Mixtape Hyperborea

by Adem Luz Rienspects

MIXTAPE HYPERBOREA is an irreverent, nostalgic, and unique work of literary brilliance.
Return to the halls, classrooms, and parking lots of Golden Sierra Preparatory Academy.
The year is 2007.
Welcome to the future. " Light and breezy, like a more focused version of Harassment Architecture. I hate to say it but the arrogance appears warranted ."
- Zulu Alitspa, Modem Waves

" Throughout there is a surprising, compelling honesty in the exploration of friendship, well-paced against the twists and turns; combining an emotional effect with excitement. The authorial voice is rhythmic, engaging and realizes the characters artfully. The innate humor and joy of the work relates to the powerful emotions of that age."
- Ben List , Austin Macauley

" So lame it cuts back to being cool again. "
-Ogden Nesmer, I Pray to the Hungry God

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction

237 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2023

Reviews

[MarkiemarkXXIV · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck me I want to go back. Take me back bros. What a goddamn guilty pleasure.

[Jesse Larkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started on Tuesday April 25th 2023 and finished on Monday May 1st 2023
A year in the life of a senior at a private high school. We follow him and his mundane life as he comes to evolving conclusions about the nature of reality and his and his friends place in it
He is a thoughtful observer and through him we branch out and are given three dimensional portraits of others tangentially connected
The characters are living an insular suburban paradise existence created by the structure of the school year
It exists in the sort of limbo of the safety net of childhood before entering the adult world.
The central character has a recurring mantra that takes on new meaning as the story goes along
At first a declaration of a state of presence and mindfulness evolves and reveals an inner desire to stay in this paradise longer.
It’s a very subtle coming of age story without ever faulting into the sensationalism of a hallmark moment
You get a sense of interconnectivity, of humanity learning from one another
The eternity of youth and trying to capture it while never embracing it in its moment
I could tell early on that I wasn’t gonna want the experience of reading this to end. It’s one of those
No overarching plot which is also reflective of the thematics but always oriented and progressing forward thanks to the structure of the school year
Full of moments of insight and beauty
Not some deconstructionist view of it just the purity of its possibilities
This is not an ironic piece of art it is as honest as can be
Clear efficient writing mixed with confident spiritual tangents
Free spirited liberated prose capturing that irreverent South Park/Wonder Showzen aesthetic inherent in the comedic camaraderie of a boy’s youth.
Riddled with playful humiliation ritual banter of feux emasculation and dominance scenarios
Raw unapologetic characters
Every word is authentic
The writing creates the space for you to react however you want to a certain moment
Brief engaging chapters that keep you tearing through it
Dreamy landscape imagery
Hauntingly vivid scenes great at sustaining tension for long periods of time
Laugh out loud funny
Time capsule in every sense of the word
Ripped straight out of the blurry memories of my childhood
Candid high school photographs sprinkled throughout adding to the atmosphere and the inexplicable feeling of the era
The playlist was curated very well
It was tailored to the period and lent to creating a cinematic mood and a more sensory experience
Lyrics from the soundtrack paired with moments perfectly
Particularly transcendent for me during a passage involving Mozart’s Lacrimosa and whenever the scenes matched up with slowdive
Chapter 9 might be one of my favorite passages in any book period it was electric
Pop culture references had thematic overlaps; parallels with the structure, chapter juxtaposition, and themes of the story
I was brought to tears on more than one occasion.
Left with heartwarming full body chills
Incredible shit

[GnosticShockmaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if the author has written anything before, I don't know if the other reviews of this book on goodreads and amazon are genuine or bullshit from people the author knows, I don't even know if this story was just intended to be some kind of 4chan shitpost. It doesn't matter. This book is actually a piece of art. It captures the feelings of growing up as a boy in the 2000s absolutely spot on. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that the author seems to be to young to have graduated in 2008. Yes, there are many things which a readership in 2023/24 will find politically incorrect (because they are), but the book doesn't shy away from showing how it used to be, without romanticizing it too much. Its just an honest look at how teenagers used to communicate und socialize back then. Its a heartwarming nostalgia trip and it manages to do this while being one of the funniest storys I have ever read.

