Photos provided by Dancing Stag Photography
It's Sunday night in Chicago. The late Autumn damp threw a thick blanket of fog over the city. Morgy's guitar casts an echo through Subterranean, the backlights capture them in silhouette, and they launch into Mt. Airy, the first track off of their newest album, Tear. Heads bob, bodies sway in rhythm, and the crowd shifts from a hundred individual conversations to one symbiotic organism, sharing this moment.
I first heard Korine back in September at Cold Waves, and their sound and energy instantly captured me. There is no shortage of artists in the scene doing the electronic, synthpop sound, but there was an energy to Korine that tugged at me. We immediately bought all of their records (including the last CD copy of Tear, but if you missed out, you can still snag a copy here).
After Cold Waves, I stored away my neochrome spikes, my fishnets, my leather, and started sifting back into daily life. My day job, my ongoing home remodel, my family. A month later, at the end of October, I took my usual week off for Halloween, this time extending it into November to spare myself the onslaught of election coverage. Love my clients though I do, I don't want to discuss politics with them, and so at home I stayed, protecting my mental health and energy in the safety of my living room, playing Stardew Valley with my partner.
There may or may not have been a pillow fort involved, too, but that's for me to know.
We woke up to the news the day after the election, and while I can't say I was surprised, I was disappointed. We can sit here and debate the how or why. It doesn't matter. The point is that enough people saw my rights as either a target to eliminate, or were apathetic enough that my human rights and dignity were an acceptable expense.
I can't explain how it feels to have your life be a fun debate for people entirely unaffected by your existence. It's a very specific kind of hell no one should have to endure.
And people will say that politics shouldn't divide us. And truthfully? They're right. But what we're staring down is not politics; this isn't infrastructure and taxation and foreign policy and tariffs and government spending... This is a culture war, an ongoing fight over who gets rights and who gets none, so those of us whose very lives are being debated and discussed (nearly entirely without our involvement, to boot) are not afforded neutrality.
And here is where Korine re-enters, glamorously, as they do.
Immediately following the election, queer-fronted Korine made their stance clear: if your heart is hardened and filled with hate, their music is not for you.
This was the moment where it clicked, why Korine spoke so loudly to me at Cold Waves, why they energized and called to something deep in me. There's a spirit of resilience that all queerfolk carry, by choice or by force. It's glitter on grief, a beautiful defiance wherein like recognizes like. To read Korine's lyrics is to delve into the darkest places of a person's life, and yet to hear these words presented, there's a hopefulness and light that reminds me that no matter how hard it might get, I've endured so much before, and I'm still here, still unbroken, still facing each day as the precious and wondrous gift it is. It won't be easy, but it will be okay.
The dark alt scene has always been for the weirdos, the queers, the ones who do do not conform to the status quo. When rock n roll told us that to be masculine was to be cold, to forego empathy, new wave rolled in to offer a space where being soft and caring was not only welcome, but the norm and the expectation. There is no denying that today's electronic music is the offspring of that exact movement, not only in sound, but in who you'll find there.
So it really should not have been controversial for an electronic pop band to make such a statement, and yet immediately, their DMs were swarmed by people who felt the need to tell them that they should ”leave politics out of it“, ”just stick to the music“, and other thinly veiled ways of trying to silence people defending their right to exist. The dehumanization of being told that your only value lies in what others can take from you, that your subjugation and degradation are acceptable, just keep working to entertain others... I cannot begin to wrap my head around how anyone can say that and not question whether or not they might do humanity a favor by catapulting themselves immediately into a volcano.
As the vitriol flowed freely, Korine's exposure took a hit. While preparing to leave for their tour supporting Dance With The Dead, trying to promote the tour and make their living, Korine's reach and exposure were limited by unknowable algorithms that decided their content was acceptable to push towards people who would “engage” (read: attack strangers on the internet), but not people who would actually be interested in attending the show. Such is the curse of social media.
When queer artists take a stand, invariably, they face backlash. This, by itself, is nothing new. What is new is the reach of both us to our community... And of those who wish us harm. Before the internet (I am old enough to remember the time, believe it or not), we sought physical space for ourselves. If none existed, we made one. Here in Chicago, active and vibrant gay and lesbian communities sprang up over a century ago, thriving even while city officials tried to suppress them, and eventually, Boystown and Andersonville became known as safe havens for LGBTQ+ folk (and still are to this day!). Then, creating space meant knowing where to go, who to talk to, and more importantly, where and who not to. It means being willing to take a little hit to protect the community and everyone within it. If we give an inch, they'll snuff us out.
Creating space means safeguarding it despite the cost.
At the cost of business.
At the cost of social media presence.
At the cost of bookings.
Of record sales.
Of tours.
Whatever the cost of self-defense, it is always more valuable than selling your safety, community, and soul. Today, as then, creating that space means holding and defending it. Korine's Morgy and Trey did nothing new, really. They helped safeguard a place that's always been ours, by us and for us. They took the hit, absolutely. But... Maybe that's a good thing.
We all know the story of the crustpunk bartender, right? “If you have one Nazi in your bar, you have a Nazi bar”, that one? It's a good story. I don't really care if it's true or not, because the meaning of it is: you either get the problem gone while it's still small, or you get a big fucking problem on your hands once they're entrenched and have overrun your place. Taking that hit early on means sparing yourself, your space, and your community later.
And all of that begs the question: why were any of these fragile little fascists surprised in the first place? This was never theirs to begin with. There was never room for them in a space made by, for, and of the outsiders, the weirdos, the goths, the queers, the non-conformists. A scene that was built by us, for us, because we were told we couldn't sit with the rest of everyone. We built our own table, and now they want to take that, too? Those demanding “old world values” will get no space from us, because they gave us none with them. You cannot sit within an alt community and demand it be sanitized for your comfort when you are the interloper.
A longtime friend of mine came with me tonight, one of the last times I'll see him before he moves to Belgium, likely permanently. On the phone the other day, he asked me if I'd move to Europe with him, knowing full-well the danger I face staying in the States.
And I thought about it. My answer was a very natural and immediate “no”. But why? It's not my job, my house, my family... None of that is what's keeping me here. It's this, a venue with a sticky floor, full of people who were warned that hate can fuck right off and still showed up full of passion, to spend their Sunday with other weirdos, swaying to electronic pop and slamming around in a circle pit, unified in their love for one thing: good fuckin' music.
Maybe it seems contradictory that, in the same breath, I'll champion unity and exclusion, but are they not two sides of the same coin? I'll say that it's about the music. It is. And that's my point.
No one should, within this space nor anywhere else, be giving their energy to quashing the civil rights of other human beings. It's the intolerance of intolerance paradox: without excluding the people who damage you, you cannot thrive, you cannot live fully and authentically.
I don't much care if you don't like how I conduct my life. It doesn't affect you. Whether I'm gay or straight, cis or trans, man or woman, none of it affects you in any way whatsoever. My existence is not about you. You are welcome to not engage with me. You are welcome to not even like me, I won't lose sleep over it.
Where we have a problem is when you try to legislate whether or not I'm even human, whether I'm entitled to a full life on this planet. We can coexist and you can despise my look, my flag, my car, my purple leather jacket. You can fume and huff and get yourself all worked up over it... Just remember that that's your problem, not mine. And I won't be allowing you to make it mine, so keep it to yourself or the door is right under that glowing sign that says “EXIT”.
Go ahead and call me divisive. Say I'm intolerant. I said what I said, hand me the mic and I'll say it again. When we are shoved out, we will always find our space, our people, and our voice.
We always have.
We always will.