May 1, 1979 – G.X. Jupitter-Larsen introduced The Haters by way of a performance called Alluring at a small gallery in New York City, where Jupitter-Larsen lived at the time. In that performance, “Jupitter-Larsen
smashed up several video cassettes by hitting them repeatedly with a
video camera. The fractured videos still radiated images. Not by
television, but by entropy.” Forty years later, The Haters remains active—the recurring emanation of Jupitter-Larsen’s
polymathic mind. The Haters is not merely musical; the project embodies
performative, sonic, and conceptual elements in equal measures, with
the audience often absent or inconsequential (though occasionally
audience participation is integral to the performance). The
ever-encroaching specter of entropy permeates The Haters. Systems of thought and measurement are distorted; order and structure give way to destruction and erosion.
It is not only the longevity of The Haters that is notable. The project has acted as a nucleus on both microcosmic and macrocosmic scales. For almost three decades, Jupitter-Larsen’s
nomadic movements led him to briefly anchor the project in many
different locations, including New York, Vancouver, San Francisco, the
South of France, Denver, and, for the last 13 years or so, Los Angeles,
catalyzing the accretion of art and noise scenes around him.
Jupitter-Larsen’s constant movement made it impossible to establish a
singular home or group of collaborators, and through the years he has
enlisted dozens of confederates for his many performances and
recordings.
To celebrate the 40 years of The Haters’ entropic transmissions, G.X. Jupitter-Larsen
extracted and refined previously unused sound pieces drawing from some
of his most significant source material. Each side of this double 10”
release (the 10” vinyl record is Jupitter-Larsen’s preferred musical format) features a previously unreleased recording reflecting each decade of The Haters:
the slow erosion of a calculator against sandpaper (1989); the
amplified sounds of Jupitter-Larsen’s Untitled Title Belt (1999); the
use of a balance scale as a sound source (2009); and an entirely new
recording using an instrument called the Totimorphous Ubiety Guide
recently created by Jupitter-Larsen.
Accompanying each copy of Forti is a flexi, called AMK Plays Forti, featuring two tracks by AMK—one
of the most stalwart Haters collaborators—sourced from the montaged
anti-records he created using the complete collection of test presses
for the Forti release. As is his custom, AMK
destroyed and refabricated the records using flexis and other musical
and non-musical items, then played and rendered entirely new sounds from
them.