Keith Reilly is a bit of a philosopher, and not in the annoying-guy-at-the-party kind of way. His London club is an institution for underground beats, and its monthly CD series (42 and counting) is eagerly awaited by fans across the globe. As if he wasn’t busy enough, Reilly took a few minutes to get real deep on the concept of power.
URB: What’s the appropriate balance between creativity and power?
I would rather there wasn’t one at all. The relationship between creativity and power is not of a comparative nature to me, which ultimately negates the purpose of assessing any meaningful balance between them. I don’t like the concept of power. It is rarely anything other than destructive and seemingly destined to be abused. Creativity is almost always a force for development, and a thing of beauty, which, even in failing, retains merit for the nobility of its efforts. I, personally, have never felt a sense of power. Truth be known, we would all admit that weakness and insecurity undoubtedly dominate all of our lives. It’s delusional to think you have power. The notion of power therefore, in its purest sense as leverage to demand, seems an entirely grim opportunity to me. It would also be entirely wrong of me to deny that I benefit from the position I enjoy, in exactly that manner. The fact, however, is that it doesn’t really manifest itself in my mind as power. To me, it is a simpler and more innocent, if childish, freedom to be as rebellious and self indulgent musically as anyone could wish to be.
This freedom is precisely the reason I began, and we as a group continue to operate this company as we do. Our creativity is born of that freedom, which justifies all to me. Being influenced and motivated by music and art has dictated that my life has been joyfully consumed by the eternal quest to encounter those rare moments of supreme beauty experienced only when you find something that touches you so deeply it fades almost all others in your awareness. And accordingly, it seems undeniably plain to me that creativity will more likely be a source of fulfilment and enjoyment, and equally plain that any pursuit of power for power’s sake could be nothing other than a waste of time. There’s a balance for you. That was a rather long-winded attempt to make the very simple point that I couldn’t give a rat’s arse for power, because quite frankly, I know myself well enough to understand what stimulates me.
Would you feel better knowing that the world is run by four powerful people locked away in a secret room or that it’s just absolute chaos?
I think this is too serious an issue to contemplate anything other than the reality which most of us understand perfectly well. There seems little point discussing a fictional premise when the reality is not at all far from the notion proposed. The subtle deviations being that there are slightly more than four of them, who periodically reshuffle themselves in order of power (perhaps they have a gentlemen’s agreement to take turns, who knows), and they are not intrinsically powerful. They are merely temporary gatekeepers for a sordid form of power that is little more sophisticated than a gang structure. We, to our eternal shame, both gift and concede power to these freaks through pure apathy, and consequently, are part of that gang structure. The benign couldn’t give a shit part. We need to look at ourselves instead of evading responsibility or seeking hypocritical comfort in our muted weak condemnation of them. They may be fucked up, rapacious evil bastards, but it is us who permit it.
It was almost two and half thousand years ago when Plato made the following observation: “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Sound familiar? Two and a half thousand years later and this shit is still perpetrated through our acquiescence, in our name, with cash extracted illegally from us. Not exactly stellar progress on the part of society, especially when compared against technological advancement, which is very relevant here. We continue to allow the powerful to exert power over us when technology could deliver a much greater level of democracy. We have a network of machines that are considered secure enough for a purpose as hideous and trivial as the national sodding lottery, but we can’t have a fucking referendum. We should demand as many as we wish through those stupid machines, and then we might begin to deconstruct the façade, which is an insulting pantomime masquerading as government. What if every single person in the country, regardless of personal motivation, collectively decided that he or she had had enough of morons like Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon….. I won’t go on, all of the fuckers. They could concoct almost any plan, however stupid or juvenile, to achieve almost any objective.
Even something as pathetic as all sitting down exactly where you are and refusing to move until they all fuck off; it might take shameless imbecile like Prescott a while to dethrone, but it would have to work eventually. It really only requires two things: a substantial proportion of society to agree to do it, and the determination not to blink or give in. It doesn’t even need to be civil disobedience, the police and the army are welcome to sit too. You can’t tell me they aren’t equally disgusted. They’d probably do it over their recent pay disputes. We could ship in a few clearer thinkers; Noam [Chomsky] leading the team perhaps. Come on, really, it couldn’t be any worse, could it? They might sound like ridiculous suggestions, but consider the fact that we have recently witnessed and sanctioned a murderous slug like Blair to rampage around the around the Middle East, having been re-elected to do so, in full light of the knowledge that he completely and knowingly fabricated his case for doing so, and the best he can fucking come up with is that God told him to do it. If we are indeed dealing with the supernatural here, and such pearls of wisdom are indeed being handed out to that prick, surely God could have had a slightly better idea. And lets face it, that’s just the press-worthy tip of his odious reign of corruption. Ask the lying shitbag about Diego Garcia, the Balkans, and vast swathes of Africa. What’s the fucking point? The list is too endless for this article. I hope David Kelly haunts his rancid arse for eternity. It’s quite sickening to know that we have simply done nothing about it. It’s all true; we all know it, yet still we do nothing. Perhaps it’s well past the time that we’ll resort to anything, no matter how ridiculous. But to answer your question, no, I don’t think I would feel better. Sorry again. This being brief thing’s not really working out. I’ll renew my efforts for the next question.
“With great power comes great responsibility”….how does this apply to what you do?
It doesn’t. I want neither the use of power nor the burden of responsibility it carries. The responsibility that I feel is to do what I believe in, and to resist any possibility that it might be diluted or distorted. And I am talking entirely in the context of the creative element of the club here. That is where my responsibility must lie in order to maintain the discipline necessary to ensure that the integrity of our music policy is never diminished. We observe a wider responsibility in the sense that our general conduct, business or otherwise, is a matter of conscience. We all have one, whether we choose to ignore or not. It is important to all of us at Fabric that our conduct is entirely honest, sincere, and honourable. We are intensely proud of fabric. Do you think we could be proud of its achievements whilst being ashamed of our methods? Whichever way you look at it, we’d be lying to ourselves. I value my pride in Fabric too highly to forsake it to such a foolish and transparent lie.
By Brandon Perkins
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