By all means necessary

Champion turntablist pioneer and producer Rob Swift is coming to Asheville this week on his first solo tour, promoting his new CD/DVD release War Games. "My goal on this album is to spark people's minds. I want to get people thinking and talking about what's going on outside their homes," Swift says in the liner notes. Having left his groundbreaking DJ crew The X-Ecutioners, as well as the frustrations and debasing demands of a corporate label, Swift has clearly hit the ground running in bold, new directions. War Games is turntable magic that conjures up a concentrated dose of social commentary in sonic portraits–some sublime, others blunt–of the US empire at dusk, post-Sept. 11. For full effect, watching the DVD is a must. Editor John Carluccio VJs a mix of images accompanying Swift's deft cuts, resulting in an assault on the conscience of "America." Taken together, the barrage of audio-visual collage and agitprop deconstructs the Goebbels-esque symbols of the US "terror war" with the savage immediacy of its primary medium–propaganda–and recontextualizes it into a phantasmagoric mediascape that rapes the senses while barfing back the collective, sociopathic puke of infotainment brainwash that has represented and led the psyche of a nation with devastating results. Also created as an antidote to the shallow superficialities of pop music and "bling bling," War Games illustrates well the haunting paranoia and alienation of the nation, post-Sept. 11 and the methods in which that sentiment has been exploited for ill-gotten gains. Inspired by the terror attacks that "changed" Swift "forever," the mix is very much a meditation on terrorism, drawing upon its definition ("the systematic use of violence to create a climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective") and then exploring its tactical use by the tools of media. Creepy ironies ooze out of Bush news clips, offering new meanings and explanations in painful retrospect. If there is any question about what War Games is about, "Dream" is a stand-out track that breaks it down. Produced by none other than Asheville's own DJ Tweak, it features Swift scratching over the talents of Weaverville MC Breez Evahflowin alongside a generous sampling of anarcho-linguist Noam Chomsky. Also of special note is a remake of Main Source's "Another Friendly Game of Baseball," a Large Professor showcase recorded in response to the NYPD shooting of Amadou Diallo. Another theme is "how we went to war on false premises, why we're still being lied to about the premises and how things are generally fucked up in America today," Swift said in a recent interview. For the skills freak wanting to see Swift's wrist-flicking, the DVD extras include a great live clip of him doing his thing up close. But War Games is clearly about more than just skills and technique. It's real art.