A big recommendation and I'm looking foreward too more books from the author.

[.::..::.:.:::.:. :.::.:....:::.:. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing else really captures the vibe of late 2000s / early 10s adolescence, the irreverent bullying and freedom, kinda plotless but these unforgettable moments and scenes.

[Senator Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

reminded me of my time as a shitty teenager. great read.

[Agerius · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to shake the feeling that this book began as one thing and then turned into another during the writing process. The aesthetic markers point you in the wrong direction: Harassment Architecture, /pol/ and /r9k/ greentexts, Bret Easton Ellis, Fallout: New Vegas total conversion mods, Drive, strong opinions on bump stock bans. Perhaps it was intended to be more of that at one point. But what it really is, at its core, is Superbad. Teenagers being funny assholes with each other, desperate to ignore the encroaching and inevitable gloom of adulthood. It makes sense that that movie was released in 2007, the same year that this book largely takes place, and if this is indeed at least in part a memoir, that puts the author at nearly exactly the same age I am. We’re drawing from the same well of cultural artifacts.

But that’s not exactly the case- Rienspects is very clearly looking back on 2007 from 2025, only half-able to remember the speech patterns and aesthetic markers of that time. This gives the material the particularly nocturnal and somewhat bitter touch I’ve always associated with straightforward nostalgia. We can rarely, if ever, perfectly recapture the past: here, the slang is a little off, the conversations a little too cleanly arranged, 2007 in memory rather than as experienced. No one was playing The Cure at a party in 2007, even one occupied by kids from a private prep school. But you would certainly remember them being played if you were a mid-millennial that got really into /mu/core and wanted to remember things as being a little more literary than they actually were. This could be seen as a flaw, but I think this obvious tension between memory and reality is what makes it more interesting. Would I like this as a straight nostalgia trip? Probably, since it’s geared toward the very exact slice of the generation I occupy. But it would be a lesser work for it.

It’s hardly perfect. Mixtape Hyperborea is badly in need of an editing pass. It’s self-released and a little amateurish and it shows. Typos, formatting errors, some particularly tortured sentences that end up not meaning much through their deliberately maximalist prose. The individual pieces within the book are a mixed bag and I feel the best ones are very obvious. Rienspects works better in longer form- there’s an almost direct correlation between the quality of a piece and its length, and the more microfiction-style works are amusing at best and just sort of filler at worst. As always with things like this, though, your personal mileage will vary. It just strikes me that the longer material is the most emotionally vulnerable, and probably the material that was the impetus for the book’s writing in the first place.

Overall: I like it. Am I rounding up out of a personal affection for it? Sure. I think that despite its considerably rough edges, it offers something relatively unique: a take on male adolescence that is not completely poisoned by either irony or hypersensitivity. This isn’t a DFW New Sincerity thing nor is it attempting to manufacture something meaner and more “real.” It’s ultimately fairly simple and straightforward, and within that admirable restraint is something special if somewhat unformed. I imagine his second book, if there is one, will smooth out some of the edges. As it stands, though, it belongs in my collection.

Also Marfan eats doo-doo, Horner is fat, etc.

(Addendum: I did read this while engaging with the “mixtape” conceit of the book. At best it adds some atmosphere, at worst it’s just some background listening. I’d say that playing the included music while reading slightly improves the experience overall but isn’t particularly necessary for your appreciation of it.)

https://hideousrecollection.substack.com

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot describe how this book made me feel. I like this book.

[Guy Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me be honest, here. I was homeschooled. I didn’t have the traditional high school experience, but I did smoke weed, and my friend group was strikingly similar to these kids.

That aside, Mixtape Hyperborea was still a nostalgia trip. It succeeded in filling in a few blanks as if I recovered repressed memories of a life I never lived.

Mixtape is well written, and you’ve suddenly read half the book without realizing it. By the end you’re in sorrow because it’s over. (Which is probably the point.)

To sum it up: If American Pie wasn’t retarded.

[Greg Parchedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based return to the hyperborean years of youth in high school. Nice read to reexamine one’s own experiences during those years. Rather comedic and good insight. Worth a read.

