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  LOKI’S CHILD

  a tale of music, revolution, and revenge

  by FENRIS WULF

  Copyright

  Loki's Child

  Fenris Wulf

  Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

  Copyright © 2016 by Fenris Wulf

  All rights reserved

  Editor: Vox Day

  Cover Image: RGUS

  Version: 001

  Contents

  Part 1

  Prelude

  1. Meet the Band

  2. “My Sound”

  3. “Vibe”

  4. Saint Jimmy

  5. Hideous Schmideous

  6. Prester John

  7. Greed Is Bad

  8. Overdub Hell

  9. Guts Ripped Out

  10. Hideous Noise Cacophony

  11. Sleaze Queen

  12. Her Majesty

  13. Guest Stars

  14. “Real”

  15. Lame Dog

  16. Miss Whiny Pants

  17. Ardath

  18. Lite Brite City

  19. Big in Japan

  20. Kidnapped!

  21. Loki’s Child

  22. Cyber-Stenny

  23. Parlor Tricks & Other Amusements

  Part 2

  24. Runaway

  25. Fall of the House of Prester

  26. Epicure

  27. Blenderman on Trial

  28. Martyr to Entertainment

  29. Last Resort

  30. Klangmacher’s House of Sound

  31. A Taut Ship

  32. And He Will Smite Us…

  33. Scotty’s Record Collection

  34. Deus ex Machina

  35. Stanton Krieg

  36. The Orchestra

  37. Loss Leader

  38. American Filth Pageant

  This Week’s News in Brief

  39. The Concert for Healing

  Part 3

  40. Provocateur

  41. Reactionary

  42. Propaganda

  43. Turncoat

  44. Fugitives

  SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

  45. Hatecrime

  46. Fatwa

  47. Putsch

  48. Blasphemer

  49. Junta

  50. League of Miscreants

  51. Cromwell

  52. Purge

  53. Siege

  54. Vote with a Bullet

  SPECIAL RELIGIOUS SECTION

  55. Hollywood Mook

  56. Revolution Remix

  57. Samizdat

  58. Temple of Sound

  59. No Peace

  Coda

  Part 1

  Prelude

  by BLENDERMAN

  My name is Ezron Blenderman. But only Ma calls me “Ezron”. To the public, I’m simply known as Blenderman. I’m one of the biggest record producers in the world.

  I’m known in the music industry as the guy who gets things done. Dead or kidnapped band members? No problem. Natural disasters? Been there, done that. Civil war? Big deal. When Blenderman makes a record, it gets made. And 85 percent of them have hit the Billboard Top Ten. My track record is unequaled. I can take any band, even the worst band you can imagine, and turn them into pop stars.

  My secret weapon is a computer system called SonoViz®. SonoViz is a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW for short. It’s like a sonic Cuisinart. It records, edits, processes, and mixes sound. It does the same job that required a roomful of equipment in the old days.

  The name means “Visible Sound”, because it was the first commercially available system to offer multi-track waveform editing. It’s made by Maker of SonoViz, or MOS for short.

  SonoViz = perfect records. Every drum hit quantized, every vocal pitch-corrected, every instrument compressed and equalized to perfection. It’s the absolute state of the art. That’s why SonoViz is the industry standard.

  There wouldn’t be a music industry without Maker of SonoViz, the Beneficent, the All-Knowing. Without SonoViz, we wouldn’t have artists like the Backdoor Boys or Lolette van Cleve. I can’t imagine a world ungraced by Lolette’s beauty, charm, and delightful habit of forgetting to wear panties.

  The major religions in the U.S. are Shizlam, Faerie, Cthulianity, and Diabolism. But those are strictly for the masses. In the music industry, everyone worships at the Mystic Altar of SonoViz.

  Today, I start a record with a new band. They’re a girl group called Fatal Lipstick. They’ve been signed to Kasugi Records, the music division of Kasugi International, the entertainment and consumer electronics giant.

