Distort XXIII Vol. 4: Houllebecq in Tokyo with Total Control

Reading and travelling – this issue of Distort is a collection of columns written for the Zagreb Book Review… this is heightened experience, the right book and the right line at the right moment… I tell the story of the books alongside the circumstances I read them in…  the world conspiring to kick head in and that exact second, lazing on the deck of a cruise ship moored outside Vanuatu, reading Dostoevsky while soaking in the sun and the rum, portals opening, possibilities… lazy afternoon in Belgian bar listening to Jacques Brel, reading Simenon, drinking pastis alongside the pimps… in tour van through glorious Polish forest across miserable Polish highway, squint to read Schopenhauer in the fading light, trees reaching to block out the sun while the van shudders code messages carved into the road by vagabonds, a warning… countless variations of the world and the people in it, suddenly the routines and the sham seem wafer-thin, the scale of your body shifts, suddenly you are an enormity, colossal, ready to fight, ready to fuck the world.

I dedicate to bandmates – I edit others out of stories – not to implicate in my excess and vice. Stories of bands are not mine to tell, they will be told together… cinematic event of the decade…

Houllebecq in Tokyo with Total Control November 2019

Nietzsche with Straightjacket Nation in Slovakia October 2010

Hemingway in New Orleans November 2011

Genet and Chris Kraus in Copenhagen October 2014

Dostoevksy in New Caledonia March 2019

Philip K Dick in Detroit with Total Control November 2011

Card cover with lino cut print, numbered individually /23.

Printing Jan '24.

Distort mag started in 2003 to document kvlt hardcore and World War III. The contents of Distort have been dominated by impulse, excess, insomnia, stimulation. No editor, no proofread, no nerd.

Out of the 2000+ pages published over the past couple of decades I am skimming the C.R.E.A.M. into an archival book.

I'm raising funds to print this by making backissues available again via PDF here.

I'm also kicking off a project called the XXIII Project, of which this is the eighth volume.

XXIII will publish 23 mags total. These will be available only in two editions of 23 copies each.

The first edition I will be selling via Prop, Lulu's and the Distort mailorder (here).

The second edition was a unique subscription edition to this project. Now sold out.