Articles from the Lazarus Corporation

The Marina Experiment: Interview with Marina Lutz

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:54:48 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/the-marina-experiment

The Marina Experiment

Filmmaker Marina Lutz has produced a controversial and overwhelmingly powerful film called The Marina Experiment, which has gained awards and accolades as it has been shown across film festivals in Australia, USA and Europe.

Culled and compiled intensely by Marina from a huge archive of photos, Super-8 film and audio recordings that her father amassed of her from her birth to the time she left home. The Marina Experiment documents his perverse, objectifying, controlling and abusive footage into an omnipotent and revengeful short film, turning her fathers lens and gaze back on himself.

He becomes the confuser and the abuser. This short film deals with child abuse, cruelty, surveillance, control, revenge and human rights. The Marina Experiment is gaining awards and accolades from all over the world.

Dug Degnin and I interviewed Marina Lutz in 2010 and tried to find out more about the making of The Marina Experiment , Marina’s experiences and what she has planned for the future. Marina spoke openly and honestly about her experiences and The Marina Experiment.

Dug: When I first watched The Marina Experiment on the Brink I found it harrowing, but I’ve seen it five times or so now and it’s a great piece of work. An amazing film.

Thank you very much

Paul: Similarly when I first watched it about 18 months ago it brought tears to my eyes. I watched it a few times back then and then recently came back to it and have watched it a lot. Is the edit slightly different now?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. The only thing I would have changed was I had a couple of sections of the audio tweaked. They were very old tapes and there were certain areas when I digitised them that were still bad quality. I needed my father to be very clear in these certain areas so I just had those slightly tweaked. I don’t remember the edit being different.

Paul: It must have been just me. Could we just establish some sense of chronological order regarding the making of the film. Am I right in saying this recording, archiving and abusive objectifying your father carried out for sixteen years or so?

Yes, from the day I was born to the day I left home.

Dug: Did you know about the films and this archive of observation material or was it a surprise to you? Did you just open this door and see all of this stuff?

Well, here’s the thing and I know this sounds kind of odd, obviously you would think I would know that it existed because I was there. I could see that my father was filming me or whatever he was doing, but I really had no recollection of it until I went to clear out the storage room and found the boxes.

Dug: How did that feel?

What’s happened now is my only memories are of the archive. I’ve been looking at it for so long. My therapist tells me that it is very common when people have been abused in any way for them to block out anything like a memory that could bring back something unpleasant.

Paul: So you discovered these archives, was that after your father had passed away?

Well, it was way after. My father died in 1986 or 87, on Pearl Harbor Day, actually. I found everything in 1997, which was when I had moved back to New York from Los Angeles. When I had moved to LA in 1992 I put everything into storage that I had and left it. So when I came back I wasn’t going to pay for storage and took everything out. That’s when I discovered it all.

Paul: You said you were sixteen when you left home, I wondered if you can tell us how you were as a person then. I guess there may have been an identification with your fathers intrusiveness for you?

I was very not present in my own life. I had so much going on. It was 1977 when I was sixteen and punk rock time. I moved in with a bunch of punks and I was very involved in the punk scene here in New York.

I don’t think I was aware of anything until I was medicated and paying close attention in therapy before I decided I wanted to work on stuff and make changes in my own life.

Paul: What was that punk scene like back then?

Boy, I don’t really know where to begin. The first people that I met were The Cramps. They used to work in a record shop just down the street from my high school, they were so weird looking I wanted to get to know them. So I used to hang out at the record shop. The first issue of Punk Magazine had just come out. I was meeting all these people. I met John Holmstrom (the editor) of Punk Magazine and, I don’t know, it was just fun. It was a place I met all my, uhm, a whole bunch of other losers and rejects that I felt I was comfortable with.

Paul: In what way did you feel comfortable with that burgeoning punk scene?

Because I was going to an all-Catholic girls school my whole life, in a wealthy part of town and I never fit in. My parents weren’t even wealthy. I don’t know how they paid for me to go to that school. So when I discovered the punk scene it was a place where I felt very comfortable. I hung out at CB’s and Max’s and went out every night to see bands.

Paul: So you would have seen The Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Richard Hell and the Voidoids?

Yeah, I saw everybody and they all used to play together. On any given night you’d go and it would be Suicide opening for The Ramones, or The Ramones playing with Patti Smith, it was just constant fantastic music and great people. A lot of fun.

Dug: I lived through the same period myself in London, hanging out in Wardour Street, at the Marquee and the 100 Club, places like that. But for me, and I don’t know whether you can relate to this, it gave me, well, I never really fitted in my town, do you know what I mean? It gave me such a sense of freedom and it seemed a very non-judgemental environment, I don’t know if it was the same for you?

Absolutely, yeah, totally and I loved that there was nothing to really separate anybody out; everybody was a bit of a wanderer, didn’t know what they were doing, maybe lost, and it just felt really correct. It was like I had found some other people who were lost like I was. When I went on tour with The Gun Club in 1984 we went to UK.

Paul: That must have been great. Wow! Jeffrey Lee Pierce. He’s sadly passed away now. Just going back to The Marina Experiment, you have used the film, photos and audio that your father made of you, turned it around and made a film all about him. It raises issues of objectification, abuse, control and power. That sounds like hard hard work putting that all together, how was that process for you? Was it a cathartic one?

Well, everybody asks that.

Paul: It’s a good question!

And I don’t know. I never really remember any particular point of catharsis, but what’s happened now is that I’ve… it’s like that classic “I took lemons and I made lemonade” kind of story except I didn’t know I was doing that. I wasn’t a filmmaker before, I just started trying to edit and I discovered that editing was a new way of organising information. I spent ten years with this archive, organising it and re-organising it and I didn’t know what to do with it. I just kept filing and un-filing, going through everything, I just became …uuhhmm…

Paul: Obsessional?

Yeah, it was an obsession; I just felt I was going to find some sort of clue or answer, which I didn’t find in the archives.

Paul: You wrote a play, didn’t you?

Yeah, right, what happened is before I did The Marina Experiment, I wrote a play called A Play with Myself and that was accepted into competition into the New York International Fringe Festival. I think it’s an arm of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And that’s when I discovered the editing, because that was the first time I had edited some of the archive to go together with the play. It was really a one-woman show and I did a sort of a stand-up routine in front of a screen that was showing a film. That actually went from birth up to the present, all the way through the punk years and all that.

That was when I really started editing and that was a lot easier as I did it with a lot of humour. It wasn’t as painful as when I sat down to do The Marina Experiment. That’s because that came out of anger.

Paul: Where did you start work on the film?

Well, I had just moved to Melbourne and I was living in musician Mick Harvey’s studio. He and his wife Katy — Katrina Beale — are good friends of mine and they gave me this amazing opportunity to come and live in their studio. That’s where I made my film. I don’t think I would have been able to make that film if I wasn’t in a place where I felt very safe.

I have known them, I don’t know, over 25 years and they have never, ever judged me. They are the kindest most wonderful human beings and they really just let me be me. They were very encouraging. Mick was fantastic, you know, he gave me some music for the film and set up his recording studio for me. I recorded all the narration there. Also I had time. I took a bit of a hiatus so I had five months just to work on this thing.

And once again, I get a little obsessive when I am working on something. I was really focused, and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I would edit this little bit and edit another little bit. I kind of think of it like… I heard this David Lynch interview where he was asked, “How do you make your films?” and he said “I write a bunch of scenes on some index cards, then I shuffle them and I’ve got a movie.”

So that’s what I did. Instead of writing it I just put audio and pictures together. I didn’t storyboard or script it; in fact the only script really was the narration. But I sort of just recorded the narration separately and just put things together the way they felt right. It’s just that I sort of lucked out!

Paul: I’m sure it wasn’t quite like that. You put all your energy into the film for five months or so. It’s great to have that unconditional acceptance and love.

Director Marina Lutz editing her film,
© 2007 Katrina Beale

Yeah, they taught me what that is, because I didn’t know what that was. Because I didn’t learn that from my family, but they’re a part of my extended chosen family I guess. So they really taught me what unconditional love is. On my website there is a charcoal drawing of me that Katy did when I was editing. That’s what I use whenever people ask me for a picture of the Director; I usually send them Katy’s drawing.

Paul: It’s a great drawing. It’s really good to see the awards the film has won recently, from the USA, Australia and Europe.

Yeah, thanks. The Levante festival award was in Italy. It was for the screenplay, but what screenplay? I think it was for the narration. Sometimes I think what happens is that they want to acknowledge you, but they don’t know what award to give you. So maybe it’s not entirely correct and that’s fine.

