As a tribute to recently departed, much beloved friends Bruce Geduldig and Bernadette Martou, futureplaces and The Tapeworm are providing the present free digital re-release of the cassette tape originally released in 2014, in its full configuration.

Originally released as TTW#74
tapeworm.org.uk

Two gigs by a loose ensemble of nomads, hybrids, tech-heads and agitators gravitating around Porto, Portugal.

ANTIFLUFFY is the pop cousin of Autodigest, both dedicated to a critique of the current culture of entertainment and the paradoxical labyrinths of late consumerism. While Autodigest takes the cerebral, strategic route, Antifluffy gets down and dirty, visceral in the face of fluff. Whether disemboweling magnetic tape or analogue photographs, delivering impassioned manifestos or crooning away in recruitment mode, Antifluffy is an invitation to rise above the bore of derivative karaoke, the endless re-packaging of interchangeable autotune divas, photoshopped selfies, cute pseudo-eroticism, the sugar-coated shoving of ideology onto the slums of digital iHallucination.

Antifluffy emerged as a drifting concept for Heitor Alvelos' participation at Stopestra 2013 (its first manifestation came in the shape of a highly customised version of "Billie Jean", to be found elsewhere on the web); it came of age as a mascot for FuturePlaces 2013, through the team conspiracy of HA, Anselmo Canha, Teresa Serôdio, Bruce Geduldig and Bernadette Martou. It has since taken on the most various shapes and guises, and is currently developed by a lucky few as a soap opera posterboy, proto-politician, academic subject, death metal singer, beat poet, selfie slave, the ghost of analogue warmth, prophet of catastrophe. An interview with Antifluffy can be read at bit.ly/1wMwlJM

This cassette brings together two fragments of recent and ongoing controlled chaos taking place in Porto, Portugal, Antifluffy both the foreboding guardian and the spiritual bond.

Side one is the full recording of the closing concert of FUTUREPLACES 2013, Medialab for Citizenship, curated by Heitor Alvelos and Karen Gustafson for the UTAustin-Portugal program in digital media. Every October since 2008, we throw together a deliberately unlikely mix of creatives, tech-heads, radio wizards, thinkers, activists and nomads… and watch the impossible happen before our very eyes. Besides being the culmination of six days of creative work, this particular gig served as the chance to unleash Antifluffy onto the World at large. More on the mayhem at futureplaces.org

The recording on side two is again a concert. It emerged in the days leading to the Summer solstice, 2014, as a gut reaction to the birth of a new internet/mobile/entertainment brand mega-consortium: "NOS". The ubiquitous "NOS" marketing campaign, treading on photoshop boobs ’n’ teeth, dead pop stars and hysterically cute pets, was reinvented as an antidote; cryptic and visceral, cerebral and introspective - all that contemporary mainstream culture seems to abhor. The gig doubled as a goodbye card to Bruce Geduldig and Bernadette Martou who, after two extraordinarily fertile years based in Porto, left soon thereafter to pursue a new life across the Atlantic. From Tapeman to Bubblewrapman… Antifluffy in all its guises.