Text on innerside of booklet:

This project was a reaction to the brutal killings of innocent people by members of the NYPD, the indifference by that administration, and the subseqent lack of prosecution of the officers involved. The killings of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismund (among others) have become international news items and any reiteration of the situation is futile. Police brutality has been extensively protested in the past years yet still we are at the hands of a system which disallows any dialogue with the public while maintaining a "protect-and-serve" facade with the supposed good of the community in mind. The actions speak for themselves and we are mere musicians - listen to the music. We asked the participants to simply address police brutality in any manner they desired. About half of the people already had tracks concerning this issue.

The blatant police brutality this nation has witnessed in the past decade should be proof enough for people that community policing is still only conceptual and rarely applied to real life. While we wallow in our so-called prosperity one would think that ideas of community policing may evolve and become policies. But one key role of the police is to protect the rich and their interests, particularly real estate. The motivations of individual police officers are not so cut and dry, but we are speaking of a system; a system that is increasingly used to erode public space and gentrify through mass arrests, transforming prisons into prime real estate and prisoners into a bastion of cheap laborers.

But we are only musicians and another diatribe isn t really going to change much. This project is a confrontation and vocalization of discontent, not only with the Brutal Police Menace, but also with the BPM culture we are part of; a culture whose technological agility has the potential to subvert these outmoded systems of control. Unfortunately, the majority of musicians, designers and other creative minds who have the resources and savvy to change the murderous direction of this country refuse to address it. Is it possible that a whole generation of bright people are being bought out by the corporate world to instill in the general population an illusion of prosperity and well-being?

We hope that what you see here is a new direction; a selection of cuts by people who are willing to use the insanely advanced technology we have been given (or rather, worked our asses off to purchase) to question and confront the growing police presence in this country. These are people and bands who play shows before protests to galvanize the event, establish free parties in a city where dancing is illegal, plunder music to create a message while risking litigation and take the time to donate tracks to projects like this, sometimes at the risk of l losing an audience who shuns radical politics. Obviously the world of underground dance music or electronic music or whatever it s called would be quite boring if everyone approached their music with the same Crass-like urgency that we re paying homage to here. A little engagement with the real world, however, would do wonders for a whole (sub?)culture too obsessed with conceptual abstraction and its own minutiae.

This is also an experiment in philanthropy, with a portion of profits going to the computer center at ABC No Rio, a Lower East Side community center here in New York. This reflects our desire to encourage technological activism on a creative, grassroots level. What follows is a profile of ABC No Rio in their own words. We have also compiled essays, lists and links related to the aforementioned topics at our website Crucial-systems.com. Finally, we would like to thank everyone involved with this project.

Peace, Criterion and Heather