Note: As of 1pm PACIFIC TIME, January 28th, 2021, this entire program has been replaced with a MUCH-IMPROVED, revamped, 'Director's Cut', Version 2.0, DEFINITIVE version of this program. It is now complete and in its final form. At last, this is how we want it. If you originally downloaded this program before this time, NCN recommends that you re-download the version as it is now for the official and definitive version of this album. We apologize for any inconvenience. This is actually the first time that this has happened in the history of NCN, but 'AOC' as we have come to know it is such an important work, we feel, that we really wanted to get it JUST RIGHT.

How it came down was like this:

We got up late in the day on January 20th, 2021. It was our plan to hear about how the Inauguration had gone, that day, after the fact. But before we turned on the news, and learned that everything had turned out okay, and that the saga of Donald J. Trump's clusterfuck Presidency had come to a peaceful ultimate conclusion, we were pouring the milk over our bowl of cold cereal and thinking about The Snake Poem.

The Snake Poem was actually lyrics to a song that Donald J. Trump would read at his rallies and on his campaign trail. It was a piece that was thick AF with irony because Donald fully intended the piece as a parable for the evils of immigration and about taking in undesirable outsiders into our country, who would then turn around and hurt the country and its citizens, and how we only have ourselves to blame for this outcome.

But on January 20th, it was clearer, perhaps more than ever, what was clear to so many people who heard him read the piece, that the 'snake' in the poem, oblivious to the reader himself, was actually Donald J. Trump. And January 20th, 2021 was the day when the nation would have to start healing from the snakebite that he had inflicted upon us.

It was also a day when we would have to start the work of reversing the effects of the VENOM of that snakebite, the HATE that had been fomented during that snake's reign.

On that day, I thought about the piece as it was in Part 4 of this program. It was based on a mashup done by an unknown artist for a film that he did called 'Donald Trump's 'The Wall' which was a video put together before Donald Trump had even attained the office of the President in 2016.

The name of that artist is not known. He may wish to remain anonymous for his own reasons. He had mashed up the poem with Pink Floyd's instrumental guitar solo from their musical piece 'Is There Anybody Out There?' as part of his video project, we thought to great effect.

But the piece, in that film, was so fragmentary. It only used part of the poem, the last few lines. In the first incarnation of AOC we attempted to make the piece more complete by adding a Trump commentary at the end of the piece which was played on Jimmy Kimmel Live! recently.

But on that day, January 20th, 2021, while we were eating our cereal, and uncertain if the Trump saga had peacefully ended or not, we thought, no, the piece needs to be completed. At last, it needs to be a complete piece. We need to track down that complete poem and match it up to the complete Pink Floyd song and complete the message of that long-ago started work.

In the end, this is exactly what we did, and after learning that the Trump Presidential clusterfuck had been resolved, we took the opportunity of not only making that fundamental change to this program, but also fixing a number of editorial 'moves' that had always cumulatively 'pulled our ear' while listening back to it and wishing we had done differently.

And the momentum of making these changes, throughout the work, led us to spending an entire day and night making a fundamental overhaul to, and a total re-mixing of the centerpiece to the work which is known as the 'Anti-Trump Capitol Hill Riot Pink Floyd / Wall MAGAmix v2.0' piece which is now, much much MUCH more improved and is available with the new download album package as a separate hidden/bonus track along with the Twilight Zone Megamix which remixes and augments Ministry's Trump piece called 'The Twilight Zone'.

So for this reason, NCN strongly recommends re-downloading this now definitive version of AOC if you got it before the time noted above.

If you have already sent us money for a download PLEASE do not feel obligated AT ALL to do so again. Just ZERO that price field out. You deserve it. The donations that have been already so raised from our listeners' generous appreciation of this work have already enabled us to purchase a year's worth of Soundcloud Unlimited account status, and so we are very very grateful for that, and we are grateful to be able to expand the project in that way and to reach more people. Thank you so much, and thank you for your support.

