“Hip Society is the fantastic new album from Hipcut, the Crete-based notorious crate-digger. The young Greek beat-maker — also a member of the audio/visual duo Monisme — has self-released a handful of well-received cuts via Bandcamp and now joins the Melting Records family with his latest work. Hip Society features 10 tracks (with 3 bonus instrumentals) combining flavors of jazzy downtempo, boom-bap breaks, spacey trip hop, and ‘90s Wu-style hip-hop. It’s an audio treasure trove of moods and motion.”

Crate-digger though… That’s a great word. This guy’s been digging deep because his samples are golden fire. They rhymes might otherwise be unremarkable. Good, but nothing to write home about. Matched with the music though it’s a lethal combo. This HIPCUT isn’t what I might have expected to find in Greece. Goes to show you though, at the end of the day, how little I know of the world that I’m continually surprised at what turns up on these dark mornings.

Yesterday was not my best day. It’s funny how a person can still be caught off guard. Maybe it was just a question of being tired. It was probably more a matter of not looking out for my spiritual condition. Routines have changed; all those rituals that have kept me upright for months and months have been upended, and not by bad things. Quite the opposite really, but the fact remains that even good things can disrupt necessary practices. That’s something to be mindful of. My mood turned foul yesterday, and it wasn’t pretty. It quickly became apparent also that there are people who look to me for a sense of stability. When I go south, they quickly become unsettled and follow suit. That can’t happen. There’s too much going on for me to lose my shit. It’s not fair to everyone else.

That’s my confession, and my promise to try to do better today. Are there apologies and amends for today? Perhaps but they’ll be made through action and attitude. It’s just time to get back to things. I can’t fly off the handle.

The geo-political clock slid back 20 years over the weekend too, which was weird to half watch. We pulled out troops out of Afghanistan after twenty years and within days the Taliban has retaken the entire country, with little to no resistance. We can try to make it out like it’s been a bloodbath, and there will probably be some retribution as things re-settle, but no… They didn’t battle back in. They drove back in with their Toyota pick-ups and Sharia law and well, the new old order was established. Less than a week and twenty years were erased. That it happened in days just says that on this side we’ve been lied to for two decades. The Taliban never went anywhere nor lost control. They just moved the seat of control back to the official buildings. We wasted an awful lot of lives for this ruse. It was a bi-partisan clusterfuck spanning four presidencies. People died for nothing.

Nothing.

Good to see Covid-19 bounced out of the headlines for ten minutes though.

This whole thing we live in is false. Been saying this but the “fall” of Afghanistan in 2021 is a good metaphor for all of it. What exactly have we been doing there all this time? You have to wonder just how quickly everything else would shit the bed if we let it. If this one was 100 percent bullshit, what else is?

You have to wonder.

Or you have to keep it small and establish daily routines that keep you propped up and level, so you don’t lose your shit in public. You throw your sobriety and sanity over your shoulder and keep it moving. You stay mobile and make sure that your shit is your own and not anchored to anything else. The world makes no fucking sense, so you have to make your own. Stay mobile. Stay agile. Stay agnostic too!

Be flexible.