Paul: How does that feel, winning these awards?

Oh, it’s fantastic. The first one was from Super Shorts, which is a London Festival. That first award I won, I was ecstatic. This whole thing has just been incredible, a continuing journey. I hate that word; I never would have expected what has happened. You know the first festival I submitted to it got rejected. I thought it was the end of the world. I felt so awful, I cried, I berated myself, “Why did you even try to submit to anything? You’re pathetic”, a lot of pain and hurt, it was so awful.

Paul: It’s putting yourself and your work out on the line isn’t it? Opening up to the world.

But it obviously turned itself around a lot.

Paul: Yeah, because you found the strength to submit again and again.

Yeah, and now what’s happening is that I stopped submitting a couple of months ago and now the festivals come to me. They request the film. And then they offer to pay for me to come to the festival. It’s amazing. I’m leaving again in a couple of weeks to go back to Paris where I will be speaking at The Sorbonne. And then I’m going to a film festival in Spain. They pay my airfare, my hotel and three meals a day!

Dug: Wow, so they should!

They treat me like a rock star! For, like, an eighteen minute movie. It’s extraordinary. I’m just very happy.

Paul: Absolutely. You look very happy!

Well I got, well, I guess it’s kind of revenge! My father would be mortified if he’d seen what I’ve done with it.

Paul: I was thinking about what I got out of the film, there’s a lot of detail in the narration, the captions and I was thinking about the bullfight scene at the beginning.

Dug: Yeah, that’s a very very strong beginning.

The bullfight I actually attended with my father in 1971 in Portugal. They don’t actually kill the bull there, that’s why it’s just running around injured.

Paul: I thought that shot was something you added in?

No, everything came from my father.

Paul: Dug and I were talking earlier on and we were thinking who is the bull and who is the bullfighter meant to be in this scene?

Right. That’s a very good question.

Paul: There are a lot of themes in The Marina Experiment and we talked about objectification, control, loss of childhood, loss of innocence, cruelty. Image is king in today’s world, the outward sign of your wealth and status. I was thinking also about the amount of CCTV everywhere and surveillance today. You were under surveillance too.

Yeah. We have that in New York, in fact there’s a cable channel that just shows CCTV from locations 24 hours a day.

Paul: I can believe that. We are objects again and we have no control over the images. It made me think of themes you bring up in The Marina Experiment; that we are all watched and objectified nowadays. Your archive footage came from the 60s and 70s, Was the camera and taking photos very popular back then?

Well, my father was always a still life photographer and he was a photographer in the Navy, so that would have been in World War II in the 40s. He had a lot of camera equipment and I think that Kodak put out the first Super-8 camera in 1965/1966, so my father got it the moment it came out. That's where the Super-8 footage starts; I mean most of the footage he took was incredibly boring. That’s why I don’t use a lot of it in the film. We used to travel all over Europe in the summer and, you know it was in all ways very 1960s and my parents would take all this footage. We’d come back and they'd have a cocktail party for their friends. They’d set up a little screen and people had to sit there and watch us, you know, driving through the Alps.

Paul: I had an Uncle that used to do that when we were young. We always used to go away with my cousins and my Mum and Dad, two brothers and he would film everything and we’d get home and then watch it. You’re exactly right. Then there would be another showing for the Grandparents.

Yeah, so there’s a lot of boring stuff like with cats rolling around, but the thing that’s so weird is we'd be driving and because of how the camera worked, you film something, put it down and you pick it up maybe a week later and go and film something else. So what was happening was I’d be watching these movies where we’d be driving through the mountains and then all of a sudden there’s an image of me with the cat, with my breast showing a few minutes and then you know, it goes back to some other scenic thing, so these little bits would just pop up in the middle.

Paul: Shit, abuse roulette.

That’s just weird, it was alarming.

Paul: Yeah, you kinda stopped, Marina, and I didn’t know what to say for a second, other than that’s quite unnerving and hurtful.

Dug: Yeah ,I would have found that quite frightening, that experience of all of a sudden these things popping out at you.

It was just like I didn’t understand what I was seeing or what was going on or why that was. It just felt so uncomfortable, awful and I think initially I wanted, I needed other people to see it to confirm that what I was feeling was right, you know, and I still feel that way about the film.

Dug: Some validation to confirm your feelings?

But it’s doing its job now, confirming that I’m not the only one who sees things that look wrong. So I really needed other peoples eyes to confirm that.

I’ve also gotten a lot of people that are skeptical, that look at me and think “Oh well, as an editor you can take liberties and whatever”, and of course I took liberties as an editor and I tried to make him as awful as I could, but I didn’t make up the material.

Paul: A friend of mine who watched film with me earlier on this week, was leaning that way, not totally skeptical but just peeling back the layers. The role of the editor; where you put the words, the sequences, the audio samples, you know that kind of stuff. It can all be played around with and they were saying, apart from some visually obvious parts, where else exactly is any abuse?

What, of me?

Paul: Yeah, there were a couple of shots that clearly weren’t right.

Well, the thing is that’s interesting is because people hear the word abuse and think that just has to do with beating or rape, physical stuff, but there are other types of abuse which I think are just as awful. One is emotional abuse and the other is neglect which is a very potent and awful form of abuse and I mean all those things you know will effect everyone for the rest of their lives, no matter how much therapy you go through or what you do, it’s part of you.

I hate that I always fall back on my therapy speak or psychological stuff but I’ve been in it so long that's what I know a lot about. My therapist explained to me what a good parent does is they hold up a mirror so the child can see themselves in the mirror and grow into who they are. What my father did was put the mirror in front of my face. So he could see himself in me. So basically he obliterated my personality and my growing by doing that, so that’s a form of abuse.

I don’t know what kind of abuse you’d call it. Obviously some people have seen that because I’ve been at a fair amount of Human Rights festivals as well. Document Seven from Glasgow is the one that’s put my film on at the Wimbledon College Of Art. I was in that festival. So someone from the college had seen my film. and specifically requested they show it as part of the screening, so it’s nice.

Paul: The Marina Experiment to me is very immediate. I can see how it would fit in to a Human Rights theme. It’s a very powerful film. A very powerful piece.

Dug: You know the sequence when you’re in the stocks? I was thinking it would be the sort of fun me and my kids would have. You know I’d say “go and stick your head through there”, and I’ll take a photograph, that’ll be a laugh, but then there’s a piece later when you’re older in the stocks again. Was that like a re-visit to a place where you used to go?

Well, there’s a lot of Amish country around in America where they have these stocks so I’m sure it was a different location but they always wanted to take the same picture. For me, you know, I used it to show that’s how I felt about my whole childhood and life. All they were doing was putting me into some kind of restraint.

Paul: Yes, and on view at the same time.

Dug: A no-escape situation.

That’s right.

Paul: It made me think of when our eldest daughter was born I remember taking lots of photos of her, I was just blown away because there was another human being here that we’d created and your film made me re-think, or re-check what I was trying to do with the photos, what was my intention?

But every parent does that, I think.

Paul: Yeah, but watching the film again reminded me to re-think back to then again and to ask what was the intention I had? Was that image alright to take? And yeah, I’m perfectly happy with them all. As you say, most parents do that.

Yeah, I think they do with the first child anyway, because people I know that were a second- or third-born have like one picture of themselves! Now it’s even worse because it’s so easy with all the digital cameras and video recorders, I mean it’s just endless footage. There’s so much out there. I think when my father was doing it, it was much less common for anyone to have such an enormous collection of material. There is a fine line between having memories and then it just sort of steps over the line.

For me the audio was the most damning. It was the hardest for me to work with and listen to and that’s why the film is only eighteen minutes long. When I sat down to make it I was really gung-ho and thinking perhaps I could make this into a feature and once I started editing and all that, I just got to a certain point when I couldn’t even look at it anymore and I put it away for a year.

Paul: It certainly is heavy. The stuff around the Christmas presents and the “no, no, no” and “let’s do it nicely”. Those audio parts are very haunting.

Yes, just being bullied all the time.

Dug: Yeah the bit where he says “Marina, don't touch the microphone” and there’s something else behind that with that lovely music and little sweet voice in the background. I was thinking, “Whoa, where’s this sending me?” It seemed as though there was a lot of control there.

Absolutely. I was a small child and all you want is your parents love and you don’t know anything else and you end up doing what they want you to do or else they won’t love you.

Paul: I was wondering whether you get to resolve the issue of the bisexuality with your father?

