In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, making a political statement has risen to the top of the agenda for artists across the musical spectrum. Last month’s Grammy awards saw A Tribe Called Quest deliver an electric protest against “President Agent Orange” on stage, culminating in chants of “Resist”. Less edifyingly, Katy Perry’s campaign for her fourth album has kicked off with vague waffle about “purposeful pop”, which might have been more convincing had it not been accompanied by cracks about Britney Spears’s mental health. But outside the mainstream, some of the most interesting forms of protest are taking place in the underground dance world – challenging ideas about what conventional protest music can be.
One of the most passionate statements came in the form of Physically Sick, a sprawling 42-track compilation on Berlin-based producer Physical Therapy's Allergy Season label, curated in collaboration with New York feminist collective Discwoman and released one day before Trump's inauguration. Available for download on a "name your price" model on Bandcamp, the striking cover image is in line with Allergy Season's tongue-in-cheek pharmaceutical aesthetic, where releases are designed to look like medicines. But this time, it feels deadly serious. "Use to alleviate symptoms of fascism, bigotry, violence, demagoguery," reads the front cover.
Tracks have titles such as Colonial Revolution – an industrial grind from Bergsonist that seems to bend in on itself – and This Techno Tool Track Kills Fascists, a stripped-back, gibbering beat from Physical Therapy himself. Most pertinently, perhaps, all profits from its sale will be donated to organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center – selected for their opposition to the Trump administration.
Physical Therapy, also known as Daniel Fisher, says the genesis of the compilation was, in fact, the events of the weekend preceding the Trump election. Broadcasting platform Boiler Room’s attempt to take its online club sets into the real world had failed dramatically when a weekend festival in rural Pennsylvania got shut down on its second night with accusations levelled at the police of racially motivated assault.
"We were feeling in the thick of the white supremacist, fascist mood of the country. We never got the chance to snap out of it because two days later, Trump won," says Fisher. So in collaboration with DJ Max McFerren, Frankie Hutchinson and Emma Olson of DJ booking agency Discwoman – Physically Sick was their response.
Hutchinson, who co-founded Discwoman as a means of pushing back against industry sexism, says she was "firm about the diversity in terms of race and gender – we wanted to reflect the wealth of folks that we're around daily and not be some white techno boy affair". The result is a vast, expansive breadth of styles and emotions, from full-on industrial techno to soulful vocal house to haunting ambient wreaths of electronic vapour. But it's not just a selection of supremely executed dance music. Hutchinson and Fisher neither stipulated nor checked whether the 42 artists involved had made their tracks specifically in response to the political situation, though in a number of cases the link is obvious. As a coherent body of work, Physically Sick manages to run through every visceral emotional reaction to the rise of nativist fascism across the West.
A majority of artists opt for a pummelling approach. Contributions from Isabella, Via App, Elijah and Umfang are relentless, short on melody and almost violent in their intensity. They feel like exorcisms, the sonic equivalent of beating up a punchbag to get rid of pent-up anger. At the other end of the spectrum are the numbed grace of Yu Su's Tales and James K's elegiac My Sorrow Is Luminous. The awareness of the need to resist with our bodies is ever present, and the connection between the defiant physicality of marginalised communities in club scenes and the similar strength in solidarity of street protests is made on key cuts: Shaun J Wright uses electro-disco as the irresistible vehicle for demanding equality on Growing Storm, while Draveng's Xeroxer (Heck on Earth Edit), with its anti-borders, anti-patriarchy chants, is the soundtrack to the kind of protest that turns into a riot.
Some of Physically Sick's finest moments point towards emotional hope. For example, the airy synths and grumbling bass of the 13-minute epic Dead By 3, in which a mysterious producer with the moniker FBI Warning weaves the mantra: "In these trying times, let there be light." Fisher names this track as his favourite: "It really shook me. It's literally been stuck in my head for weeks."
Physically Sick isn't the only example of artists taking the protest to the club. Chilean producers Valesuchi and Matias Aguayo's Nasty Woman sets actress Ashley Judd's rousing delivery, given at a Women's March following Trump's inauguration, of Tennessee poet Nina Donovan's I Am A Nasty Woman against rattling, whirring percussion, the cheers from the protest recast as dance-floor fervour responding to Judd's passion.
The day following Trump's election, Berlin-based Lotic uploaded a furious, hammering version of Beyoncé's Formation to his SoundCloud, subtitled Election Anxiety/America Is Over Edit and tagged "urgent self-care". Sped up and set to manic drums reminiscent of Destiny's Child's Lose My Breath, the panic in the music was offset by the magnification of the threatening urgency in Beyoncé's voice.
On Physically Sick, Moni Moni's 26,172 (US) Bombs Dropped on Short Notice is a reminder that Trump is less an aberration than a logical end point of American imperialist exceptionalism: the title of her martial, sinister track refers to the number of bombs dropped in the final year of Barack Obama's presidency. Iranian-born DJ and producer Kasra V, who has lived in London for the past six years, took a similar approach with his Middle East mix, made following Trump's executive order banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Incorporating samples of right-wing news speeches, Palestinian demonstrators' chants and recordings of bombs falling on Gaza amid music from Middle Eastern artists such as Iranian-Armenian composer Loris Tjeknavorian, it's a mix that veers between dreamily static and violently explosive. At times, the dissociation and dystopian mood is reminiscent of Iranian director Babak Anvari's 2016 horror film Under the Shadow, in which the terror of living in a war zone is intertwined with the terror of potentially supernatural forces.
Kasra V, whose work joins the dots between traditional Iranian folk music and western techno, notes the irony that for him music was originally an escape from politics, but “I get dragged into making statements on it” – following Trump’s first executive order, he received a slew of interview requests. The immigration ban has since been revoked and then reinstated, and Kasra V, who has also worked in the dance industry as a promoter, explains that this uncertainty is enough to affect career opportunities in the US regardless of whether the upcoming round of fresh legal challenges succeed. “I don’t know how many people would be up for risking [booking me] – investing money on flights and everything ahead of time – knowing it could be cancelled at the last minute,” he says.
Thus, Kasra V's music has become inherently politicised: his Middle East mix was intended as a statement "that wasn't just words". As with Physically Sick, it's an illustration of the political power that lies beyond words in dance music, where different types of people have always found refuge. Or, as Daniel Fisher puts it: "The medium is also the message."
Alex Macpherson is a freelance journalist who also writes for The Guardian and New Statesman.