  They are possibly the worst pop group I’ve heard in my entire life. They’re going to be huge.

  I will be keeping a diary of the making of this record, and posting it on my exclusive members-only website once a week. I’m going to take you behind the scenes, so you can see how a real record producer works.

  1. Meet the Band

  by BLENDERMAN

  It’s late October, and unseasonably warm. This morning, I met with Sir Robert Bastarde, the President of Kasugi Records.

  Bastarde isn’t a British subject, but a doddering royal did clunk him on the head with a sword for organizing a benefit concert to feed starving children in Africa. To hungry lions. Those poor lions never get enough to eat.

  Bastarde has a belly like a steam boiler, a face like a bulldog, a sadistic streak, and a combover. He looks and talks like an old-school mobster, but with nicer suits. And those are his more endearing qualities.

  We sat in the plush lobby of Kasugi Records’ studio complex in Manhattan, waiting for the group to arrive. It’s a huge, old building with an illustrious history. It served in various decades as a radio broadcast studio, a concert hall, a performing arts center, and a recording studio. It was purchased ten years ago by Kasugi and renovated to house a modern studio complex. Studio A is orchestral, Studio B, C, and D are pop/rock, and studios E, F, G, and H are used for voice-overs, editing, and anything else that doesn’t need a live room.

  “They’re too good,” Bastarde was growling into his cell phone. “They make all our other acts look like crap. Shelve the album and write off the recording expenses. No, keep them under contract. I don’t want them signing with another label.”

  He hung up the phone and leaned toward me. “You’re gonna love Fatal Lipstick,” he said sarcastically.

  “Why is that?” I said.

  “These are the meanest little bitches I ever dealt with. They squeezed a million-dollar advance out of us just by acting like rock stars. They have no talent, no fanbase, nothing. The terms of their contract are un-fucking-believable. They still get screwed on the back end, I’m not stupid after all, but still.” He shook his head dolefully.

  I chuckled. “So the fox got foxed. How about that.”

  “Real funny, asshole. I spent way too much to get this group. This record has to be a hit. Or else.” He slapped me on the back. “That’s why I hired you.”

  “Much obliged.”

  His face darkened. “Here they come. And they brought their manager. That’s Velma Stone.”

  My eyes widened. “The feminist attorney? The one who filed that equal accommodation lawsuit and made it illegal for men to pee stand
ing up? That Velma Stone?”

  “Yeah,” Bastarde said, looking ill.

  “Saints preserve us,” I muttered.

  “Do you know what she did? She set up a fake record label with a fake distribution deal and scammed our genius A&R man into a fake bidding war. She never made any false statements, she just implied certain things and Mr. Genius fell for it.”

  I was starting to like this Velma character.

  The place was festooned with mirrors, so I glanced in one to make sure I looked okay. Tall and lean, hawk nose, dark wavy hair, tailored suit, late thirties. That’s me.

  They walked toward us: three young women with elaborate blonde hairdos and outfits that were about 70 percent French courtesan and 30 percent dominatrix. They obviously didn’t have much practice walking in stiletto heels, but they acted supremely nonchalant, like they dressed this way all the time. It was hard to tell how old they were under all the clown paint, but I guessed about 24.

  They would need some coaching before they were TV-ready. But I knew right away they had star potential. They had presence. Anyone who can command your attention like that will go far in the music business.

  Velma was the professional type, with a practical hairdo and the kind of expensive, designer, don’t-mess-with-me clothes that women wear to impress other women.

  Bastarde put on a big fake smile. “Ladies. It’s wonderful to see you again. I’d like you to meet your producer. This is Blenderman.” He pronounced it “Blendermun.” Repeatedly mispronouncing your name is one of his charming little quirks.

  I made a little bow. “I am perturbed and ingratiated to finally meet you in person.”