I don’t know the answer to that. But you know some who come to the festivals, they send comments, like the jurors and selection committee, and a couple of those people said why did you dump that on us at the last scene? I guess it was just my cruel joke. I have so many other bits of disparate information that don’t necessarily connect with anything else but they are there and I’m trying to sort of figure it out.

Dug: Can I ask a raw question, Marina? How do you feel about your father now?

I don’t know I feel anything about him now. I actually don’t feel particularly angry anymore, which I think is really good. I don’t really have any feelings about him. I don’t think about him. I mean if I think about anyone, I think about my Mother, but her presence was so minimal. I do miss her. I don’t miss my father. Someone recently asked me “What was your relationship like with your mother?” and I said “not sexual.”

Paul: The Marina Experiment is still running and has more showings coming up in Europe?

Yeah, you can see on the website there’s a lot of things coming up. The one that I’m going to is Play-Doc in Tui-Galicia in Spain. It’s a tiny festival but they’re paying for everything so I thought why not? I’ll meet some interesting people when I go. When I went to the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France I met my producer Christophe Arnaud. You know I have a producer in Paris now? I did an interview for Cahiers du Cinema, which is like a famous French magazine. Every time I go to these festivals I meet all kinds of people and other festival programmers and I feel like all of it is an investment in my new future. I don’t know what that new future is but I’m working on another film already. I’m turning The Marina Experiment into a triptych. That’s the plan. Make two more short films that will eventually be able to be shown as a feature, so I’m working on the second one right now.

I’m very excited about that because I’m in such a different place now from The Marina Experiment, so now I feel much more solid now. And there’s so much more material in the archives so I’m just starting to dig into more things and it’ll be a little different, the next film.

Paul: I really look forward to that, I think The Marina Experiment is going to run for quite a bit.

Oh, you think so? The producer and my friends think it’s just beginning, taking its first baby steps.

Dug: Yeah, tip of the iceberg stuff and it’s going to be awesome for other people to watch.

It’s really interesting you know because of all the accolades and everything I certainly get a fair amount of rejection, I’ve been rejected for about thirty American festivals just in the last month.

Paul: It’s a contentious subject matter, which is why I like it so much!

Yeah, and also I think there’s so many things besides that, like, they may like the film but they don’t know how to program it. A short film generally, unless it’s in an all shorts festival, opens for a feature, so unless they have something that’s sort of dealing with a similar topic they don’t know where to put it. But, yeah, the rejection hurts less.

Paul: What else has been happening?

The Documentary Channel wants to license the film in the US. So if that happens, I will have to take the film off my website.

Paul: So what does that mean exactly? Does that go out across all of America?

Yes. The Documentary Channel is a national satellite television network. It’s great that so many people may potentially watch my film! They did an on-camera interview with me as well which will be shown on a part of their website called DocTalks. I started a Facebook page just for the film that will give out news about The Marina Experiment, showings, festivals, and what I am up to.

Paul: Facebook is a good tool for that kind of information marketing. I will have to look to see if the film/interview will be shown online.

There is a UK production company that has offered to distribute the film online, but I can make more money with broadcasts, so I want to try that first. I have some pending possibilities for broadcasting in France and Spain as well.

Paul: Europe too? That’s cool. Your work deserves that. Your work needs to be seen.

But who would have known that anybody would have wanted to watch this creepy little film?

Paul: Abuse survivors at different stages in their recovery, those who support those who have been abused perhaps, and you, Marina. It’s your revenge. It’s been really great talking to you. Many thanks for being so uninhibited and candid about yourself and The Marina Experiment.

Interview conducted over the pond by Paul Hawkins & Dug Degnin via Skype.

The Marina Experiment: www.themarinaexperiment.com

The Marina Experiment - Facebook page

The Marina Experiment now has a producer and distributor in Paris: Christophe Arnaud (christophe dot arnaud at le-standard dot fr).

Reading Burroughs Reading

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:46:15 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/reading-burroughs-reading

Interview with Michael Stevens, author of The Road to Interzone

The Road to Interzone is the result of a fascination with the works of William S. Burroughs and the literary influence that made his legendary canon of work possible.

Michael Stevens

Here, the raw material of the shaping spirit of the imagination, is analyzed by presenting quotes and selections from Burroughs’ works (novels, interviews, criticism, etc.) alongside the primary literary sources that influenced him.

Also contained herein are listings from the recorded archives of the books Burroughs read through most of his lifetime. Redacted from university archives and WSB’s personal libraries, these listings attempt to catalog the source materials of what was to become Burroughs’ literary legacy.

The Road to Interzone provides the skeleton for an interpretation of the operational processes of influence and the function of artistic inspiration.

Michael Stevens has found the right vein, circulating raw material of the mind of visionary genius in post modern literature and art. His exhaustive compendia and matrix is like the fractal’s pattern bringing similarities that could reveal whole equation. He has provided the reader with the sources of allusion, influences, critiques, and the spirit of scatological obsessions of the late William S. Burroughs, the well-read innovator, inventor, and investigator in literature, art, culture and cosmology. Ezra Pound once advised readers who thought the Cantos too obscure, to just think of them as people throughout history sitting around talking. This book allows me the conversations with Uncle Bill that I unfortunately neglected in his presence. — Charles Plymell

We spoke earlier about the significance of the Literary Outlaw you would always refer to, way back in your early days. In what way did you use that?

Yes, when I first became interested in Burroughs I used to refer back to Ted Morgan’s Literary Outlaw a lot. I would make notes and seek out other authors to read based on Burroughs’ recommendations or his mention of this author or that book. If I found a new lead I would always check to make sure it met Burroughs’ seal of approval.

And when would that have been, Mike?

1990. Early 90s.

What was it that made you bite on Burroughs?

Oh, I picked up Naked Lunch in 1989 for the first time and I hated it. For some reason I picked it up again a few months later and still hated it. It wasn’t until the third try that I got it. I was missing his humor. I didn’t realize how funny he was at first and was using this satirical voice to get across or make people see the savage madness that is the world. Once I figured that out I was onto something. It took some time.

Yeah, I had similar experiences with Naked Lunch. In that it took me some time to get it. So the humour was your door in. Mike, did that mean you then read Burroughs’ work voraciously?

Once I got it, yes. I read everything in print, then I started seeking out the more obscure books. I became a Burroughs junkie. James Musser, out in Forest Knolls, was sort of like my dealer. I spent a lot of my student loans and sold my car to keep up the addiction. In the meantime I was seeking out Burroughs’ influences and his reading because I needed more.

Wow! What was the most challenging area(s) of his work for you?

The Road to Interzone

That’s a good question. The Ticket That Exploded was the most difficult book for me. I love the cut-ups, but that book was very challenging because it completely abandoned all narrative structure, as far as I could tell.

Burroughs excelled in that, chopping up and throwing structure to the north, south, east, and west, in order to create another narrative, a challenging one … did you get through that challenge?

Maybe. I thought that I needed to approach it from a different perspective which is another reason I wanted to research the books/authors he was reading. I needed to know what was going in in order to understand what was coming out.

Which led to some pretty hard-core research on your part. Where did you start, Mike?

Well it all started with notes. I had no intention of putting a book together. I was working in bookstores in the late 90s and spending most of my time seeking out and discovering Burroughs blurbs on books and reading Burroughs looking for references to other works. I moved to Spicewood, Texas in 2000, which was when I decided to make it a full time job to compile my notes and put this book together. I carried around lists. I was a bookscout for ten years with lists falling out of my pocket crazily searching for these books. Most of my reading at the time consisted of what you see in The Road to Interzone.

I like lists. Its an ongoing present time record of where one is within a certain task or discipline. Your book pulls raw data, magical connections and archaeological literary research together. In short, it’s like a never ending pool to dive into … When were you aware that these lists would provide the backbone of your book?

When I moved to Spicewood I decided to put these lists to some use. They would no longer just serve me, but anyone else who was interested in Burroughs, 20^th Century literature, books or research. I tried to see what it would look like in 2001, while in the thick of the work, by putting out a little chapbook called A Distant Book Lifted. That was just a listing of blurbs, intros, and other Burroughsiana that I thought I would test out on the world. It was more successful than I’d expected it to be. Folks were interested and I had no idea. A Distant Book Lifted was sort of the rough draft for sections two and three of the current book.

That would have been very encouraging for you, Mike, there seems to be much interest in Burroughs; his motivations and areas of enquiry were so far reaching. That background reading, his reading from a long way back must have been a mountain to climb. How did you find the energy to follow your muse?

Oh, that wasn’t difficult at all. If I have a passion for something there is no lack of energy. Our culture and time is different than what it used to be, obviously. What people refer to today as obsessive was once called research or a meticulous work ethic.