[WhitePillMedia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book might not really have a plot, a main character with a name, or much in the terms of character development but I strongly recommend it. Lots of funny moments, nostalgia for highschool, and wonderful writing. I questioned if some of the povs were needed since they didn't exactly all tie together but those chapters were still well written. Will definitely read more by this author.

[David]

Aggressively kino; wistfully melancholic.

[BE NOT AFRAID OF GREATNESS · Rating 5 out of 5]

goes hard

[pilleater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Self-publishing is a critical activity in 2023. Everything is on the author, and all aspects of the book process have to be done by him. That is not only writing, but also formatting, designing, and releasing the book. This likely has to do with a careless economy that wants to squeeze the function of the worker and get rid of the resources and markets required to sustain a literate audience. With this in mind, that gives the artist total freedom from anyone to publish what they would want on Amazon.com.

Adem Luz Rienspects’ self-published novel, Mixtape Hyperborean, is a special case in that it relies on the auditory senses in a visual format. It compiles a series of vignettes, cued with popular music and “mixes” with the products and technology of the 90s to 2000s. We digress into the many “hyperobjects” of Object-Oriented Ontology and make sense of the world around us through collage and the object’s desire to function with us.

And yes, this novel has a soundtrack! There are 26 songs, or a “mixtape,” that are cued when the text tells you to play it. The list can be found on the last page. This is assuming that the director, Luz Rienspects himself, wants the reader (or “viewer”) to concentrate on a certain scene and the intention of how the text (the “film”) should be read (or “watched”).

It takes place in the year 2007, senior year of high school. I remember the year 2007. I remember going to Barnes & Nobles in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and I bought KMFDM’s (then) new album, “Tohuvabohu” on CD. Lucia Cifarelli sang on half the tracks on that album, it was far from what WWIII or Hau Ruck sounded like. I remember there was an iTunes review of the album, and the record was given 1 star out of 5 because she changed the band’s direction.

How is 2007, not 1997? I realized there were so many similarities over the years. I recall going to FuncoLand in 1997 and picking up the Sonic & Knuckles expansion for Sonic 3 on the Sega Genesis. Maybe some other places, like Camel Beach in Tannersville, Pennsylvania also came to my childhood mind, and I enjoyed the taste of imported Chubby Soda from Trinidad. And Depeche Mode’s Ultra album came out, which I enjoyed as a child.

I am guilty of contributing to “sound poetry” in an age of illiteracy, “social media,” short attention span, dopamine hits, and visual technology overreaching all mediums to a point where we can’t think for ourselves anymore. If we isolate the music from a song and just read the lyrics, then I guess it’s poetry. We forget that music, especially popular music, is rooted in music theory, harmony, and craftmanship that requires a different discipline and skill set than language, writing, and formatting. What remains is performance. Sometimes, it’s not appropriate to “perform” written instructions in a board game or sing a Wikipedia article. This confuses poetry, the aesthetic interest in text, with music or singing, because technology is a superior format. The existential crisis of the poet is that his medium is obsolete unless he becomes a performing singer instead.

The paradigm of Brion Gysin did not die.

What are Hyperboreans? Accordingly, they might have something to do with “innocence and security.” Otherwise, they could be described as people of the north. Maybe these hyperboreans in question are the origins of mankind or the “golden age” of modern living.

Good Morning, Captain plays in the first chapter. I never was a fan of Slint, but mark my word, it meant something to the 2000-era white boys. When we listen to this kind of math rock, we are bombarded with images of “the S symbol with the six parallel lines,” PowerPoint projects, and Mortal Kombat. And like many of us, he called the project file, “Faggot.ppt.”It’s both a music criticism narrative mixed with a cultural memory prose. If a picture has 1,000 words, then a word can have 1,000 pictures. It’s like “recording” everything without a camera. The “poetry” is about the hyperobjects that have power over us.

It’s something like the inlay art of Boards of Canada’s 2005 album, The Campfire Headphase, where we remember the pictures, but don’t add up if they are real or not.

