Fresh off the release of their recent single Booty Smashers, Mr. Industry continue their experimental streak with a fictional recipe that explores their musical artistry.
Mr. Industry explore the themes of their recent release through the medium of a narrative recipe for the fictional meal that is ‘Smashed Booty’. The imaginary recipe is inspired by Mr. Industry’s recent single Booty Smashers, which sees the Canberra outfit flit between dungeoncore and pop-punk with the ease of a band ten years their senior.
While Booty Smashers undoubtedly showcases a group of artists committed to experimentation, Mr. Industry’s innovation goes well beyond their music — a fact evidenced by their decision to use a recipe as a storytelling device to explore their discography. Evoking the modes of Julia Child with the writerly flair of J. D. Salinger, Mr. Industry present what might be Happy Mag’s most daring curated piece to date.
Below, the band format their exploration of Booty Smashers as a 15-step guide to cooking ‘Smashed Booty’, complete with an ingredients list and narrative asides that speak to the themes and inspirations behind their work. Dust off your aprons and dive into Mr. Industry’s ‘Smashed Booty’ recipe below, and keep an eye out for the band’s upcoming music set for release throughout the rest of this year.
15 Steps to the Perfect Smashed Booty:
This winter, warm up your dinner party, family dinner, or simply indulge yourself with the most delicious Smashed Booty using this simple recipe!
What you’ll need:
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed and diced
- Basil leaves, finely diced
- Virgin olive oil
- 300g of ground beef
- 1 whole Ice Berg lettuce
- 2 tablespoons of the forbidden Himalayan spice
- Knife
- Chopping board
- Your 2nd amendment right to bear arms (may be region blocked)
- 1 jar of Artichoke hearts
- 1 whole onion, sliced
Method:
Start by mixing your garlic, basil and virgin olive oil with the forbidden Himalayan spice in a mortar and pestle.
Season your ground beef with a little salt and pepper (some may say that this permanently toughens the ground beef, but they are lying to you). Put into a hot pan with virgin olive oil and begin frying your beef. Cut the leaves of your ice burg lettuce into small, equilateral triangles. Make sure to be as precise as possible with the shape, this is very important.
Sarah O’Neil was a friend of mine. She introduced me to this recipe. I met her back in high school. I remember seeing her around when I first moved here, but it wasn’t until ninth grade that we started to get close. I didn’t have many friends at the time. I don’t know what it was about me but I never seemed to have what the other kids wanted.
I occasionally orbited around the edges of different circles, but I was never ‘one of the boys’. I typically was there out of circumstance. Maybe I’d share a class with a couple of people and then follow them out to lunch. Maybe there’d be no more seats left in the library so I’d sit next to whoever I could. No one ever complained about my presence, and no one ever sung my praise. No one would even say my name.
Some of these cliques I’d simply follow around because I had nowhere else to go. I’m not sure they even knew I was there. One day I set a garbage bin on fire. I don’t know why, I’ve never really been the type to act out. Even then, I wasn’t really acting out, I was just bored during recess so I took off my glasses and magnified the light of the sun onto a brown paper bag in the bin.
It caught alight. The other rubbish caught alight. Suddenly the bin was ablaze. Everyone was looking. I could feel their eyes. Before I knew it was in detention every day for a week. And so was Sarah O’Neil. The teacher didn’t care what happened in detention; burnt out husk of a man waiting for the day his contract ran out, spent the days looking through catalogues of hunting paraphernalia and watching naughty videos on the classroom computer.
Sarah used to talk, she didn’t care who too, she didn’t care what about. A constant stream of whatever she wanted to say. She liked horror movies and nineties rock. She caught the 109 bus to school every day. Her mother was a bitch, she loved her dog, she once went to Disneyland and rode Space Mountain thirty-three times. After that week in detention I never saw her again.
Around this point you should quickly glance out at the street from your kitchen window to make sure no one has caught on to what you are doing. They cannot know.
Pour your artichoke hearts into the pan with your beef and stir briskly. Do not look away from the pan as at a moments notice the artichoke hearts could burn. This could present a fire hazard; an unwieldy danger in your place of residence.
Scoop your garlic, basil, and Himalayan spice mix into a microwave safe bowl. Add your sliced onion and microwave for 10 minutes.
There’s something living in my walls. I hear it scuttle around in the night, moving from room to room. It tries to be stealthy, but I have keen ears. I can hear it. I don’t know when it started, or how it got here, but I have a dark sense that it was present long before I arrived. I searched for the symptoms on the internet to try and work out what it is. Its best guess was a rat or some other small rodent. It’s not. I swear I heard it whisper to me once. I couldn’t make out the words but it was trying to say something. Whatever it is, it isn’t human.
That voice was not the work of God. I haven’t slept in weeks. I stay up, waiting to hear its call, but most nights it just scuttles around, doing this and that and the other. I knocked on the wall once to see what it would do. It just scampered away. I guess it has since lost interest in communicating with me. It moves in patterns.
Starting in the living room, then to the bathroom, then to the kitchen, then into the bedroom. I wonder if it hears me in the day, pondering what that strange thing in its walls is. That strange inhuman noise that it makes as it moves from the living room, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, to the bed. Over and over and over again. My door stays locked all the time; no one goes in or out. This house is rotten to its core.
Take the garlic, basil, Himalayan spice, and onion mix out of the microwave and let it rest. By now your beef and artichoke hearts should be a charcoal black. Mix everything into a glass bowl and refrigerate. You may notice that it doesn’t look like the photo. It will never look like the photo.
I’ve spent hours staring into the drain in my sink. I swear I saw a glint of light reflecting off a camera lens. I cannot look away. I don’t know why they are watching me. For so many years I just ignored it, the glances from passer by’s, the strange comments from my teachers and my boss.
The joke everyone else is in on. Japanese comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, or Nasubi, spent fifteen months trapped alone in an apartment against his will. Naked and near starving he survived on rice and dog food which he won in magazine sweepstakes. Fourteen-hundred sweepstakes a day he would write, only ever winning a handful. On the other side of his walls, a TV studio.
They mocked his appearance and taunted him with the aroma of a variety of cooked meats. Every Sunday 17 million Japanese people would tune in to watch. On August 14th, 1936 the last public execution took place in the United States of America. Three years later the last public execution by guillotine was held in France. I don’t know what atrocities they committed to deserve such a fate. I doubt the people in the crowed did either when they arrived to witness the spectacle.
There has been no true evolution of the human mind since the days of gladiators in ancient Rome. One day soon this world will fall apart, and the dams we built in our minds will come crashing down. Human beings rely on each other to survive. Alone we are nothing. It’s just me and the Other in my apartment.
After 3 days, take your Smashed Booty mix out of the refrigerator and reheat on the stove.
Serve to family and friends.