That's a good point, Mike…

People can call it what they want, but I’ll stick with meticulous and passionate. I learned more from my research and reading for this book than I did my entire time in public school and my nine years in college. Burroughs was a great teacher and I was willing to listen.

That’s a great energy to have. This supposition that JL Lowes had regarding his work on Coleridge began to resonate with you Mike and you cover that in your essay The Bladerunner and The Shootist. Tell me about the connection with Burroughs?

Well, I discovered Lowes’ book, The Road To Xanadu, several years into my work. Burroughs was a student of Lowes at Harvard and I think it was in a letter to Allen Ginsberg that he mentioned the book. I found it, read it, and realized that what Lowes had done so long ago was what I was doing. I immediately felt a connection to him, and the title, though not the method, is an homage to his book, The Road To Xanadu, which was an investigation into the reading and drug use of Coleridge during his writing of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Could you trace Burroughs’ drug use to have an enervating presence in his writing, in the same way Coleridge did?

Yes, I think so absolutely. Burroughs’ drug use was essential to his development as an individual and as a writer but, that isn’t really my area of expertise.

What were the conclusions of your essay The Bladerunner and The Shootist I just mentioned? You mentioned a relationship to what Lowes called “the deep well”.

Lowes referred to “the deep well” as being that place in the unconscious that somehow shapes the writers’ experience, reading and input into what is later written. He saw influence as a shaping force of the imagination, as do I.

Yes, I feel that gathering of information has to bear upon one’s creative or artistic output.

I do believe that studying Burroughs’ reading is as important, if not more so, than studying his life experience. In other words, I think it’s an essential part of understanding the Burroughs mythology.

I agree with you, you cannot place a great visionary and communicator in a bubble, without definite reference to the culture(s) he lived in and through. His command of letter-writing and his ability to turn such correspondence into threads of his writing was especially poignant in Naked Lunch and other books.

Yes, definitely. His letters were the source of all later output and if it weren’t for his desire to communicate, his need to send and receive, I don’t believe he would have ever been able to do what he did.

When did you meet with Burroughs?

I met him in August 1995.

How did that come about, Mike?

I’d sent him a painting I did and we went back and forth through letters concerning art and the Stendhal Syndrome. He invited me to stop by if I was ever in Lawrence. Well I found a way to be in Lawrence soon after. Wouldn’t you?

Yeah! I would be in Lawrence sharpish … like you.

He was brilliant in real life too. He said his cats liked me. I think it was Jane who sat in my lap. I had orange spice tea and he had a tumbler of vodka and coke. He’d recently had the front of the house repainted red and was worried about the smell of paint. He talked about Brion Gysin, his cats, and a boy who had been gutted by a bull, which he thought was funny and in context, it was.

The boy was gutted?

William Burroughs’ bookcase

Yes, he had harassed the bull. He thought it quite humorous and it was great to hear him laugh. I couldn’t stop looking at the books on his shelves though. I found myself unable to listen to everything he was saying. I couldn’t pay attention to him because I was too busy looking at his shelves.

What did you see?

Doctors of Death, Mark Twain, The Tibetan Book of the Dead was near the front door. Brian Stableford, random true crime and ghost stories caught my eye. William Lyon, the guy who wrote that great book about Black Elk was there. He was trying to find his copy of True Hallucinations by McKenna. Burroughs claimed he couldn’t find it and looked at me with a grin and said, “scout’s honor.” The book was in his library when he died. I guess Lyon never found it.

Were you taking notes?

Mental notes, yes. I went back in 1998 to document the books. Mr. Jim McCrary of Burroughs Communications provided me with a list and I did some research while there with spiral bound notebook and pencil. Two of the greatest days of my life.

I bet…

Everything I’d done up to that point seemed justified.

Mike, where did you hear of the Naropa reading list Burroughs had compiled?

I think John Bennett sent that to me when I discovered it among the Ohio State University archives. James Grauerholz provided the table of contents for the projected, but unpublished, Granta anthology that was to collect Burroughs’ favourite bits. These lists were like holy grail stuff to me. I was in awe and spent months and months on them. Seeking, reading, researching. It was like discovering a new gospel, man!

Yeah, I can dig that sermon, Mike! Getting back to your book, The Road to Interzone is a truly amazing, informative, and depth charging handbook to me. It is in a second edition now as well. You published it yourself, Mike: tell me about that process?

Thank you. I’m glad you like it. I had finished the book in 2004 and sent it off to Grauerholz, who made encouraging and helpful suggestions on the presentation and order of the book. I then spent another year putting it together in what seemed a comprehensible format. The book then floated around in the hands of the initiated for several years until early 2009, when I decided to start a publishing company called Suicide Press. I already had a book so I thought I would try it out. I called my editor friend, Brian McFarland, who lives in South Carolina to see if he’d be interested in polishing it up and helping me with the final months of editing. He was thrilled to do it and so from March until September of 2009 we performed those final edits. In the meantime, I was learning about formatting and design because I didn’t want to just have a great book of research about Burroughs’ reading, but also an interesting and artistic product to offer folks. My friend, the Australian artist, Peter Maloney is responsible for the cover art, which I find to be incredibly appropriate and beautiful. Now The Road to Interzone exists for Suicide Press, not the other way around.

That’s great, Mike. The artwork is especially beautiful and captures the contents with energy and passion. Yeah, I see that…

And Supervert over at Realitystudio, was very helpful with publicity. He also published my essay The Bladerunner and The Shootist on his site.

The Realitystudio website is a great resource. So do you have any other plans for Suicide Press?

Oh yes, yes, thanks for asking. I certainly do. Upcoming books will make my work on The Road to Interzone look like a curious teenager in the shower. I'm very excited about future Suicide Press publications. I’m currently working with three separate authors for different projects that I expect to be wildly successful. All works of personal passion and love. I’ve spent the last couple of years getting Suicide Press ready and am also working on cataloging Larry McMurtry’s personal library, here in Archer City. I’ve currently catalogued 20,000 volumes of his 28,000 volume collection, which is a Suicide Press activity in that it has helped fund current and future publications. Also, it’s interesting and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

YES! energy and creativity, connections spiral into new works of love and meaning, I wish Suicide Press the best. I will be keeping a close eye on what the air bubbles contain as they rise to the surface! Any clues as to when a release may occur and by whom?

Yes, I expect at least two books by year’s end, but cannot say who or what because I want to blow the lid off the world suddenly!

Cool. I am looking forward to those releases and further Suicide Press activity.

Thank you for giving me this time, and a big thanks to everyone out there who’s helped me get this goddamned thing off the ground.

That’s kind of you, Mike, its been a joy for me and very interesting. The Road to Interzone has great things in it, things that will provoke the rampant searching you entered into in new Burroughs fans, students and old hands around the globe.

Thanks so much, Paul. I hope it will be helpful in spreading the virus.

A fascinating and richly helpful piece of literary archaeology, tracing as broadly as possible the sources William Burroughs had available to him as he wrote. Both the title and the method echo the classic “Road to Xanadu”, John Livingston Lowes excavation of Coleridge’s reading: Coleridge, like Burroughs, being more than a little interested in drugs. It is a work for which all Burroughs students should be grateful. — Larry McMurtry

To scan Michael Stevens’ bibliography is to dream of entering into William Burroughs’ head from a new angle — not from his writings but from his readings. You can't live Burroughs’ life, but you can read the books he read. You can infect yourself with the same word virus he picked up in writers ranging from Abrahamson (Crime and the Human Mind) to Yeats (“cast a cold eye on life, a cold eye on death…”) Will these get you any closer to the mutations Burroughs performed on the word virus? Doubtless you’ll understand the man and his work better. And perhaps, with the help of the creative reading Burroughs espoused, Road to Interzone will even put you in position to subject the same viral sources to a few new mutations of your own. — RealityStudio.org

Check out the Suicide Press website for more info and to purchase The Road to Interzone by Michael Stevens

Read The Bladerunner and The Shootist by Michael Stevens on realitystudio.org

Lost In Misery, the Music of Nostalgia

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:24:36 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/nostalgia

I discovered Nostalgia during the days of MySpace, the project stood amongst the best in all of the experimental music because of its effective simplicity at first.

As I kept up with the releases ambient and noise qualities worked together within the project. Nostalgia never disappointed me with any of his four releases. I’d mentioned Nostalgia in a previous article on Premature Ejaculation, but always felt the project worthy of its own article.

