"Alastair Reynolds - Digital to Analogue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

I winced. ‘More like driving the road to Whitley Bay, searching in the
fog for another bloody vandalised kiosk.’

Boulevard Citizen looked at us dubiously, then disap-peared into the
dance-floor, the DJ segueing into a fresh track laid down on a scuffling
foundation that had JB embossed in every one of its bpm. I dropped a tab,
getting into the music. Suddenly I remembered something I had to convey
to my friend. ‘Hey,’ I shouted, throaty over the noise. ‘I heard James
Brown’s got two people, full time, just to spot samples on other records,
then squeeze the artists for royalties!’

‘Two people?’ he said, then laughed, punching a fist in the air. ‘Good
God! Two people! Full time! Good God!’

‘I thought it showed how endemic the sampling thing’s become,’ I
said, aware my voice wouldn’t appreciate such discourse in the morning,
also that I’d reached a phase of my own drunkenness cycle characterised
by extreme humourlessness. ‘I mean, just listen to this stuff . . . this is
probably one hundred per cent recycled sound, friend.’

‘Then it’s very nineties, isn’t it,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Very Green.
Thought we were all for recycling these days. Cars, paper, bottles . . . why
the hell not music?’ Then I skipped a few frames and my friend was looking
at his watch. ‘Well, guess we’re going to split soon. Sorry you’re not on our
taxi route, mate.’

‘Yeah, I’m on shanks’s tonight.’ I shrugged, the E affecting my
bonhomie. In any case, I wanted to stay for a few more numbers, now I was
clicking into the Drome’s vibe. Pink smoke was flooding the floor, blue
lasers tracking from the ceiling rig, and I was getting righteously into it. A
track I liked came up, one of those blink-and-you’ve-missed-it ephemeral
club hits that attains culthood, graduates to being a classic, gets heavily
sampled, becomes slightly jaded, becomes frankly pass6, winds up a
dusty artifact of late twentieth-century pop culture, all within a month or two.
A bit of social commentary this, as well: ‘A Killer is Stalking Clubland’. And if
you think that’s in questionable taste, there was even a reference to
someone’s eyelids being stapled open.

Come 3.00 a.m., I decided I’d better hike if I wanted to make it to
work. Had to get my coat, so I re-entered the melee, semi-dancing, pushing
toward a neon sign at the club’s other side, through a veil of perfumed
smoke. I was halfway when I saw the red laser stabbing through the cloud.
A shrouded figure was aiming a gun at me, eclipsed in waves by
silhouetted bodies, face blocked by shadows and a pair of sunglasses, and
framed by what looked like aviation phones, with a mike wrapping around
the front.

Weirdos everywhere. Why not just bliss out, instead of getting on
everyone’s tits? Yeah, time to leave, no doubt there.