Total Fucking Darkness

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TFD/TOTAL FUCKING DARKNESS RELEASES NEW ALBUM COMMUNICATED TO THEM VIA A GREAT VOID, PLAYS DISASTROUSLY IN HELSINKI, SEEKS NO REDEMPTION

The venue is small. Just as well because the Helsinki audience is emphatically not enormous, the quality of youth amongst them unpronounced, the weather depressingly uncrisp. Before global warming it would have been as cold and sharp as an 808 snare. But there is still a grey excitement, a grizzled hope that the (mostly) Canadian provocateurs (more “provo[ke]-” than “-a[u]teur”, if we are to be frank) might, somehow, tonight, dip their electronic buckets deep into the well of a better past, and pull out a clear drink of the old TFD joy. Hope is in the audience’s watery Finnish eyes, under their grey eyebrows.

Doors open, audience filters in. There is plenty of room to move around. The local opener cancelled because they had to record a podcast. So an hour goes by in silence until finally the lights dim (it’s still quite bright outside). TFD does not so much take the stage and collapse onto it. Torquil Campbell, still uninjured, prances out and screams TOTAL FUCKING DARKNESS into a microphone over and over until some laconic Finn or other turns the microphone on. Campbell keeps screaming into it. Stephen Ramsay is also there, as close to stage left as possible. He desperately tries to plug a suddenly malfunctioning and badly bent MIDI cable into some other dented piece of metal. For some time there is no music at all, just Campbell’s voice (a great voice, somewhere between purloined maple syrup and marbles in a can). Also here is Tom McFall, the synthesizing Pooh to Campbell’s seizure-prone Tigger and Ramsay’s electronic Eeyore. Unlike the others McFall seems—this is hard to explain—as if he has chosen to be here. His skin is good. He has a kindness. Used to the disaster, he simply stands behind his devices and waits for circumstances to improve.

Campbell, now amplified, starts to complain that the microphone is a cheap knockoff, that it “tastes wrong.” Finally Ramsay gets his difficult wire to connect. He hits “play,” his major contribution to the evening so far (and his second-major contribution forthcoming, as well). McFall does a series of complicated maneuvers with quiet authority. This is “Desolation Boys,” one of their truest classics. The crowd musters what it cans. Campbell dances, aims for Bez, hits Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd in SCTV. The elklike, barely-moving Ramsay seems to be trying to hide behind his drum machine, which is perched precariously on a stand and suffused with wires. The rumors of his perpetual exploitation by Campbell—decades of late payments and evictions—make you wonder how willingly he has come to the stage. The song, as all songs must, ends. They segue straight into “California Sun.” McFall radiates a surprising contentment.

TORQUIL CAMPBELL, the unelected, legendary leader of STARS, and STEPHEN RAMSAY, the vast soft mind behind YOUNG GALAXY, partnered with legendary studio genius and synthesist TOM MCFALL, to celebrate the GREAT VOID into which all TRUE MINDS must stare. TFD was created when the GREAT VOID demanded to be fed LATE 80s/EARLY 90s HOUSE MUSIC. This is the source of TOTAL FUCKING DARKNESS. The band is the NAME OF THE VOID.

The story of TFD is eternally the story of two thwarted Canadians with unresolvable Anglo-industrial fantasies—men yearning to return to the post-industrial Manchester of 1992, to once more rave with twenty thousand former football hooligans on ecstasy in a sheep field. And yet somehow, on the way to London, the plane always lands in Winnipeg. Or, in this case, Helsinki, a Winnipeg of Europe. McFall, the fifth synthesist to join TFD and the only one not to die, came on board in 1997, after the overdoses and evictions, as things were looking up. It falls to McFall, along in good spirits with a spanner in hand, to remind the other two that their lives are okay, actually, and that Manchester in 1992 was a lot of bright spots amongst an enormous amount of Thatcherian bleak. They never listen.