I

Mark Hunter’s ambient project Nostalgia began in 2005 with the self released CD Funereal Rituals. Nostalgia was immediately recognisable as a mournful instrumental project whose sound at first was a combination of keyboard drones and samples.

Funereal Rituals was limited to 300 copies. The calligraphic logo and text drew influence from the visual aspects of black metal. It was a four-track recording consisting of seven tracks. Despite its four-channel recording, Funereal Rituals is immediately ambitious in its cinematic scale, it doesn’t just seem content to use four channels as a genre identification, there seems to be a wider scope.

The music was categorised in its early years as being more in the area of Dark Ambient but seems rooted in a different, mournful, slightly ethereal area. Keyboards switch through intense drones as the dominant instrument, complemented by some effective instrumental samples and dark ambient undertones that pass through. It’s as if the album slips from sadness to darkness periodically.

The rise and fall of Hitler is explored in To Kill with No Remorse, it’s this track that pushed Nostalgia into a more aggressive electronic territory than the rest of the album. Hitler’s speeches are backed with some powerful rumblings. It draws parallels to Maurizio Bianchi’s early work under the alias of Leibstandarte SS on the Come Org. label. But key influences at the time were Rozz Williams’ experimental work as Premature Ejaculation and Heltir, but still in these early stages, Nostalgia does seem to work within its own territory.

II

Funereal Rituals was followed by 2006’s The Aesthetics of Death, recorded straight after Funereal Rituals over a 5-month period.

This was also a four-track recording, made with improved equipment and limited to 100 copies. The album starts with keyboard drones and surrounding ambience. Vocal samples move in and out of the work. The sense of sorrowfulness overwhelms with a continued strength in space and dynamic.

Aesthetics alludes in brief to martial and futuristic sounds; Withering into the Ashes also successfully combines both. But drones do turn to rumbles that threaten to take the lead in parts yet slip back into the background. Self Destruction the Process of Withering allows a lasting aggressive industrial and Dark Ambient passage of sound to come through.

It’s as if the key Nostalgia sound at this time was broken down in areas to explore new possibilities. Track 8, The Aesthetics of Death, accelerates Nostalgia’s experimental and industrial qualities to a higher degree. Pulses, metallic clangs, channelled atmospheres battle each other to good effect. The purity of sound evident on Funereal Rituals continues on The Aesthetics of Death but the breakdowns of that key sound within would shape the later work of Nostalgia.

III

In 2006 a self-released (100 copies) split was recorded with the artist Cerberus: Axis I/Seasons of Decay. The human mind, perception, and disorders were particular interests that influenced Axis I.

There is an immediate difference in sound on the opening track Hell?; it’s as if Nostalgia has stepped into a far darker ambient territory than before. It successfully combines Dark Ambient soundscape and Industrial hostility to an effective hybrid; Dementia Praecox and N2OC10H12 achieve all of this perfectly. Axis I could be seen as the beginning of the second phase of Nostalgia in its development of sound. Mark Hunter saw The Aesthetics of Death as a stepping-stone to what he envisioned Nostalgia as becoming.

In my opinion Axis I is the full fruit of that development. Axis I was also the beginnings of Mark Hunter’s first venture into digital recording instead of the four-track methods of the previous two albums.

IV

The Infestation EP is currently the final Nostalgia release. This dark intensely compressed, claustrophobic soundscape seems ready for explosion at any time.

Tense layers of sound pulse and distort, it would fit in the genre of Dark Ambient, but there are elements of low-level Power Electronics there, bursts of low-level noise pop up as lead aggravation devices on Prologue; Decomposition. Infest pulls drones in and out of distortion, other harsh distortions intensify and pulls back. Sharp bursts of sound pattern around the drone.

Infest 2 immediately starts on the high levels Infest built up to, with breaks of feedback and aggressive beat-like electronic samples used as lead instruments working around each other in duet. Infest 2 relies on harsh repetition and occasional breaks within. A vocal distorted and pulsed to overload cut through by a siren bring Infest 2 to an end.

The final track is Decadence; here Mark Hunter brings things back to a dense hellish atmosphere overlaid with a vocal sample to an end. Overall Infestation represents Nostalgia allowing complete breaks from drones and compressed atmosphere with sounds and noises taking the lead and forming a new extra surface upon compositions.

This is the third phase of development in the work of Nostalgia.

V

Several post-Infestation tracks were recorded: a reconstitution/remix of Roto Visage’s Am God was recorded for a web release compilation The Reconstitution of Roto Visage. This revels in familiar hostile ambient territory low-level noises are used and compiled to make a formidable new version.

2006’s Creation through Deconstruction was made to soundtrack the site of the French artist St. Obscur, this furthers Nostalgia’s re-examination of low-level ambient sounds, sounding like a developed look back at the earlier ambient cinematic Nostalgia work.

This kind of re-examination was also the case with four unreleased tracks for a split with Field of Black Orchids. The unreleased Eradication Ritual, also from 2006, furthers upon all of this building a loop of tension and suspense. Axis IV, also unreleased, was made around 2007-08, this begins a very curious stage in Nostalgia; the breakdown of a track into several passages. This was not done before within Mark Hunter’s work. Noises drone and pulse around each other, come to a halt only for a more aggressive burst of distortion to pulse a similar gradual rhythm. These sounds pull back for an area of calm and seem well away in the distance, only to return with brutal killing sounds to start a cacophonous choir; layered atmospherics override this and bring the journey of Axis IV to a halt.

Axis IV is a strong development on the triumph of Infestation. There may be an online Nostalgia compilation of unreleased tracks being released; it would be good to see how these tracks work together.

Interview with Mark Hunter

Through contact with you I am aware of your involvement in the black metal scene in America particularly Xasthur. Was your introduction to more ambient music from the fringes of black metal where dark ambient sounds are explored, or did that come from elsewhere?

I wasn’t entirely aware of what “dark ambient” was until I was introduced to Premature Ejaculation. Some bands I was listening to at the time were already incorporating subtle dark ambient pieces into their music which I was highly fascinated with, but I really didn’t know what to call it (not that it needs a label either).

Since Xasthur, what bands have you been involved in? Is it a constant thing being vocalist in bands?

I’ve been active in a few bands before Xasthur, mainly handling vocal duties. Nothing has been as permanent as the band I’m still in today, being Spiculum Iratus (name change is coming soon because of a change of members and different ideology than when we first started). I’ve done vocals for a few bands only because it was requested of me and I happened to fill the spot just fine.

Throughout the visual appearance of the Nostalgia albums there seemed a visual aesthetic that pointed towards black metal. For some reason the more keyboard/drone - depressive feel of the first two CDs seemed to point towards that. Musically it seemed to disappear on Axis I and Infestation, but visual traces were left from the artwork. How did Nostalgia tie in with black metal?

Visuals - Nostalgia really had no ties with black metal other than aesthetically on the first two demos with the use of Beksinski’s artwork. After the 2^nd demo, everything about Nostalgia was becoming focused and with that, came about a more focused aesthetics and what Nostalgia was representing. From a background of mainly black metal, I can see why the artwork had a similar aesthetic to what is used in black metal. After the 2^nd demo, I did my best to stray from the visual appearance of black metal so a distinction could be made with what I was trying to do with the project.

You mentioned a change in recording techniques for Axis I, beginning to shift away from 4-track, what did you do? There seems to be an obvious change in mood to Nostalgia from Aesthetics to Axis, from sorrowful to threatening, was there a change in aesthetic in Nostalgia at this point, what changed to bring such a huge leap in sound and mood?

Recording was switched from analogue to digital. With this brought about a huge change in sound in a positive direction, which is why the moods also changed from The Aesthetics of Death to Axis I and beyond that. As I’ve discussed though, Axis I was becoming musically and conceptually more focused. I knew what direction I wanted to take Nostalgia; an abrasive cacophony of sounds.

Noise or an abrasive cacophony of sounds is a good description as Infestation and Axis IV do this perfectly. I would say you use elements of low-level Power Electronics in parts of later Nostalgia, and in Axis IV you use separate passages and juxtapositions of noise. On Infestation you allowed noises to take the lead over the ambient sounds to good effect your use of noise is progressing steadily yet consistently. However on the tracks you sent me for the proposed split with Field of Black Orchids as well as Eradication Ritual and Creation through Deconstruction you re-explore ambient territory. Do you see Nostalgia as a varied project that continuously explores both territories?

I do. I enjoy exploring what I can with both territories and it can lead anywhere which is what I enjoy so much about this type of music. There is a lot you can do with it.

Have we seen the end of Nostalgia? Will the project continue?

