DYSREGULATION (2026)
This release was unexpected and unplanned. It may become another of the many Lugubrious 78 Series that are available as SUBTLE ANTIMUSIC. As part of the ongoing, potential (and far from decided) divestment from major streaming platforms, this latest release collates (mostly) high-resolution (192/24) versions of all the Lugubrious 78 ‘singles’ released between 2024 and 2026.
Does it make a mockery of the long-touted SIXTEEN ALBUMS AND A BOOK? Perhaps it adds a strange symmetry, appearing as it does at the half-way point in this year's releases? Or is it just another attempt to obscure the gartuitous self-plagiarism that has pervaded the work of LUGUBRIOUS 78 from the very beginning?
Is it so nacissistic in this world of short attention, vapid emptiness, self-aggrandisement, mass musical production, febrile loyalties, and comprehensive dydregulation across multiple domains and scales from self to society to global consequences?
With the exception of ‘Another Toddler King’, ‘I Need Toxins’, and ‘Reflections on Instability’, all nineteen tracks were released as singles via our distributor. Wresting these tracks to re-issue elsewhere incurs many of the hidden costs of the modern distribution paradigm. Rather than releasing them again as singles if we strike them down, we have decided to release them today at the central inflection point of the SIXTEEN ALBUMS that were scheduled for release this year.
‘The Monied Lies of Powerful Charlatans Creating Chaos’ is a retitling of the previous release ‘Carelessly Championing the Monied Lies of Powerful Charlatans Creating Chaos’. It turns out publishing administration systems cannot cope with titles longer than 60 characters. When the track is registered with yet another title ('Carelessly Championing The Mond Ls F Pwrfl Chrltns Crtng Chs') to overcome this limitation and without its ISRC it gets lost in the black box ether of music royalties. Fortunately, we do not make music for money or survival, so this doesn't really impact us, but there is always that nagging feeling that somewhere someone else is pocketing those miniscule pennies. These things scale.
Lugubrious 78 has terminated its Publishing Admininstration contract and plans to leave its streaming distributor. We are in a position to do this because music isn't income. Not everyone is.
To be clear, we are not suggesting anything untoward by any of the organisations that we have used. These things happen. It is just that as an independent artist, we wish to assert more control over our rights and creative choices, with fewer constraints imposed by the massive infrastructure of the modern streaming industry. Like so much of modern life, the benefits of widely accessible music, that so many can find and now have the opportunity to produce, appear to be outweighed by exploitative and extractive structures that litter the road to a release, whilst simultaneously being lost in the churn of automated, efficient, effortless musical output. How will this be resolved?