There is also a similar interest found in the work of fiction writer Dennis Cooper and his obsession with “George Miles.” We don’t know if there is a real “George Miles,” or if it is rather a placeholder name for a real person that Cooper grew up with. We can’t tell if the images presented here are also fabricated evidence and meant to dig into a traumatic memory that isn’t real. This is similar to the artificial construction of the “creepypasta” on the internet and the urban legends that are passed as real.

Mixtape Hyperborea gives me that same feeling that this memoir, including the photos in the book, is fabricated with actors and digital filters.

But who knows? I am not here to ruin the magician’s tricks.

…There is a level of homonationalism in the text. Socrates was a well-known historical homonationalist who wanted to improve the lives of the people. Together as a high school clique, “we begin to lift.” There is also the “My dick…” Game Grumps joke, and the cliche of “Who’s the hottest girl in your school?" It’s cute that “she a Mexie,” but negates this as embarassing.

I question the homosexuality of the characters when they jerk off together while watching “A Midsummer Night’s Cream.” I don’t know anyone who has ever done a jerk circle with straight intentions. There is a level of “quiet” intimacy when they look at each other masturbating. How could T.J. comment on Britney Spears being so “fucking hot” when he just masturbated in front of a bunch of high school boys in a no-touch orgy? “Did you beat off?” is an inquiry of “Are you gay?” Dennis Cooper also wrote something similar about gay kids and heroin shooters in his 1994 novel, Try.

Pornography should be beautiful, not ugly. There are a lot of ugly and crude scenes of humorous masturbation in the text, which accidentally comes off as homosexual. Sometimes there is sadism in the text, which I like. Any fictional sex scene should be described as beautiful, but instead, “I should put tobacco on my dick to make it go down easier.” That’s ugly. In this case, there is a large amount of condescending irony that is found in this middle-American culture, from belittlement to anger. “Don’t smoke in the car” is met with “fuck you.”

Nonetheless, Mixtape Hyperborea follows the tradition of Aaron Cometbus, with his long-lasting punk zine to novel format, “Cometbus,” and John Updike’s “A&P,” which advocates dialectical materialism as the new paradigm in creative fiction. The Anarchist collective Crimethinc had a 2001 book called “Evasion” which told, through narrative, how to shoplift and use resources like a homeless person. Mixtape Hyperborea reminds me of Evasion in many ways.

Mixtape Hyperborea follows sentence pauses and jams that read like a song.

Like this,

“The light background music.

The train.

The wind through the trees.

Insects.

The AC.

Everything coheres into a symphony of calming white noise.”

And also something like this,

“Some go past the big rock.
Some take a seat and look out at the horizon.
Some take pictures.
Some sit on boulders and dangle their feet.
Some are telling secrets, others are shrieking with laughter.
Some are skipping rocks, others are rubbing their shoulders.
Some will drop out of college and start selling real estate, some will work at Toyota, then quit Toyota to become a full-time electrician. Some will waitress at a really fancy restaurant, then cheat on their boyfriend with their shift manager. Some will move to Korea for a year.”

Poetry nuggets like these are written throughout the text. And for a second, you forgot that this is a linear narrative. The novel follows the nonlinear function of cultural memory. Any passage that can be read as reminiscent, the novel becomes a sensory experience, that you, the subjective reader, make sense of.

Memory fades away from the work they did. Where are the Hyperboreans now?

The clash of technology and culture plays a huge role. What is the “mixtape” is a printed book, brought upon the new software in 2023 that allows us to make edits and designs that were not possible in the English language. We can’t put a book in a cassette player, but the old technology is invoked again through new tech. It becomes a synthesis of the “old-new” than of the “new-old.” The novel has been digitized as a .docx, .pages, .txt, or whatever popular file type to make of. Its digital reinvention means that what is “novel” can take shape to what the computer limits us to do with it.

This entire time, I though I was going to listen to a literal mixtape, not read a novel!

Mixtape Hyperborea has promo videos that simulate virtual readings to entice you to buy the “product.” The videos alone could pass as art films trying to persuade the visual-minded to get up and read a book for once.