Nostalgia has ended, but I will continue where I left off under a new moniker. I’ve been slowly working on new material for an upcoming release. Familiar elements are present, but there will be new styles being incorporated (some will be quite subtle, some more present than others). In the mean time, I’m compiling the unreleased material and plan to release it on the net for free as a proper way to “end” Nostalgia. I’m currently working on the artwork and expect this to be released sometime in August 2011.

Many thanks to Mark Hunter for making many unreleased tracks available to me for this piece.

Fugs at the Meltdown

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:21:50 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/fugs-at-the-meltdown

Supping a pint of chilled Guinness in the cool darkness of “Grand Central” before boarding the 17:19 from Brighton to Waterloo, shades and a small cognac (w/ ice) en route from the wandering refreshment trolley; then waited for John Jones in the slightly-less-Brendan-Behan-than-before “Hole In The Wall”.

Jones duly arrived from being lost in Kensington, and we ambled over to the South Bank — past crowds, Tracey Emin posters for the Hayward Gallery, giant artificial foxes perched high on rooftops, ethnic food stalls, spices, Festival of Britain 1951…

Located the Queen Elizabeth Hall and collected reserved Fugs tickets from the box office…

They came for Johnny Pissoff, but they got William Blake.

What do you do when you’ve been known for onstage masturbatory antics, inviting young ladies up to join in the latest dance craze sweeping the nation (The Gobble), and dumping several tons of steaming spaghetti into the front row of your audience?

If you’re Ed Sanders, and you’re about to turn 72, you just amble up to the Queen Elizabeth Hall microphone in an unassuming manner and say “Hi, we’re The Fugs.”

Looking like a friendly if dissolute history teacher, he informs the small but wildly enthusiastic audience of this fact and then launches straight into “Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side” from the Fugs’ first album circa 1965. It sounds GREAT…

Missing their co-founder Tuli Kupferberg who sadly passed away in 2010, Sanders & his younger Fug cohorts nevertheless deliver a spirited and unapologetic trawl through their formidable back catalogue, much to the delight of the assembled faithful here at the Meltdown tonight.

They follow “Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side” with the engaging nihilism of “Nothing” (also from their first album), a steadily smouldering “CIA Man” laced with menace, and a rousing singalong version of that old Fugs favourite “Wide Wide River” (aka “River of Shit”).

A reflective “You Can’t Go Into the Same River Twice” follows, an ambitious yet joyful “When the Mode of the Music Changes”, and two William Blake sonnets set to music: “Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time” and “How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field”.

This current version of The Fugs have been together for 26 years now, and it shows in the empathy, and tonight’s rendition of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach”, with stunning instrumental coda, easily outshines the original studio version on the 1968 “Tenderness Junction” album.

We were also treated to “Carpe Diem” (“you can’t outrun the angel of death”), “In Honor of Tuli” (with assorted b&w film clips edited together into a moving tribute, homage to the late great man) — and a hysterical performance of one of Kupferberg’s last ever songs: “Backwards Jewish Soldiers”.

The Fugs show climaxed with a full-on guitar-howling “Crystal Liaison” (from “It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest”) that rocked and reverberated the Queen Elizabeth Hall to its very foundations and left the faithful shaken and yelling for more. A standing ovation for the bards of bohemia…

Amid calls for “Johnny Pissoff meets the Red Angel”, Sanders & co. returned with a restrained but effective encore of “Morning Morning” before thanking festival curator Ray Davies for inviting them to the Meltdown 2011, and then bidding farewell to London (Sanders loved the Naked Bike Ride earlier that day in the capital and sent pictures to his wife in Woodstock) with blown kisses and promises to return…

A great night—classic, in fact—drinking abandoned wine at alfresco tables overlooking the Thames at dusk—a toast to Tuli—blue lights on the sacred river.

Ciril: interview with Darrin Hall

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:26:18 +0000

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/ciril

My introduction to Ciril came from a friend called Pinni (RIP), we were discussing bands we liked and he recommended Ciril, he sent me a link to their myspace, I was blown away by a track called Death Is Gone, this was three years ago and I have never looked back since.

Ciril are a punk/hardcore band form Long Beach, California. They formed in 1995, the consistent member being singer Darrin Hall. Their records show a consistent development to their demented sound, they have recorded 2 albums; Ciril, Hysteria Driven and the 12 Tales one side LP. There have has been a split album with Armistice, split single and a bunch of singles. Their sound is on the extreme end of punk in its rapid mood swings, tempos and blend of different punk and post punk styles to form a hybrid sound of their own. Contemporaries and influences could be seen as: No trend, Christian Death, Rudimentary Peni, Flipper and Late period Black Flag. Every album is a blast of relentless intensity that does not seem to calm over time.

Singer Darrin Hall has recently collaborated with noise artist Wyrm on a CD. Their music has recently been used in the soundtrack of the film Los Bastardos. Images of their live performances can be seen in Don Seki’s new book Scene through My Lens which documents the vibrant California hardcore scene in recent years.

This interview took place via email in April–May 2010 between Darrin and Zenon Gradkowski, we discussed Ciril’s history and concepts. Their amazing album art is often by former guitarist/artist Kyle Chew or musician/artist Zara Kand. I could not find any good sized pictures of Ciril’s album art, so I would recommend buying their records, to make up for it; I illustrated several of their songs recently.

Part of Ciril to me is Anarcho Punk, having played with bands like the Subhumans and all. I know before Ciril back in the 1980s you were in Inner Peace. What songs I heard I liked you had a very aggressive sound, how long were Inner Peace active and how did this build up to Ciril, was it a case of moving onto Ciril immediately after Inner Peace or were there bands in-between, I was curious as there is a large advance in sound between from Inner Peace to Ciril.

Inner Peace stated in the middle of 1982. Our first name was Inner Conflict. We changed the name to Inner Peace. One night me and two of the other band members were walking around on a heavy amount of LSD. We ran in to a couple of hippie religious walking missionaries. We hung out with them for the rest of the night. They shared many philosophies with us; the one that stuck out to the three of us was the concept of Inner Peace. The next day we changed the name to Inner Peace. Inner Peace was a very important band for me, for the first time I was feeling some relief from the pressures of my over active rebellious brain.

Being in a band became a drug for me that works in a positive way. We played several back yard parties in our home town of Lakewood and Long Beach California. In the 1980s you could ride your bike to one of several punk back yard shows. That period of time was instrumental for punk rock. We were kids without cars, so we created our own scene. A lot of great southern California bands came out of back yards.

Inner Peace ended sometime in 1984. It’s very funny we broke up due to reverting back our old attitudes of Inner Conflict. All of us were on heavy amount of drugs, and it tore the band apart. The next few years were a living hell for me I walked the streets homeless and strung out on drugs. In 1987 I cleaned up my act. I meet a nice lady and we gave birth to my daughter Bridgette. My life changed for the positive. From 1987 to 1995 I was in several different bands. Junta and Pissant the most notable. Then 1995 rolled around, that was the year and the birth of CIRIL.

I am curious about Junta and Pissant, I recognise Pissant from your tattoo, did you ever record or did you only play live gigs? What were both bands like?

Well Junta was a great local band; the sound was a cross between tribal music meets Mudhoney. I joined the band in 1989. For me it only lasted 5 months. We played a few local clubs, and I did record a demo with them. I have a lot of demos in my tape box in the closet. Unfortunately I don’t think they liked my drama or my lyrical content so that was that. A shame as they where an interesting band. I am pretty sure they broke up after my departure - ha!

Now Pissant was a band that I formed in late 1989. It consisted of me on bass and backing vocals. Plus three old friends from my school days. All of us where in separate bands from high school. Our sound was more of a Descendents/ Guns & Wankers approach to pop punk. Mind you this was before the whole crappy influx of all those horrible pop punk Blink 182 shit bands. Pissant lasted about three years we played several gigs with bands like the Vandals, and only recorded one demo, we were a favorite on a local collage radio station they gave us lots of air play. Then some band from Hollywood stole our name and put out a CD with their rich mom and dad’s money (posers). It was devastating for me as I thought up the name. If that other band didn’t steal the name Ciril would have been called Pissant. There was a long lap of time between Pissant and Ciril. I spent the time jamming with lots of musicians till I finally fond the proper line up for Ciril. Note: the first year of Ciril I played bass guitar, and we had Donna on vocals. Our first demo was me on bass doing back up vocals.