This project has never been about making money. It has always been literally a labor of love and slack that has been about making art and it has always been about making music and it has always been about making it clear where the pursuit of money for the sake of pursuing money LEADS.

Feel free to keep version 1.0, maybe renamed separately, maybe it will be a collector's item someday that may be valuable in some way for comparative purposes.

Album Details:

No explanation of what this album is about is necessary. You all know what it is about.

But we will say that it is our very humble opinion that this is quite possibly the most significant work that we have created since starting The National Cynical Network in the year 2000.

Please Note:

This program presents, at times quite dramatic sonic depictions of issues, sounds and events concerning a crisis which affects all of us and which is still developing at the time of its publication.

The creator of this program is attempting to artistically capture, comment upon, and document a moment in history, right as it is unfolding, as well as the disquieting and alarming spirit in which it is doing so.

With this in mind, portions of this recording might be an emotionally intense, draining, disturbing and even triggering experience for listeners with certain conditions. No. This is not hype.

Please use listener discretion.

It is up to you of course, but we recommend hanging in there until the completion of this audio journey for the resolution, message, and overall effect of the entire piece. We believe that you will find it a rewarding listening experience. Thank you for taking the time to listen to it. You do not have to pay anything in order to do so.


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Technical Notes:

The audio player on the landing page for this program is cued to Track 3 and not the actual beginning of the program.

For the overall intended effect of this work, NCN recommends listening to it, from start to finish (not necessarily all in one sitting) in a comfortable and restful setting, using good headphones.

Many of the audio source files used in the creation of this MetaMedia collage mix were of 'lossless' or CD level quality some being specially purchased by the creator in order to have this quality.

For this reason, and for the ideal listening experience, we recommend downloading and listening to this via 'lossless format' files (.flac or .wav) in order to preserve this fidelity.

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On a personal note, stepping outside of the editorial NCN 'we' for a moment, i wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for all of the artists and commentators whose work is represented in this MetaMedia audio documentary and in all of the collage work that I have done since coming under the tutelage of the late Don Joyce of Negativland in the early 90's on KPFA radio.

Don will always have a special place in my heart for patiently and compassionately taking me under his wing and having the artistic courage of allowing me, some random listener, into his world when he really didn't really know who I was. I am happy that we did get to know each other and to work together. I credit the man for teaching me so much in terms of how to do this stuff.

Since then, I think that there MAY have actually even been times, TIMES, in the course of my career, on this strange strange artist's path that I have chosen, where I have actually 'outshone the master'. I know that, technically, you're not really supposed to do that! It is just bad form. But I couldn't help it. This program, 'Agent of Chaos' may be one of those times. But, don't take it from me. I am biased. Every parent thinks that their newborn baby is the most adorable thing, ever. I leave it up to YOU, the listener, to make that evaluation.

Be that as it may, NOTHING will outshine the love and respect that I have for Don and for the other members of the group Negativland and the work they have done. On the whole, I cannot hold a candle to it. If I have ever been able to reach up so high, however briefly, it has only been because I have stood on their shoulders. They may have been the pesky nail that stuck out of the dull woodwork, and got painfully hammered down at one point in their careers. But the hammering of that nail has gone toward BUILDING something valuable and worthwhile for so many: a framework and a recognized legitimacy under which I, and other artists, 'people like us' if you will, have been able to work and live and grow.

Even though, throughout the years, and in the course of my mental illness, which we have never actually even talked about in all the years I have known them, I may have made them sometimes feel uncomfortable with non-rational or even downright bizarre or inappropriate behavior, they have all ALWAYS always been nice to me, and supportive of me. It has meant the world to me.

In terms of this recording I wanted to especially thank 'WTFBraah' for the consistently excellent work of short, straight-forward and effective sample-based collage audio artwork, usually of a political nature, that they do and who have a number of pieces in this recording. I am in a state of awe.

