nyah nyah".

Radio KAOS is a product of its time. The production values are somewhat detrimental to its perception, but the songwriting is solid and the tunes are catchy to get through the 80s plastic dirge.

If anything, Radio KAOS encapsulates the tone of the 1980s with its fear of nuclear war, fascination with computers, overproduced sound and celebrities trying to save the world while marketing themselves.

Random notes on DNA songs

Back in the day i used to take extensive notes while listening to music. The thing is - my brain generates a lot of thoughts and when they just float around my head starts to boil and having it hot is no good.
And when you write it down - the pressure's off and you can keep your head fresh.

I stopped doing that due to work-related burnout. But why not try it again?

Here are some of my notes on songs by seminal New York No Wave band DNA.

The thing you need to know about DNA is that this was the band that wasn't in the whole music thing. They were doing a thing of their own that just happened to be expressed with sounds. Also - this is how Sonic Youth would have sounded like if all the articles about them were accurate.

Christian Morgenstern - BIM BAM BUM poem

Heavy emphasis on the images is one of the great things symbolist poetry brought back to the spotlight in the latter half of XIX century. After years of being buried in the verbosity of romantic poetry, symbolism cut the fat and tried to get straight to the point. 

Despite that, symbolist approach managed to overstay its welcome and become a passe by the time XX century rolled in. Part of the problem was plain and simple misuse of images, they became nothing more than a mere garnish of the text, an outlet for the flowery language, the one used for furbishing instead of actually serving a thematic or narrative purpose in the text.

But it wasn't necessary a bad thing. Case in point - BIM BAM BUM.

Why procedural text generation is the best?

Here's an article from LIFE magazine from March 3 1961 about a text generator that does some form of beatnik poetry and it is almost as good as a real thing. At least for the disinterested and uninitiated. 

The tone of the piece is a mix of tongue-in-cheek amazement and goodhearted irony. But nevertheless it is really curious piece of history. 1961 was the very infancy of the Natural Language Processing - but even then there was this semi-mocking tone regarding what NLP is capable of.  And the poem is decent enough. 

I think Lew Welch would have been a fan of this thing - there is this smoky blur of similarity of his cadences and of the generated poem.

Anyway. As a writer, text generation is one of my areas of interest. It is a tool worth exploring. And not because it can do job for you. 

The poem itself is the representative of the procedural text generation variety. In essence, it is a cookie-cutter template-based way of producing text out of available elements without taking context or semantics into consideration. It is as blunt and unelegant as it gets. Usually, the results are clumsy and borderline demented. But only if you expect it to do text writing the right way. If not - it can be incredibly efficient at its job if you know how to use it.

I can go even further and claim that of all its types, procedural text generation is probably the greatest application of natural language processing ever.

Here's why - it is a simulacrum1 operating with a simulacrum2 based on a simulacrum3 to do simulacrum4.

Cue Inception BRAAAAAM.

Let's unpack this.

3 Procedural Text Generation is based on an assumption that grammar rules and vocabulary is all there is for language. Such vital parts of the language as onthological and aesthetic contexts or semantics are left out of the picture for sake of keeping things simple. In other words, PTG assumes that "map IS territory". 

1 Then there the generative infrastructure - it is more or less a Rube Goldberg machine. Eerily futile, blunt instrument. 

It is a structure marked by placeholders and there is an inventory out of which the result is constructed. In fact, this structure is the text, except it is not, but it shapes the result. 

There can also be some rules that affect the choice of words, but it is optional. It can run at random just fine.

2 Traditionally, the formation of text is bound by narrative. Its intention is to transmit some sort of information.

On the other hand, the intention of PTG is to generate a text entity, not narrative or evoke imagery. Thus, the central element of PTG mechanism is more or less doing snapshots of the indeterminacy.

From the existential standpoint, the choice is rooted in numerous factors. But what if we take out factors completely and leave it blank - what kind of choice it will be? It won't be because it is a completely different thing now. It just operates similarly. That's where procedural text generation magic kicks in.

4 Basically, what happens is - a bunch of stuff is being thrown together and by accident it generates sense to the reader because the reader bears the baggage of experience and context and is able to embalm a piece of text with meaning. The text itself remains empty. It was made to be made.

This is substantially different approach that explores other facets of perception and cognition. 

On the other hand, because the text in this set-up is not actually the text but the template and its inventory - it turns the creative process the inside out.  Instead of conveying meaning - the spotlight is on the framework and its potential to generate combinations. 

The sum of parts generates new entity that contains information shaped in a certain way that is not really saying anything but can be interpreted if necessary. 

As a result, procedural text generation allows us to peek at the strange parallel dimension where things look mostly the same but function differently. The whole method opens up different creative possibilities in terms of interaction with the text and constructing narratives.