ARCADE KID (7)
By:
November 17, 2023
We are pleased to present ARCADE KID, a ’90s “drivethru” written, illustrated, and soundtracked by HILOBROW friend Nikhil Singh. Our readers are urged to check out Nikhil’s dystopian psychedelic-noir novel Club Ded (Luna Press, 2020).
The 90s left an indelible aftertaste of confusion. It was often difficult to tell where trends started. If they had ended. You could be drifting down Leicester square. On a Saturday morning, in 1991. See girls in lavender granny glasses. Bell bottom cow-print catsuits. Hobbling away from another dance party disaster. When Acid House was the great white hope. Mark Moore on decks. 2000AD, still a vibrant force of change. Fomented by madcap writers and artists, communing in Camden pubs. It had all seemed so hopeful and debonair then. Cultural revolutionaries with preppy hair and wayfarers. Reading Rimbaud in the smart drinks section. Playing psycho. Waify nobodies in the foreground. Name-dropping Andrew Eldritch or Lenny Kravitz. All these instances of hotel room abuse. Recalled in full. Real or imaginary. Flying like migratory birds to Goa and Ibiza. Dying in puddles of projectile vomit. Heroin was spreading. Like some supervillain syndicate. Becoming more of a cultural flavour. Darkening every drape and doorstep. A sense of a gathering wave. But, it failed magnificently. Later came the grunge flood. All the faddish reinventions of disco. An insipid mirror ballroom. Capsizing efficiently into the autocracy of Ecstasy culture. House came, saw and conquered. Leaving behind an empire of the ordinary. The triumph of the middle classes. Nobody pondering the ominous implications of ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’. My father owned live venues back in South Africa. Even at my tender age, I was no stranger to clubbing. I had spent many a boring evening watching synth-pop sound checks. Reading John Varley. Phreaking on the backroom phone. 2000AD had its offices in Camden. I imagined John Smith meeting Grant Morrison down at the pub. Years later, I would befriend John. We would have tortured conversations when I was in New York. In the future, he was a one-armed man. Side-lined. His best work appropriated by corporate interests. His long-term boyfriend dead. But, in 1991, he was an unseen psychedelic demi-god. Lurking in lavender shadows. The Face, a mainstream style-bible for teenage hipsters. The Signal to Noise strip. That androgyne themed B&W editorial, where I first saw Kate Moss. Fashion was changing. Going mega. By 1992, this dark psychedelia was spiralling hard. Pret a Porter. Quality cinema booming. Period film culture influencing everything. Merchant Ivory to Jarman’s Caravaggio. Peter Greenaway fallout. Jeremy Thomas and Roeg. The English Death, dressed up and fed LSD. Everybody trying to remake Donald Cammell and Last Tango. An inexplicable return of bellbottoms. Preppy sociopaths. Bret Easton Ellis. Clive Owen in Chancer. That famous live-version of Psycho Killer. Wesley Snipes with blue eye-contacts.
More NIKHIL SINGH at HILOBROW: DREAMING MEDIA (Q&A) | JOURNEY TO IXTLAN | HASHTAG FASHION POLICE PROBLEMS | ILLUMINATE OR DISSIPATE? | HATE ISLAND. ALSO: HADRON AGE SF (2004–2023) | ORIGINAL FICTION at HILOBROW.