Dixie Flatline
By Disposable Planet on June 23, 2024 5:41 am
The Color of Television, Neuromancer-inspired album, Track #7 - "Dixie Flatline"
This week it's the WB debut of everyone's favorite dead hacker ROM personality construct (and no I'm not talking about Johnny Silverhands goddammit!) - it's McCoy Pauley aka The Dixie Flatline. Named Dixie Flatline because he survived three flatline deaths after being fried by the ICE while trying to hack an AI in the Matrix, Dixie is full of laughs - that bone chilling almost-laughter Gibson writes at length about.
Dixie taught Case everything he knows about being a console cowboy. He's no longer with us, sad to say and so to speak, yet he is still with us because the wonderful folks at Sense/Net decided to store his personality on a ROM construct and keep it in their vault for safekeeping. Molly and Case, with the help of the cyberterrorist group The Panther Moderns (led by Lupus Yonderboy), stage a daring run at the Sense/Net pyramid in cyberspace and into their Headquarters IRL too to liberate the Dixie Flatline so he can help them with their larger mission.
It's a bouncy, insomnia-fueled-and-inspired track great for late night Jolt Cola drinking contests with Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack. Some soaring PWM leads compliment the breaks and major/mixolydian key shenanigans. There's even a part that sounds ever so slightly like a UB40 song cover. A healthy dose of pulse instruments and decoration make up a big part of this track and it has a lot of chiptune/chipbreak flavor, perfect for hacking into the Sense/Net Pyramid and uploading some Panther Modern inspired seizure-inducing visuals into the corporate TV screens for kicks as the salarymen convulse and vomit up their krill patties. Lupus Yonderboy, although he never made it onto the album with a track of his own, is alive and well in this soundtrack to the Sense/Net run. And Dixie's chilling too. Listen for the digital almost-laughter to close it out.
Thanks for listening so far! More to come! Next week we meet the holographic puppet master himself, Peter Riviera as we round the halfway point.
The full album is here for free licensed under CC Non-Commerical Share Alike Non-Commerical with all M8 song bundles included: https://disposableplanet.bandcamp.com/album/the-color-of-television
The Full Length Album Music Video on Youtube
All character names and quotes from Neuromancer by William Gibson.
This album is entirely unofficial.
Dedicated to my folks, Ralph and Sandra. RIP and infinite love.
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)