Blog post

"Old School, New School, Frankfurt School"—Minima Moralia goes punk

Huw Lemmey15 February 2012

A keen writer on music and an extraordinarily sharp theorist, Theodor Adorno once wrote "The task of art today is to bring chaos into order."

His own selection of essays and journalism on music, Quasi Una Fantasia, reverberates with his deep conviction in the human properties of music as a form capable of resisting barbarity. We're not sure, therefore, how he'd feel about Minima Moralia EP.

Inspired by a "glib aside" from Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces, about how Adorno's seminal text of critical theory Minima Moralia would be better realised not as a book but as a punk album, US author, artist and musician Brian Joseph Davies did just that.

A full frontal assault of sub-riot-grrrl trash punk, Minima Moralia EP punctures its own pretentions, but only just. It's good, but also, it's really not good. In fact, it's best summed up by Davis himself- "It's a bad idea."