by Buzz Drainpipe
Outside, the rain needles the window. Gwen’s asleep. The cat too. The city hums in standby, every lamppost a sodium confession. In this half-dream, half-dystopia hum, I cue up “Orwellian Nightclub”, the latest mixtape to slink out of my subconscious. Eighty-five minutes of chrome fatigue and ballroom decay — the future as imagined by those who already outlived it.
1. Diamond Dogs (Bowie, 1974)
The gates open with Bowie’s carnival barker shriek, calling all mutants to the dance floor. “This ain’t rock’n’roll — this is genocide.” You can smell the sawdust and circuitry. This is where the dream begins: a world collapsing under the weight of its own performance.
2. Ghost Rider (Suicide, 1977)
The beat snaps into minimalist terror. Alan Vega preaches over a pulse that sounds like a factory heart on the verge of cardiac arrest. The Nightclub is alive now — neon veins twitching under fluorescent malaise.
3. Kill Your Sons (Lou Reed, 1974)
Lou sits at the bar, sedated but lucid. He’s narrating the lobotomy of the American family with his usual venomous calm. Every song in this mix owes something to his disgusted mercy.
4. In Every Dream Home a Heartache (Roxy Music, 1973)
The first slow dance of the apocalypse. Ferry’s voice is too elegant for this world, serenading an inflatable doll as if she were the last goddess of Babylon. By the time the guitars burst, the ceiling fans ignite into halos.
5. Gimme Danger (Stooges, 1973)
Iggy appears like a skeletal messiah, barefoot on broken glass. There’s tenderness here — but it’s wrapped in plague bandages. The Nightclub trembles under his whisper.
6. Baby’s on Fire (Brian Eno, 1973)
Art-school inferno. The guitar solo sounds like a cybernetic insect chewing through film stock. This is the perfect midpoint — where art becomes malfunction, where dance becomes seizure.
7. Destroy Everything You Touch (Ladytron, 2005)
A 21st-century shimmer enters — the nightclub goes digital. The crowd are algorithms now, and Helen Marnie sings like an android re-enacting heartbreak. Still, the pulse continues. Still, it hurts.
8. Teenage Dream (T. Rex, 1974)
Marc Bolan floats through, glittering and doomed. The sweetness is unearned, the innocence counterfeit, which makes it somehow beautiful again. A ghostly reprieve before the descent resumes.
9. Science Fair (Black Country, New Road, 2021)
Suddenly we’re modern again — the new young prophets sweating over distortion. The awkward anxiety of the information age becomes symphonic panic. If Bowie’s kids grew up and found no future, this is their manifesto.
10. Adolescent Sex (Japan, 1978)
Glam becomes alienation, eyeliner becomes armor. Sylvian croons like a lost dandy trapped in a Tokyo arcade. The bassline reminds us: youth is both disease and cure.
11. Fade to Grey (Visage, 1980)
The dance floor freezes into chrome sculpture. The synths feel like security cameras humming in empathy. We are all mannequins now, posing in self-surveillance.
12. Dark Entries (Bauhaus, 1980)
If Ghost Rider was ignition, this is combustion. Peter Murphy shrieks in glorious panic — the gothic mirror cracks and reveals a second, uglier mirror beneath.
13. The Becoming (Nine Inch Nails, 1994)
Now the machines have feelings. Reznor is terrified by the flesh still clinging to his wires. The Nightclub becomes a morgue of obsolete sensations.
14. Down in the Park (Gary Numan, 1979)
Numan narrates the cybernetic promenade. Robots execute crimes of passion while humans watch from sealed domes. The groove is narcotic, tender, funereal.
15. White Punks on Dope (The Tubes, 1975)
Suddenly we’re laughing — the most American response to collapse. Satire as survival instinct. The Nightclub becomes a circus again, but the audience is gone.
16. Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing (Reprise) (Bowie, 1974)
We end as we began, back in Hunger City. Bowie's suite unfolds like an elegy for all our synthetic youth. When he croons, “We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band,” it feels like the last prayer of the 20th century.
CLOSING NOTE:
“Orwellian Nightclub” isn’t a playlist — it’s a prophecy transmitted through eyeliner and distortion. It’s the dream where the beautiful ones dance beneath flickering telescreens while the DJ cuts between Bowie and oblivion.
Some nights I think the future already happened and this is the afterparty.
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