Also a special thanks goes out to 'Beau of the Fifth Column', on Youtube, for whom I have the greatest admiration especially during the last few months. While I do not know Beau, and have never spoken with or corresponded with him, and really actually know next to nothing about him, based on his video commentary efforts, I regard him as a true patriot and a thoughtful. honorable and courageous man of conscience. He has my deepest respect.

Also, a heartfelt thanks to the incredibly wonderful Randy Rainbow who appears in a number of NCN programs but not this one. His political song parodies almost consistently reach a Tom-Lehreresque level of comedic and artistic perfection and frequently not only able to hit the artistic 'trifecta' of eliciting not only 'the good', 'the beautiful' and 'the true' but are amazingly able to fit in 'the drop dead hilarious' in there as well. Thank you, Randy, for helping to keep me laughing throughout the insanity of the Trump years. You are better than a million therapists and I will always love you, but, you know, not in a creepy, stalky kind of way.

I also wanted to thank Seth Meyers of Late Night and Jimmy Kimmel of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Your wit and humor, your impeccable focus and timing, which somehow you are able to do consistently LIVE and in one take, which you make SEEM effortless, but to me it's like omg how the fuck do you DO THAT? is something that makes me want to continue living. Your expertly and thoughtfully composed and presented comedy, throughout the last 4 years, along with other comic artists such as Rainbow, has not only helped myself and countless others psychologically maintain during this time, but I believe that your work actually has literal political value. By ridiculing the ridiculous, and by regularly, as the British say, 'taking the piss' out of a rampaging tyrant, you are exposing him for the utter buffoon that he is. YOU ARE the little kid, in the fable, pointing out to people that the Emperor is in fact standing their buck naked. And I think that history should appreciate that by justly undermining the abuses of that tyrant's authority, it has diminished in the public's mind, the LEGITIMACY of that authority which is something that needs to be done. Because every laugh you elicit by showing what a fucking IDIOT he is, makes it THAT MUCH HARDER for them to install the nightmarish fascist scenario that they do much want to bring about. Because the other politicians, that we got in there, are for the most part just ROLLING OVER on this shit, And while you may never ever read these words, I want to say that YOUR WORK, is better than theirs. YOU are the actual revolutionaries of conscience, the foot soldiers in that battle which is a battle for the freedom of all of us.

If Donald Trump is the 21st Century's nightmarish caricature version of this culture's Archie Bunker, you have beautifully, expertly and diligently foiled the ignorance and the hate of that era by being our national Rob Reiner.

(Notice, that I did not say 'Meathead').

If there is in fact a personal force of GOOD in this Universe that we can call "God", then you are truly doing His work. It has been the joy and slack of my life to have the ability, the means, and the opportunity to propagate your message and to share that work with others.

If my stupid little fee-free media mixes ever do come up on your radar, it is my hope that you do not mind my making you all de facto field correspondents for my silly Cynical Network.

How truly wondrous it would be if you actually thought that it was COOL.

It is, and always has been, my intention to use the fruit of your art in order to proselytize, not pirate, not profit. with the hope that your valuable and excellent efforts reach a larger audience, that might otherwise never heard of you and what you are doing. I'd like to think of that sort of thing as 'having a culture' and a human conversation about things which matter to us all.

After all, a big part of the reason I put these audio research projects together is to increase my own understanding of the subject matter at hand, and to communicate that understanding to the world around me.

Thank you ALL for being a part of that understanding. I may never ever get to actually meet, speak, know or spend time with any of you within the course of my lifetime. But in a way, I feel that I already have.

We are all bozos on this bus, doing what we can to make sense out of an insane and senseless world and communicating that sense, or even nonsense, to others in the hope of making that world a little bit less senseless. We are all fighting the same and very good fight. And I feel a bit like a member of the dance band on the Titanic when I say that it has been a privilege and an honor working, and fighting, alongside all of you in the commission of that effort.