With your first CD Ciril you effortlessly move across differing sounds for example the OC hardcore sound of old to Joy Division sombreness. Aggression seems to explode in certain tracks and pull back. This hybridisation was fully formed on Hysteria Driven. But from the early demos to the first CD, how did Ciril change, was that variation of sound instant or not? What was the first Ciril sound like? Also on that Ciril CD there was a lot of space in the sound, it filled up in later releases but that space seemed to give your voice a void in which it had a higher explosive quality, this was lost as the dual vocals became prominent, which was not to me a bad thing, it was replaced by something else that was better. Were those early special dynamics purposeful?

I grew up on Orange County punk rock it is instilled in the brain. For me punk is like a sound track of life, I still to this day march to that beat. Punk is the suburban blues, you take the deck of cards you’re dealt and rock them. It’s true as well with the early post punk bands the only difference is they were more romantic. I was never afraid to mix my angry with my sensitive side. I think from the early demos to the first CD the change was not to be avoided because for once we were using real recording studio. We would lay down a track and it would sound very juvenile. I would tell Tom our guitar player to bend the strings, as I would also be experimenting with various guitar effects. Plus I had two great recording technicians who helped me produce. I am extremely lucky to have Rusty on the first album and Mike McHugh on the second. They both recorded Le Shok which was an amazing band.

So yes, our sound changed over night in the studio. The difference from the first CD and the second as far as the vocals go; I encouraged all of the members to sing, Kyle the guitar player was the only one to accept the challenge. All of our early dynamics where experiments but we ended up likening the sound and it just stuck.

I feel an often overlooked factor to Ciril is how songs switch from raw personified aggression to absolute dementia, I mean this as a compliment; Hysteria Driven (track) being a strong example. The verse will often be very aggressive and the choruses just flip out totally, it’s not like the usual hardcore technique of fast-slow. Instead it’s fast and nasty then a sideways passage of madness, to and from the two several times in a song, which I find refreshing. To me Ciril don’t just use power chord formula like many bands to it seems to be a sonically sharpened aggression, how do you feel this has pulled off in a live context in the past? Was this an immediate of gradual thing in your sound?

I think all normal people go through roller coaster of emotions. It’s just that most don’t have a way to express the ups and downs. For me I need to release all of the good and evil energy. I am quite sure that I would go completely insane if I didn’t release my emotions through song writing and singing. For instance we played this yuppie party in Pasadena California. It was a party for Jerry Springer’s daughter.

Any way we got half way through our first song and every one left the room. They all retreated to the back yard. Now for me performing is a very serious thing with all the preparation that goes into a live performance. Not that I think my band is the most important thing. All I ask for is a little respect. So any way I proceeded to get totally naked and run around this girl’s house while screaming out my songs. Everyone could see me through the glass door. I then gobbled on my mike stand and inserted it up my ass and ran out side and sang the rest of the set outside chasing a bunch of ignorant people around. But on the serious side I do release a lot of child abuse issues through my writing and live performance. So yes, the tempos of our songs reflect human rights for children.

As far as chords that we play they are influenced through the blues, old country, and jazz. We just add distortion, flange and chorus pedals, and experiment with tempos. Music for me can become very repetitive; I try to keep myself interested by finding different ways to approach rock music. But no Ciril was not always melodic. Our first three demo tapes where very Crass meets Dead Kennedy’s. Sean Greaves recorded and produced our fourth demo tape. He used and experimented with different affects he simulated a dissonant bent chords. From there on we never looked back. We learned how to copy the recoding. We got very good live; I think we sounded better live. But what ever influences you hear in Ciril are probably right. I do love 80s Death rock, as well as hardcore and Anarcho punk bands.

I have always described Ciril as Death Punk to people as certainly on the later releases the Death Rock influence is there, but not in a crappy imitation way, more of incorporation within the overall sound. Social issues are dealt with, but not preached, they do seem to come from what I see as a personal angle. There has been a constant change/evolution through the three albums and the band is difficult to pin down directly which is a good thing, perhaps too much for the average listener, did you see a lot of the original Death Rock, Anarcho or hardcore bands, who had the most influence/inspiration out of them?

I also met an intense US Anarcho band who played here, they were very intense live. After the show I asked them about you guys, if they had heard you. The singer said a reliable friend of hers recommended Ciril to her, they said you are strange they only seem to play their local area, they never tour, which fascinated me. She kind of told me that your records are seen as great yet you keep things local, such as the label and gigs, why is this? Is it an extension of the backyard scene you mentioned? I always think a lot more people need to hear Ciril as it’s better to hear now rather than 10 years too late.

Yes I have always been influenced by early Death Rock. The first time I saw Christian Death was early 1984. It was the Catastrophe Ballet tour. I was blown away, they had a very theatrical stage show, and it was done in a punk rock sort of way. Other Bands from that era was T.S.O.L. (they are a very under rated Death Rock Band) who also mixed it up with hard core punk. And back then it was unheard of mixing new sounds to punk. They lost a lot of narrow minded punk rock fans. But Jack kept going. He never really gave a fuck. That in its self is a huge influence on me. There was also Super Heroines. (They hung out a lot in my town, Long Beach)

When I was young I also listened to a lot of Subhumans and Crass. I loved both bands very much. But what set the two bands apart for me was they both had great political and social issues. Subhumans stuck out to me because their lyrics were very to the point. (Easier for a teenage brain). From early on, in Inner Peace I knew I wanted to sound like a combination of Crass and Christian Death With easy to understand lyrics of The Subhumans. That’s not to say me, or the other people I was working with had the talent to emulate such talented musicianship, its just that I did a whole lot of LSD and listened to a lot of music and it imbedded in my brain. Shhhhhhh that is my only secret!

In Ciril, even though I was the singer, I wrote 60% of the music so I formed the way we sounded. My members never really minded the forms and shapes of our songs. And yes I truly love all sorts of music, and I try very hard to express that through my music. The majority of people that hear us don’t like us. The diversity is disturbing to most Punks and Goths. If you look back through history of music all of the greats broke the rules. Ray Charles took Gospel and turned it into Rhythm and Blues. Enough said! As far as touring goes, we where supposed to be over in Europe in spring of 2010. None of the members wanted to go except for me. I am trying to find people in Europe to be my backing band. So that I can get over there. But we have played from one end of California to another, it’s a huge State. We also flew out to the east coast, and played New York, Washington DC. As well a couple of other states. But touring Europe has always been my dream.

You mentioned that you like to find different ways to approach rock music and I can see this, the three Ciril albums I have heard differ greatly, The first CD seems to have what I see as a classic US hardcore approach yet also experiments with down tempo sounds as well, Hysteria Driven perfects the various combinations of tempo with a more prominent madness in the sound. 12 Tales seems to focus on political issues in an original way whilst allowing for a more aggressive full on assault of sound. Were Ciril to produce more albums, do you have any future ideas of where you would like Ciril’s sound to go?

Yes the first album is a reflection of what I was going though at the time, I was facing the reality of being homeless. Which I think reflects the tempos of the songs. The more up beat tunes were a reflection of having to be tough living on the streets. The somber slow tunes were a reflection of the sad feeling you get being homeless and sleeping in your friends’ car. The lyrics of the album are stories of how I became homeless. Hysteria Driven was written in a period of my life where I had gotten my life a little more under control, as far as a job, and a place to live. The tunes and the tempos are an expression of the struggle to maintain all of the horse shit that goes with conforming to society. Mind you, I have a very strange thought approach to the world we live in, stemmed from my hallucinogenic past.

I must also say that during the time of both albums (the first album and Hysteria Driven) I was going through a horrible time with the break up of my daughter’s mother. My daughter Bridgette was taken away from me by her mother. It is very hard to be away from your daughter after living with her for, Four years. So I guess a lot of my emotions stemmed from that on both albums. As far as 12 Tales goes it was a progression to an earlier 7-inch we had out called Six Tales - which is out-of-press, only 200 made.

It is a concept project of Ciril to express are strong political views, with a hard core approach, the only rules is for the songs to be short and fast six songs in six minutes and with 12 Tales, twelve songs in twelve minutes. The other rule for me as a lyric writer is for all the political stories to be fictional characters based on real events. For example on twelve tales we have a song called Daughter, it is about a lady who lost her daughter in the twin towers. She worked down the street and left her daughter at a day care in the twin towers, and of course her daughter died. See, it was a real event 9/11 but I used my imagination for the characters. At one point we could play all 6 and 12 tales live. That’s eighteen songs in eighteen minutes we wouldn’t stop between songs, which really got me in good physical shape.