This also brings up the issue of whether Vilém Flusser is correct in Does Writing Have a Future? and Into the Universe of Technical Images. Will people become illiterate in the future because of technology? Or will literacy and writing be engaged only by the elite, and everyone else must suffer from peer pressure internet memes, and delusional Instagram envy? Flusser acknowledges that technology will continue to accelerate, and the medium around us will become a cyborg enhancement. Unlike Marshall McLuhan’s delusional “global village,” Flusser believed that dialectic materialism cannot be contained with ever-increasing post-scarcity technology, and like Fredric Jameson’s criticism of postmodernity, there will be a global crash.

Mixtape Hyperborea will survive the crash when it happens. It’s not just about 2007 and the generation around it. It’s a cultural study of advanced social control technology and how it has influenced preferred aesthetics and memory. The novel is an artifact intended for the post-history period that will eventually come into being. It doesn’t matter if the Hyperboreans are real or not.

Imagination is a social weapon that shall prevail over institutionalized arrogance and gatekeeping.

-pe

10-29-2023

[Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Mostly fine. Occasionally excellent.

[think blue count two · Rating 4 out of 5]

i saw this on a random outspokenly racist guy's page and i was curious based on the premise and the kind of praise it was getting. went in on a whim, with neutral/good expectations.

my arbitrarily high hopes were thrown into doubt right away with a clunky feeling beginning and the music motif, which i found really corny. i also happen think a lot of music our unnamed hero loves is actually fucking stupid.

i had gotten the impression that people were excited by the "raw" edginess of this book- i thought it was going to be some kind of "transgressive" thing. i was planning on being transgressed or, if not, at least i thought i'd be able to see how my sensibilities measured up to those of other netizens. but it was just normal. just real life teen boy stuff. the main character is probably nicer to his classmates than i was at this age. in fact, he definitely was. one of the worst "bullies" from my high school confronted me a few years after we graduated. he was still upset that i had been so mean to him.

so, the beginning felt clunky, the music schtick was lame, and the hype i perceived the book to have generated seemed pretty flimsy. besides straight young men calling each other gay for fun, i could not detect any edge at all.
the tone was fairly irritating at the beginning and there were also stupid inaccuracies - i got way too annoyed when he said Elimidate was an MTV show (it was on basic cable) and he was listening to Deathconsciousness before it was released (maybe it leaked, idk. i hate that album by the way. everyone who likes it can eat shit out of my asshole.) the redundant phrase "bootleg mixtape" made my hair stand on end and the typos were really bad. an early note i took said "Needs an editor. Does not need a second printing."
so, i was really hating this thing for a while, despite coming in hoping to like it.
i was encouraged by the scene with T.J.'s mom discussing the word "faggot" and whether or not it was rightly applied to her son. i felt like she was characterized really well and the interaction had some depth i hadn't been feeling up to that point.
happily for me, things continued to improve from there and generally stayed good. there was a lot of 5/5 material here. the more intense scenes like the new years party and the open mic were really effective. i am impressed and i look forward to more from the author. as a whole book, it could be much more refined and i am sure his next project will be. the main character's philosophizing kind of clumps up in certain places and i think it could have been a better book if that stuff had been more evenly distributed.
i don't really want to break down my takes on any particular themes. i will comment that despite a lot of content that might seem to be "reactionary," i feel this is a work that is above "reaction" (and i am not using the term here to point to any specific worldview by the way). it appears to be getting lumped in with more overtly reactionary(tm) fiction and i'm sure it's going to satisfy that crowd. perhaps this is more a part of the author's objective than i realize. don't know, don't care.
personally, i received this as something written by a peer who evidently looks back with love on the time when we were both young, high-minded churls. i was a pretentious teenage asshole and i did not do a complete 180 or anything of the sort, it is still part of me, and i am glad to read something honoring this part. i don't know how common this is in recent fiction because i am generally really checked out of anything current- some reviewers seemed to take this as a "voice for the voiceless" kind of thing or a rare celebration of disagreeable masculinity and i'm too aloof (disagreeable male trait) to know if that's true or if they're just as oblivious to reality as i am. maybe there really is a dearth of late millennial shithead guy representation and i was lucky to stumble-without-searching upon some that spoke to this real and persistent part of me.
perhaps i was too wrapped up in good feelings by the end but this is the final note i took while reading:
"main character sees life with an artist's eye. or with the eyes of a saint. but saint is funny to say because he feels like a true pagan. maybe there's no difference. beautiful examination of how in time our own lives become our guiding myths. even if sometimes clunky and heavy handed."
honestly, that could have been my whole review. would have cut down on embarrassing posturing and saved me some time writing, too. jesus christ i really didn't mean to write so much LOL

