Sitting, taking lunch: the news will hit you like a punch.  The day the Iraq War happened, the tension hung like a mugging in the air, ready to knock you out at soon as the bombs dropped. America, or at least my generation, was new to this. That country had always been a murderous one, with one of the largest body counts at the behest of it’s Congress as any nation in history; but this full scale ground war, this would define our generation. We didn’t know that at the time. We sat, still, eyes glued to TVs. We would soon become spectators to the casualness of bombs bombarding Baghdad. We were watching people die. To my peers, it was distant, a simulacra, a hyperreality of bodies fleeing for shelter, being thrown from buildings.  But I knew someone I knew was going to die. It was just when.

When DJ Shadow’s ‘Six Days’ first came out, that newness, that disbelief of ‘how could we do this?’ hung raw all around.  It captured perfectly the naivete that thought Democrats were anti-war–except when they’re in power—that somewhere there was a politician that would stop this shit.  But 12 years and a youth painted with the blood of perpetual war, we watched another mass genocide on the Palestinian people as spectators. And this time, we cheered. We reached right down and grabbed that blood spilt, right off the bodies of the Gazans and  put it under our eyes like warpaint. I listened and I read and I watched the bloodthirsty things my generation said: ‘that they deserved it’ for Israel to ‘go get ’em’, and that people were glad to have a President who cried when he made the decision to war as he bombs Iraq again. And I buried my head in my pillow and wondered if I needed to breathe.

This Machinedrum remix comes at a perfect time then.  It’s the embodiment of the muddying of our souls. We’re a traumatized generation, and like the dark, brooding clap trap beats which flow through this song, our hearts beat a little sludgier. We’ve watched so many invasions are souls have been toppled like the Sadaam Hussein tower. And DJ Shadow’s original feels like a distant memory to the kind of people that would stand on a hill in lawn chairs, having a BBQ, clapping and eating popcorn and watch as the bombs take people out.  Cheering, for fucks sake.

Follow Machinedrum on Soundcloud / Facebook. 
And check out DJ Shadow’s website to download this song and the EP for free, plus support his Liquid Amber imprint.

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