  The lead singer, who was also the guitarist, sized me up insolently. She was medium height, slender, and bleach-blonde. She had Nordic features, dark eyebrows that gave her an oddly diabolical appearance, dark lipstick, and raccoon-shadowed eyes that were a striking cobalt blue.

  She said, “Hi, I’m Jasmine. So this is the great Blenderman.”

  “None other,” I replied. “So, you’re called Fatal Lipstick. Exactly how fatal are we talking about? Snakebite fatal, or run over by a truck fatal?”

  Velma smoothly intervened. “It’s a commentary on the toxic lies of the beauty industry.”

  Jasmine shrugged. “Yeah, what she said.”

  “And that demo tape of yours! It’s like the middle of next week called and left a message. And what do you call that style?”

  “Goth-rock-angst-hop,” said Jasmine.

  “I expect you’ll want to bring in some veteran players to give it a solid foundation,” I suggested hopefully.

  Jasmine waved her arms. “No way. None of that fake stuff. We want to play everything ourselves. If we make a mistake, you can fix it in SonoViz, right?”

  Now, I’m not a technical monkey with grease under his fingernails. I’m a Producer. But I’m very hip to the technology. In fact, I’m known in the industry as “the high-tech guy,” because I was one of the first producers to use SonoViz.

  “Of course we can,” I said smoothly. “In fact, my engineer is one of the top SonoVizts in the business. We’ve done about a dozen records together.”

  I led them down the hall and opened the soundproof door marked “Studio B.” We entered the control room, dubbed the “Padded Cell” in memory of Scotty’s predecessor who had to take an extended rest cure. “Ladies, meet Scotty. He’s an all-around Jedi Audio Engineer. Guitars, drums, vocals, synthesizers, you name it, he records it.”

  Scotty is a young guy, about 25, but a real straight arrow. He actually showed up in a lab coat his first day on the job. I had to explain that the dress code for engineers had relaxed a bit since the ’50s. He has that puppy-dog quality that girls adore; the pop starlets are always sitting in his lap and tousling his hair until he gets all flustered and I have to lure them away so he can get some work done.

  He turned around in his chair and looked at the girls dourly. I gave his chair a kick. “Smile, Scotty!”

  He stood up, gave a big cake-eating grin, and stuck his hand out. “Hi there, I’ll be your engineer this evening.” They all shook his hand, very ladylike. He turned off the smile and sat back down. I could tell he was questioning his career choice today.

  “This is where we do the magic,” I said. I showed them various pieces of equipment. “Here’s the degronkulator, the spazmodifier, the transmorgifier, and the double bifurcated sploshing flange.” Finally, I gestured toward the 50" plasma monitor and the huge $50,000 control surface with row upon row of knobs and faders. It doesn’t actually pass audio; all the processing happens in the computer. But it’s great for impressing the talent.

  “And THIS,” I said reverently, “is the SonoViz®. As you know, SonoViz® is used on over 95 percent of the records made today.”

  Jasmine said, “Where do you keep the”—she made circular gestures with her hands—“the big tape thing?”

  I snorted. “Sheesh, the last time anyone used analog tape was in the ’50s. These days it’s all computers. Recording on a strip of plastic with iron oxide glued to it? That’s like doing your taxes on an abacus.”

  Mitzi, the drummer, spoke up. She was tiny, but adorably plump, with a sparkly green dress that showed off her round bottom. Her hair was platinum blonde and done up in dreadlocks. “So when do we start?” Her squeaky voice completed the faerie effect.

  “You forgot the pixie dust,” I said with a grin.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Is that some kind of code word for drugs?”

  “The stories you may have heard are almost entirely untrue.”

  “So what kind of drums do you guys have?”

  “The circular kind. They tried square drums back in medieval times, but they didn’t sound very good.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “But drum sounds are more Scotty’s department.”