[Zulu Alitspa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hyperborea Mixtape is not a political manifesto. It's a personal manifesto, a dreamride through a nostalgic memescape cultivated and crafted from a combination of shared experience and personal memories, with bursts of staggering sobriety which remind us that the past is not always what we wanted it to be. Although the book begs for comparison to Harassment Architecture, it is utterly devoid of hate or frustration or resentment while capturing the same refreshingly irreverent tone.

The story moves breezily through the narrator's senior year at a private high school, immersing us with unbelievable clarity in the experiences which shaped him into the young man he is, and the experiences which have shown him what kind of person he wants to be. The author has a keen sense for tension and suspense, and despite a lack of overarching storyline or ongoing conflict within Mixtape Hyperborea, you are never bored or confused. There are scenes exploring the whimsical drama of the kindergarten playground, the pointless novelty of middle school mischief, the false maturity of high school, and the oppressive yawning dullness of the life which was waiting for us all along on the other side of graduation which, in our childhood naivety, we had so sadly mistaken for freedom. The author's deft deployment of symbolism results in a conclusion which brings all of these disparate elements together and leaves the reader with a sense of optimism and a yearning desire to shove this book in society's face.

As long as the name Adem Luz Reinspects remains uncelebrated in the world of fiction, we can be sure that The Literary Establishment™ is not interested in the simple truth of the lives we are living.

[P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a high school coming of age story set mostly in 2007 and 2008. One good starting point for this is to recognize how hilarious it is. If you ever laughed at the class clowns in school, or maybe you had your own group of friends with a sense of anarchic comedy, this book will make you laugh until it hurts the way I laughed. Fitting of teenagers, the humor is wildly inappropriate yet the verisimilitude for the shenanigans is spot on. Even when daily internet use was well underway in these years, A.L. Rienspects does show how the internet was not so dominant in our lives the way it is in the 2020s. The internet is only mentioned a few times, and I think these sections were used wisely.
But this novel is not just a ride through humor, drugs and sex. You see a sincere attempt in the protagonist to understand his own views and the world through meditations, proverbs and music. Music is especially part of how he relates his life, and the story has a playlist to help understand the mood. And while the story meanders quite a bit, Rienspects is quite good at reflecting throughout the story and starts to rein it in at the climax, just when you start to think the book had no point. You will begin to feel the story shift as the future begins to loom over the protag and his friends.
While I don't normally go for stories set in grade school, I would still recommend this story. I recommend it especially to people that were in grade school in the 2000s and even if you weren't, it's a great way to understand how life was not too long ago. And for any kind of adult, it's a great retrospective to go back to a world without many rules or responsibilities while savoring some heartfelt wisdom from the author.

[Lazich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the nostagic trip back to highschool but all the hyperborea stuff seemed forced and the random philosophical musings by the narrator frequently interrupted the narrative and contributed little to the actual story. The whole 'mixtape' aspect of the story didn't do much for me either, the interjection of song lyrics happened far too often and it got annoying fast.

[Evan Agovino · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a seed here in the casual, but reflective and wistful tone of capturing a time long gone but this book was seriously undercooked. Felt like it was ping-ponging between actual memories of high school the author had, random subplots with adult characters that were shoehorned in, random high thoughts the author had, and a five-page debate about whether Eminem fell off?

[Thingol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based. Whitepilled. For the people. Total homage to a life we have all lived!

[Adem Luz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it, it's amazing.

[L · Rating 2 out of 5]

why would a high schooler from 2007 think in 4chan lingo

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly captures male friendship in a way most coming of age media fails to, as well as being one of the funniest books I've ever read.