They play “Attack Decay Sustain Release.” The crowd is unmoving so far but this is more about self-preservation given how many of them have obvious, mild infirmities brought on by too much salted perch and licorice-infused Salmiakki Koskenkorva. To dance might mean injury. All proceeds in this vein, the technical issues gradually being worked out. Ramsay is dressed in a one-piece jumper too tight in the crotch. McFall, multiple times, leaves some arpeggiator running in his immaculate setup, wanders to the confused Ramsay, places his hand on Ramsay’s high, slumped shoulder, and then with his other hand twists some knob into behavior, returning Ramsay to relevance. Campbell notices none of this, whirling nonstop, and his accent gets unaccountably more British with each song until finally he sounds like he’s choking on a Scotch egg. He asks the audience to put their arms up, and they do—he still has that wattage—but it’s slowly, with Finnish reluctance. This is a crowd that rarely raises its arms.

The set touches on the entire catalog, picking and choosing over the last 30 years of TFD—”Good Song,” “Private Club,” “Him,” until finally, 160 minutes in, during the 19th minute of the extended club version of “Beaten to Write,” which features a new, unexpected set of verses deeply critical of the Mulroney Administration, Ramsay’s drum machine starts to shoot sparks. It’s such a radiant shower that it must be a special effect, and at first people yell with enthusiasm—at last something is happening. But it’s soon clear that, no, once again, Ramsay’s entire world has gone up into flames. And whatever part of Campbell’s clothing, or his hair, or his genital prosthetic, was flammable, is not really relevant, but soon he, like the drum machine, is burning. Lightly. McFall of course untouched.

It does not devolve into tragedy. It could have been if they were actually from Manchester, but Canadian Tragedy? You can’t put those words together without laughing. The best Canada can hope for is irony. Anyway, we’re in social-democratic Europe. There is wonderful fire suppression. A laconic-yet-brisk Sulo or Eino shows up with a fire extinguisher, and she sprays Campbell down as he writhes, as if it’s a normal Wednesday evening. McFall, as always, is trying to put out the fire, batting at Campbell with some random winter coat. Ramsay doesn’t quite cross the stage to help. Ramsay’s drum machine continues to shoot sparks for a full minute, even when unplugged, until finally it doesn’t, and only a black lump is left. All lights, unaccountably, go off. Only the smell of mildly burnt Canadian and melted machinery remains. Total Fucking Darkness.

Then the house lights come on—someone rebooted the system—and what the band must see from the stage, through the blue smoke, and through Campbell’s pain, is that a couple hundred Finnish eyes are gleaming with joy. The truth is that this is as much a TFD show as any ever—the dildo show (1998), the nipple hooks show that left Ramsay hospitalized (2002), the ritual video of the burning down of Le Studio (2017), the vomiting live eels show in Japan (1995), all those legendary years spent trying to break through to something that might be identified, broadly, at a distance, as success. It’s up to Campbell to summarize all of this, now that he has all of their attention, every eye on him. “Fuck you, Helsinki,” he says. He won’t bother with a doctor.

Why are we here? That attempt to scale the mountain of pop glory is long over, of course; the mountain won. Base camp is full of skeletons. The disaster rolls on, bones clanking. Is it over? It seems to be. Campbell is limping but McFall has, typically, found both bandage and balm and is gently applying both to Campbell’s exposed, red thighs—which appear more chafed than burned. He returns to his workstation with his small smile. Ramsay stares unspeaking at the lump of drum machine that was, obviously, the last thing of value left to him, but when he looks at Campbell, who is obviously in pain, he finally smiles. At the best TFD shows one accepts that the music doesn’t matter, the stagecraft doesn’t matter, technology and talent do not matter, nor success. All that matters is the darkness. You go for the stubbornness and leave knowing that one has seen something, or more accurately, absolutely nothing. The purest of voids for the void lovers. Toss a penny into the deepest well and never hear the splash. They close with their signature song—the eponymous song that is also the name of the band. The lights are up for the encore. Total Fucking Darkness.

—Paavo Pakettiautot (1974-2019)

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