An extract from Jordan Prosser’s ‘Big Time’

In the not-too-distant future, Australia’s eastern states have become the world’s newest autocracy – a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy and moral indecency is punished with indefinite detention. Throw into the mix a new designer drug that gives users a glimpse of their own future, an escalating pandemic of ‘extreme coincidences’ and temporal anomalies, and a band at work on that difficult second album, and you have Big Time, the wild and addictive debut novel from one of Australia’s most exciting new novelists, Jordan Prosser.

Day one hundred and twenty-two. The circuitry in the church has been completely rewired, the soundproofing replaced on the stained-glass windows. The brickwork on the walls and floor, blasted clean and dry by the summer months, has already repopulated with streaky tendrils of black mould. It’s the Acceptables’ second-last week in the studio, supposedly, but there’s a handful of tracks still to go.

I’m sitting on the couches behind the mixing desk with Oriana, chewing my pencil to a nub while I watch Fizz canter through the church, filming the band on her old 8 mm Bolex. ‘She’s doing it wrong,’ I say with a frown.

Skinner’s taken to wearing singlets – partly to fit in with the band, partly because he still gets too hot, even with the air-con blasting, even during autumn. You can see the tattoo-removal scars on his chest and the skin grafts from the secession night riots on his back. Nat’s had to get prescription glasses. Solomon’s lost about seven kilos.

‘From the top,’ says Ash. ‘Roll it up.’ 

‘Fuck Panic’ is the centrepiece of In the End and by far the most difficult song on the album. At a relentless 190 BPM, it’s the closest Ash has ever come to writing pure punk. It features some truly unpleasant, almost mutant funk riffs and some bold bass rhythms. Xander’s fingers are in tatters and Tammy’s activewear is yellow with sweat stains, while Julian, who’s seen this whole day and knows what’s about to happen, is just breathing deeply and playing his part. ‘Fuck panic! I’ll just do what they tell me / Fuck panic! I’ll just buy what you sell me,’ screams Ash, smashing his lips against the pop filter on an expensive condenser mic.
Xander’s D string snaps at the headstock, ricocheting backwards and splitting his cheek open. ‘SHIT,’ he hollers. Pony rushes to his side and Nat cuts the track. 

‘Good lord,’ says Skinner. ‘Solomon, grab the first aid kit. That was sounding terrific, folks! Keep it up!’ 

‘Two minutes, Xan, then we’re back on,’ says Ash, dabbing his forehead with a towel. 

‘Oh, get fucked,’ says Julian, right when he knew he would.

‘Was that for me?’ Ash knows full well it was.

‘Let the guy get a Band-Aid, would you?’

‘When we stop we lose momentum.’ 

‘We wouldn’t need that kind of momentum if you hadn’t written this batshit fucking song.’ 

I can tell Fizz doesn’t quite know who to film. In a moment of solidarity, I telepathically urge her: keep it on Julian, keep it on Julian.

‘Like, when did we used to write stuff like this? Ever?’ Julian prods. 

‘We didn’t,’ Ash says plainly, curling his mic cable. 

Julian won’t drop it. He can’t, because he knows he didn’t. Therefore he doesn’t. He rifles through the sheet music in front of him and reads: ‘“Necktie hangmen sniffing in the dirt / Hard to eat your truffles when the world has gone berserk / Hard to check your balance when your bank is killing clerks / Hard to park your Lambo when the street is in the surf.” Honestly – what the fuck is this?’

Skinner mops his brow and chimes in: ‘I quite like “Lambo”. Feels colloquial. That sort of vernacular really helps to geo-locate the music in the listener’s mind.’

Julian clarifies: he’s not trying to pick the song apart artistically. He couldn’t give a shit about Ash’s inner artist. What he wants to know is: are they trying to make the first album to get redacted before it’s even been released?

‘We’ve been at this for months now,’ he says. ‘Playing your music. Going along with your vision like we’re hired hands. I get it, man. You’re Ash. The label’s got high hopes for you, I’m sure. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the elephant in the room, the one with a spit hood and complete jurisdictional impunity. Whether it’s good music, or bad music, or whatever, that doesn’t fucking matter – what matters is: this is dangerous.’ 

Tammy’s tried to stay neutral this whole time, but finally pipes up. ‘Did you even listen to the demos, dude?’

Julian never had. Out of laziness or hubris, he wasn’t sure.

‘The label signed off on the demos,’ Tammy says.

Skinner clears his throat and blinks the sweat from his eyes. 

Yes, Labyrinth had signed off on the demos. The tracks had been stripped apart, broken down, analysed, then put back together by a proprietary algorithm that claimed to be able to predict an album’s week-one chart placement with 96 per cent accuracy. But Labyrinth didn’t need a machine to tell them the new music was inflammatory – overtly political, in a sort of rough-hewn way. A bit unrefined, but bolshy for sure. The exact type of diatribe one might expect from a group of well-to-do suburbanites who made some money, felt bad about it, then dramatically overcorrected as they clicked into the real-world order for the very first time. In the End’s content wasn’t particularly shocking or unexpected, but it might have been enough to put some of the wrong noses out of joint. Labyrinth’s human analysts ran the demos past their lawyers and marketing experts, crunched the numbers, then presented a few possible scenarios to the board. Regardless of what happened to the band members themselves, there was no outcome in which a controversial follow-up album from a group of ingenues with strong cultural capital and a healthy fanbase didn’t spell financial success for the label. Furthermore, Labyrinth’s parent company was based in the WRA, where albums redacted in the east regularly outperformed any other release. The board had given their unanimous approval to proceed. They even upped the budget.

‘It’s time we took risks,’ Ash says. ‘It’s time we stood for something.’

‘Like your precious fucking church?’ Julian marches straight up to him, waving one arm around at the parapets. ‘It’s just a pretty, empty building, Ash. Nothing here means anything, and you can’t just pretend things mean something when they don’t. What are you trying to do, exactly? Who are you trying to be? A beat poet? A soothsayer? You spend a few months mainlining F and now you’re Henry fucking Rollins?’ 

‘People listen to us,’ Ash says calmly. ‘Whatever we make, they’re going to listen. When they do, what do you want them to hear?’
Julian’s whole body trembles as he shouts: ‘Fucking MUSIC!’

The word MUSIC takes a trip around the dome of the church, bouncing off the balustrades. Everybody there, for just a brief moment, makes the small mental concession that the acoustics really weren’t so bad.

Julian reins it in a little. ‘People want the bands they love to make more of the music they were making when they first fell in love with them. What’s so bad about that? What’s wrong with just making people happy? I thought that’s what we did. I thought that’s what we were.’

Ash reminds him: ‘You bailed, Jules. You came back for this. No-one tricked you into being here. But when you left, you lost whatever say you had in what we are and what we’re not.’

Remembering the morning he hastily packed his bags and fled Melbourne without so much as a word to the rest of the band, Julian falls silent. He flips through his sheet music to ‘Boot to the Neck’, then tosses it at Ash’s feet and splits for the green room, spitting: ‘Why don’t you practise this one? There’s no fucking bass in it anyway.’

Extracted from Big Time by Jordan Prosser, published by Dead Ink Books, priced £10.99.