‘Ye mean it’s all done, you’ve finished it?’
‘Yeah, more or less. It’s not really an album, though, more one long track.’
‘What about the songs ye wrote, aren’t they on it?’
‘No. I can’t even look at them any more. They were totally fuckin delusional. What I’ve made now is more …’ He searched for an expression, licking the backs of the skins in the meantime. ‘More honest,’ he said eventually.
‘Well let’s hear it, then. I’m dead curious.’
He went up to his room and returned with a CD.
‘Let’s have a smoke first,’ he said.
We lit up and then he put in the CD and turned up the volume. Straight away, the peace of the room was violated by searing sheets of noise, screams of feedback and harsh metallic clanging. There was no rhythm or melody, and it was hard to even tell what instruments, if any, were being used. The noise constantly mutated but didn’t go anywhere; it sounded like a black, amorphous worry-cloud. Random shrieks flared up and then died. Drills and hisses rose in volume till they smothered everything, then dropped away again into more clanging and hammering. It was the most discordant, abrasive din I’d ever heard.
Then, emerging from the squall of noise, human voices could be heard, arising for a while before being swallowed back up by the black cacophony. I heard what sounded like a child weeping. Then there was a cold, deep male voice with an English accent. I strained to make out some of the words: ‘… took him out to the factory where we had the cameras and the equipment. It was three hours before he finally died …’
The voice fused into a steam-hiss of static noise and vanished, then there were more sobs, and screams of fear and pain, like the sound of people being tortured. There was a ranting voice in a foreign tongue, maybe Asian, furious like Hitler. Then it was Hitler himself, and more crying and wailing in the background. The screeching, metallic din kept warping, disfiguring itself further, slowing down and speeding up without any kind of pattern.
Now a racist thug was gloating about how he and his friends had beaten a Pakistani man to death in a public toilet in some deserted park. An American woman described how she had microwaved her baby. After several minutes, many voices, sobs and screams converged together, merging into a featureless panic of sound that rose in pitch until it was a single, shrill tone. The tone played out for a few seconds. Then, abruptly, everything stopped.
There was silence but for the whirr of the CD as it came to rest.
Rez exhaled smoke, looking ahead of him at the CD player. I studied the side of his face. Neither of us said anything for a few moments.
Then, stubbing out his joint in an ashtray on the arm of his chair, Rez said, ‘So, what do ye think?’
‘Well …’ I didn’t know what I thought. ‘It’s fairly fuckin powerful. I’ve never really heard anything like it. Do ye have a name for it?’
‘King of Pop,’ said Rez.
My stoned imagination was hurling out all kinds of speculations about the black sprawl of noise he had played me. I had a vivid, thrilling insight into just how fucked up Rez was getting, how lost he was. It occurred to me that this recording, this King of Pop, was Rez’s cry for help, the aural equivalent of a half-hearted suicide bid.
A few minutes later I awkwardly tried to respond to the appeal. ‘Listen, Rez, are ye alright these days? It’s just, ye seem different, you’ve changed a lot. Ye never seem happy any more.’
‘Of course I’m not fuckin happy,’ he snapped.
Stung, I proceeded more gingerly. ‘Right, relax, I’m only talkin to ye. It’s just, I mean, yeah. Ye need to relax man, you’re too wound up. Look, I know that the way things are in the world is horrible, and that life is meaningless, and all this stuff we’ve talked about. But … but there’s more than that.’
‘There’s nothing more to it than that.’
‘There is. Or maybe there isn’t, I don’t fuckin know. But what I mean is, ye seem in a really bad way and, and I’m worried. So is Jen and so is Cocker. I think you’re only seein the world the way you’re seein it because you’re depressed or something. Maybe ye need some kind of help. Ye know? I’m worried that you’re going to, ye know, do something to yerself.’
Rez scowled. ‘Do something to meself. Jesus Christ, don’t give me that.’ He looked right at me with an intensity, an anger that unnerved me. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable, wishing I was elsewhere, wishing I wasn’t stoned.
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he said. ‘Part of you, the honest part of you, would love nothin more than if I went and topped meself. That’d be excitin, that would be a good story to tell people, it would make ye more interestin. Something to tell girls to make them fall for ye: “Oh, it’s rough, me friend hanged himself.” You’d love it if I went and killed meself.’
I looked away.
‘Just as I would love it if you went and did yourself in,’ he added.
‘Fuck off, Rez,’ I said. ‘I was only tryin to talk to ye. I won’t bother any more.’
‘Yeah, well don’t fuckin bother,’ he sneered. ‘All I asked was what ye thought of the music.’
‘It’s not music, it’s just noise. Anyone can make a racket like that, and then just stick on the worst quotes ye can find. It’s just fuckin lazy.’
‘It’s not lazy. It’s just honest. That’s the only way to get through to people any more and make them feel something. Everything else is just some fuckin false memory that ye get from a car ad or somethin. Do ye know what I mean?’
‘No.’
‘I mean, like, ye can’t trust anything else, emotional songs or melodies or anything like that, anything with feelin in it, cos it’s all part of the system, it’s all been fed to ye by these fuckers who only want ye to keep consumin things and not cause a fuss and …’
He frowned, angry at not being able to articulate himself better. I glowered at him, hurt and furious, relishing his confusion.
I said, ‘It sounds to me like you hardly know what you’re talkin about, Rez. You’re inventin some political statement or whatever just as an excuse to make something dead vicious. It’s just cruel, that’s all it is. You’re just wallowin in all this misery and hidin behind some concept. That music is more like something Kearney would make. Maybe you’re not that different from him. At least Kearney is honest about what he’s into.’
The comparison incensed him. ‘Well fuck you then, why don’t you fuck off and make something decent, since it’s so easy for you to criticize?’
‘Fuck off yourself.’
I remained in my seat, tense and shocked. We had never fought like this before.
‘I’ll go then,’ I said.
‘Yeah, off ye go,’ he replied.
‘Thanks for the smoke,’ I said, ridiculously.
I was out the door and thirty metres down the road when I heard him racing after me. He caught up with me, panting.
‘Listen, I’m sorry Matthew. I’m sorry man. I didn’t mean it, I just felt a bit, I don’t know, insulted or something, or trapped.’
Now there was something pathetic to him. I had the sense that he really didn’t want me to go, and that if I did, it would be disastrous.
I sighed. ‘Look, forget about it. Ye can’t be talkin to me like that, though. I was only askin ye if you were alright.’
His face darkened like he was going to snap again. ‘I am alright,’ he said, but then he made a visible effort to smile and soften his tone. ‘Look, come on back to the gaff, we’ll have another spliff. I’ll nick some of me da’s vodka and we can have a drink. I’m sorry man, I was just bein fuckin ridiculous.’
We walked back to his house together. Rez actually seemed to lighten up a bit after that. He even made a few jokes and did impressions of some of the teachers, like in the old days. He flailed his gangly limbs about while telling an anecdote from the couch, and after a while he had me cracking up, like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with him, and our nasty argument of earlier seemed to be forgotten about completely.