136. Deadbeat
I.
It’s early 2020, lockdown has just come into force, my relationship has just ended, I’ve moved into a cramped flat and am waiting for the moment when the walls close in on me and crush me. At that moment, Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush is released, an album on which Kevin Parker comes to terms with a few demons from his past and surrenders to the constant change of life. He does so on the dance floor, with a string of hits.
The Slow Rush is then on repeat at least once a day for months on end. It’s no surprise, then, that the album holds a special place in my heart. When Tame Impala performed at the AFAS Live two years later and I heard the songs live for the first time — and saw an incredible light show — I felt nothing but euphoria.
Now there’s a new Tame Impala album: Deadbeat. You’ll no doubt be in for a shock if you haven’t listened to any of Parker’s music since Innerspeaker (2010). There’s hardly any psychedelic rock left. Am I hearing a reggaeton beat on Oblivion? (Ugh!)
Parker tells The New Yorker that Deadbeat is largely inspired by bush doofs: dance parties in remote locations that go on all night. I’d never heard the word either; in Australia, it’s a household name. “Doof was a derogatory term used to describe club music,” explains Parker. “Because from a distance, all you can hear is doof, doof, doof.” For him, the music has something mesmerising about it.
On Ethereal Connection — a hard-hitting track lasting almost 8 minutes — the inspiration from those parties comes through most strongly. Parker tells radio presenter Zane Lowe that he had even considered making a techno track. Judging by this track, I think he’s got what it takes, but for now I’m glad Parker has layered his dreamy pop sound over it.
I’m not sure yet whether Deadbeat will grab me in the same way as The Slow Rush. Musically, it veers off in all directions. It could also be that it just needs a bit of time to grow on you, because there’s plenty of lovely stuff on it. Dracula is an 80s synthwave earworm. Piece Of Heaven is a little work of art. On No Reply, Parker sings: “You’re a cinephile, I watch Family Guy / On a Friday night, off a rogue website / When I should be out with some friends of mine / Running reckless wild in the streets at night / Singing ‘Life, oh, life,’ with our arms out wide”.
- - -II.
If you want to know what kind of depressing world view we’re heading towards, I can recommend Giuliano da Empoli’s essay collection The Hour of the Wolves. In that book, the Italian author, who travelled with Emmanuel Macron to meet world leaders for years, explains exactly how power works. And how our democracy is increasingly coming under pressure from — surprise! — populists and tech bros.
We are witnessing this shift in power happening before our very eyes. Last month, on Nieuwsweekend how journalist Sander Heijne hits the nail on the head. “Modern democracy emerged at a time when power stemmed from governing the land, and we have tried to democratise that,” he says. “Nowadays, power stems from capital, from technology, from data, from AI, from international trade flows. These are all matters that are not at all embedded in our democracy.”
So now we vote for politicians and parliaments who promise us things over which they actually no longer have any control. Da Empoli sketches a painful example in The Hour of the Wolves: “The oligarch steps out of his private jet, a little grumpy because he has to waste his time with the chief of a tribe that no longer matters — instead of being able to spend that time more usefully on some post-human project. After receiving the oligarch with great ceremony and pomp, the politician begs his visitor during their brief private meeting for a research centre or an AI lab, but in the end he has to settle for a quick selfie.”
Now that the campaign for the Dutch parliamentary elections is in full swing, it is striking how little attention is being paid to technology and digitalisation. On the electoral lists, almost everyone with digital affairs in their portfolio is placed in a virtually unelectable position. The topic is barely touched upon in debates. The same goes for voting guides — although there are initiatives such as Nerdwijzer and Technologie Kieswijzer.
Whilst we here in the country are preoccupied with all sorts of other (important) issues, the ‘tech conquistadors’, as Da Empoli calls the directors of major tech companies, are playing a different game. “They have decided to get rid of the old political elites,” he writes. “If they succeed in their plan, everything we are used to regarding as the backbone of our democracies — will be swept aside.”
These figures thrive on chaos. Algorithms have already caused division on social platforms. It is already too late to reverse that, and perhaps it will get even worse. Da Empoli devotes a paragraph to Meta’s AR glasses. “Anyone wearing such glasses is entitled to their own reality,” he writes. “Soon, ten people attending the same concert will have ten radically different experiences. Their AR glasses offer the possibility of adding lighting effects, advertisements and even guest performers. The same applies to a meeting, a political gathering or simply a stroll down the street. The AR glasses throw open the gates to a veritable magical world.”
Da Empoli paints a pitch-black picture of a dystopian future. We are marching towards it like lemmings.
PS.
Hay Kranen has been writing De Circulaire, his newsletter on art, digital culture and media, which I enjoy reading. To celebrate this milestone, he is producing a one-off print magazine in which writers transport themselves to the year 2050 to look back on 2025. And all in a nineties-style design. Kranen just needs a few more donors to cover the printing costs. Support your bloggers!
Writer and illustrator Luis Mendo lived in Amsterdam for many years (and worked on the design of Bright Magazine, among other things), but now lives in Japan. On his blog Mundo Mendo, he writes about life there, and he is now publishing a selection of his illustrated stories in a lovely compact book.
Phil Gyford has written a report about his first months on the internet, taking you back to the year 1995. I always love nostalgic stories about When the Internet Was Still Fun.
Wikipedia is attracting fewer visitors, because bots and scrapers are stealing the information and putting it into AI summaries. People may read the texts in those summaries, but they don’t click through to Wikipedia.
I’m currently watching Made in China, a programme by Filemon Wesselink and Mark Baanders who ask themselves: can you live using only items from Chinese online shops such as Temu, AliExpress and Shein? They put it to the test and order a (tiny) house and a rollercoaster for the garden. A sort of Prul of Praal on steroids, quite entertaining.
You’ve just read blog post №136, written during the week of 13 to 19 October 2025. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it in your inbox every Sunday, free of charge.