  “What’s your department, then?” said Sandy, the bass player. She was a tall, gorgeous Hispanic girl with full lips, a Roman nose, jet-black eyes, womanly hips, rose-brown skin, full breasts with a lovely teardrop shape that had to be natural, and arms like a sword-wielding barbarian princess.

  Unfortunately, the bleach-blonde hair ruined the effect. Pink or blue would have been less jarring.

  I got a pained look on my face. “I stand around and get paid to pick boogers out of my nose. You know what I do. I make hit records.”

  Scotty showed them to the live room, where five different drum kits were already set up, tuned, and miked. Mitzi sat down at one of them, and began making a noise that sounded like a drum kit being thrown down a hill.

  Scotty opened up the amp closet, where guitar and bass amps of all descriptions lined the shelves. Jasmine counted on her fingers. “Can you hook up all the amps at once?”

  “Why?” said Scotty.

  “I heard that Gillian Hitler’s guitarist played through fifty amps at once and it was like 300 decibels.”

  “That’s great, but we can’t fit 300 decibels on a CD.”

  “You can if you master it.”

  “Riiiiight. If we master it.”

  “And I wanna record my guitar solos through the P.A. system in Yankee Stadium. I want people to flip out when they hear it and kill themselves.”

  Scotty looked at me. “Fantastic. Any other requests? Sideways reverb, maybe?”

  I grinned. “Jasmine, honey, Scotty will be your personal genie. You dream it up, he makes it happen.” I glowered at him, and he sighed dejectedly.

  I clapped my hands together. “Let’s start with ‘Whoredumb.’ We’ll do the basic tracks and see how you work in the studio.”

  There were fifty-odd rented guitars and basses, neatly arranged on stands. Jasmine selected a blood-red 7-string guitar. Sandy selected a 5-string bass.

  “No headphones,” I instructed Scotty. “Today we’re keepin’ it real.” I winked. “Then we’ll edit the whole thing in SonoViz and make it even more real.”

  Scotty gave instructions to the assistants, two k
ids nicknamed Alpha and Omega. Omega never starts anything and Alpha never finishes anything, but as a team they’re reasonably efficient. They rolled out various speaker cabinets and arranged the baffles to minimize bleed. Jasmine picked out the amp with the most knobs on it and cranked every knob except the midrange, while Sandy ignored the vintage Ampegs and picked out an 8000-watt transistor amp best reserved for stadiums. Scotty and I retired to the safety of the Padded Cell, and watched the trio through the bullet-proof glass.

  Mitzi counted off 1-2-3-4 on the sticks, and they blasted into “Whoredumb.” It was a punky nu-metalish song with a rudimentary three-note riff. Jasmine muttered her guide vocal into a Shure SM57, an indestructible utility mic that sounds equally mediocre on everything.

  I leaned back in my “critical listening” pose, as immortalized on the cover of HITZ: The Magazine of Highly Successful Record Production Techniques. In spite of myself, I started to frown. It sounded like a 20-car pile-up.

  Scotty looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  “Pretty raw,” I said. “Needs some polishing.”

  “Polishing?” said Scotty. “They don’t need polishing. They need to be dragged outside and shot.”

  “Now, now.”

  “Maybe you could turn them over to Stan. They can woodshed for a few weeks until they have some excuse for being inside a recording studio.”

  Stan is an old jazz guy and multi-instrumentalist. He used to earn his living as an anonymous session player, until the work dried up. In the old days, a band member who was less than adequate would be replaced with a “ghost”—sometimes without his knowledge. Today, we just fix the performance in SonoViz. Now Stan works at Kasugi Studios as a janitor. I asked him once what he was doing in a job like that. He shrugged and said, “I used to be the cleanup hitter on records that needed some help, now I clean the floors.”

  He still gives music lessons on the side. He’s really, really tough on his students. He’s known in the NYC music scene, as the guy to go to if you want a drill sergeant to knock your playing into shape. But all too few musicians are interested in his services.

  I said, “I don’t think they would get along with Stan.”