I am currently planning to write and record 24 Tales! We also at the moment have our third full length recorded. It was been finished for two years now. The economy has gotten really bad as of late and our label Know Records hasn’t been able to release it. I might put it out myself, stay tuned. Also coming soon is a book of poems that will come with a CD of me reading over some dark experimental music. I am hoping for the future Ciril full length to be written and recorded in Europe with a European band!

To me somewhere that Ciril lies in part, is the extreme end of punk, although Ciril have a strong political conscience and lyrical concerns, I have always thought this. I am thinking the area of Germs, GG Allin, Christian Death and the Dwarves. Musically I see Hysteria Driven as a very emotionally extreme album in its lyrical content and how it was played. The Springer story was kind of confirmation of that, aside from that have there ever been any extreme gig experiences or reactions at Ciril gigs?

Yes yes all the bands you mentioned are heroes. I have always had the notion the more extreme on stage the better the band or artist. I have been told that I am copying this or that band. I never took it personally, because I knew I wasn’t. I don’t always go crazy at shows, it usually only happens when the audience or the club hates the band. So I just give them something to hate. I do enjoy inflected pain, and sometimes I want to show people I am serious. Music for me is an expression of pain. OK, one time we played a restaurant in down town Long Beach. It was sort of a classy place. We got half way through our first song and they pulled the plug on the P.A. saying we were too loud. I very nicely pleaded with them to restore the P.A. They in-turn got very snotty with me. The place was packed with our fans.

Being the nice guy that I am, I didn’t turn the crowd against the club. Instead I purposely tried to freak the owners out. I got completely naked and jumped on the bar trying to make myself throw up, all that came out was a lot of stomach acid. The bartender looked at me and said she was calling the cops. I turned around and looked at the crowd, they were all thrashing the place broken glasses, and chairs flying through the air. I turned back at the lady and said go ahead. I then took out my false teeth and sang the whole set with no P.A. I held my teeth in my hands moving them to the words. After we were done playing I stuck around and hung out with fans, still naked plus I ended up stepping on a broken bar glass with my bare feet, so I was all bloody and nude. They never called the cops; I got out of there, lucky.

Something that I always notice to Ciril is that there is darkness in the sound, yet like the band Flipper, light shines from the darkness, the music is uplifting. What made me certain of this was a youtube comment on one of your videos; someone said this is dark yet strangely uplifting that and the first album confirmed it to me. Is it a goal of yours; that despite the angst there has to be something positive come through even if it is in a roundabout way? This is different to Anarcho Punk, where you can bop around to the angst (Leftover Crack) of find humor in the lyrics (Subhumans); to me you’ve bent the rules in a massive way, this being most evident on Ciril and Hysteria Driven.

Ciril is based on an imaginary child growing through a sick society. All the songs deal with struggling through emotions that I think a lot of humans go through. I think subconsciously the Ciril character is me. I take the pain and misery and juggle it examine it play with and push it to the fullest. But I believe there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

I have never been book smart or politically knowledgeable. I have always related to a social point of view. A sort of Suburban blues. I feel strong on child abuse issues, which is ramped in the United States, Which is where of a lot of the dark aspects come from. Our humorous angle comes from the basic theory of good old fuck it. Accept your fate and have a giggle with it. Punk has always been an out let to break down social barriers. Ciril is expressing our emotions and would like to hear and learn from others.

Links for more information

Papa November interview

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:19:13 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/papa-november

Papa November

Papa November is a Birmingham based electronic project started by Stuart Tonge in 1997. It is usually an instrumental project however vocals are occasionally provided by Katy Acquaye.

My introduction to Papa November’s music was the album From the Start Line, my collection then grew with other great releases such as Monkey See Monkey Does/Navara and the nineteeneightyseven EP.

Since the 2006 EP nineteeneightyseven a highly noticeable concept within became a reflection and response to Birmingham. This gives the project a regional feel something now becoming a rarity in music. With the city’s reputation as the birthplace of metal, the EP was made of guitar samples from across the genre creating a darker and more expansive Papa November.

Up until this point Papa November was released on a variety of independent labels, however Papa along with several other artists took their independence further and formed their own self financed, self promoted label First Fold Records. First Fold, a definite product of its environment has its own brand of generic packaging and three first fold artists collaborate on the project: Nations Shall Rise. This interview took place after Papa’s first First Fold album release: The Book of Azmaveth.

In your latest record alongside the main story there seems to be a lot of reference to vinyl, with hisses, cracks, and jumps throughout. Is this in reference to the First Fold Records concept of From the Ashes of Industry We Rise? By this I mean that despite the rise of online retailers and MP3s we are experiencing and you are mourning a possible demise of good record shops and vinyl? A dying approach to how we buy and experience music?

The crackle, pops, and static blasts that pepper the album are in part an exercise in nostalgia. Those of us that have a specific relationship to vinyl are, most likely, just as much in love with the sound of the stylus negotiating the well-worn grooves as we are with the music initially pressed on the plastic. Over time those crackles, hisses and jumps become part of the production and part of the sound.

Ideally Book One: Azmaveth would have been a vinyl release and would not necessarily contain any sonic reference to vinyl, because over time the music would continue to write itself.

The release exists on CD so I wrote it’s history, pops and blasts included. There are also references to radio distortion, digital clipping, and clicks, so sounds that should not be present and are objectionable to the ears of an engineer of producer become the rhythmic backbone to the album.

First Fold Records was not created with the idea that the record industry needed saving from anything at all, it was created with the idea that we would save ourselves from the pitfalls of the industry by becoming self sufficient, self-regulating, and self obsessed. Within First Fold I can look at the demise of an established industry that tells me that the digital song is now key, that it is not the body of work that counts but those perfect three minutes of ear candy and I can turn around and say You may not buy my music, it may not end up on your iPod, but I will write twelve albums of soundtrack music beginning with Book One: Azmaveth and I will do it because I believe in a body of work. I am therefore mourning the dying approach to how we experience music, not so much the format or the retail side of things.

With there being twelve albums soundtrack to come, that means a lot of artwork. I have noticed through the Papa November series that the visual aspect plays a very important conceptual part in the project, it’s not just there to make the record look cool and transfer smoothly onto merchandise. I am thinking of Monkey Says Monkey Does, From the Start Line, Nineteeneightyseven EP, and Book of Azmaveth as key examples of this. Is there a usual order in which the visuals and sound come together?

As a child my main skill was that of being able to draw better than anyone else in my class and coming a close second or third in the whole of the school. It was, if I am honest, the only thing I was good at, and up to an extent this continues to be true. I got into music production and sequencing through a university lecturer on a fine art course. He was all about Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Shaeffer and John Cage and they seemed to draw with music a lot more than the techno artists did that I was listening to at the time, with the exception of Richie Hawtin as Plastikman, the work these people produced to me represented the whole package, art and sound as one.

Only a couple of Papa November releases have a synergy between the packaging and the sounds that I am actually happy with and up till Book One: Azmaveth the music came first and the art followed. With the soundtrack work I am trying to match the mood and pace of the music to the stories, so the artwork is worked out and storyboarded before I commit any sounds to my hard drive. I consider myself to be primarily a mark maker who works in sound. Visual art and music demand exactly the same aesthetic sensitivity, When do you call your work finished? What sonic or tonal pallet do you apply to achieve a certain mood? Basic stuff really but when it works the results are potent.

One of my favorite aspects throughout Papa November is the communication of sounds within each song structure, I noticed when you briefly worked as a duo there was a beat, Katie singing and you communicating through loops, noises and samples. Now with Book One there seems a whole lot of conversation going on with each track. How does Papa November communicate within the tracks to you.

I think my main objective, and I guess that of many artists working in sound, is that of creating a language that the listener can identify as belonging to the artist that has created that song. Over time the sounds and sonic pallette develop and at some point the communication between the sounds and the song structure become a language and that framework is the system in which I create Papa November tracks.

I don’t really know how Papa November communicates within the tracks to me. I listen to the tracks that I am working on constantly, up till the point that they are finished and after I am satisfied that I have done the best I can, I tend not to listen to the music critically again. I listen back with nostalgia and on occasions I am surprised by liking something I have written, some songs seem to have a wider context, they sound like they belong out there as sound-waves, no longer only on my hard drive or a CD that no one will ever listen to.

You mentioned you and friends starting first fold records, having worked with different independent labels over the years how are you finding being totally self-sufficient compared to other past labels?

The labels that I have released music through have all been small independents and my experiences with all of them, from my viewpoint, have been really positive. I think that as a musician I took for granted how much work goes into running a label, as an artist you want your music pressed packaged and ready for the shops as soon as you have finished the final mixdown, obviously this does not happen, there is a lot of waiting, so I think I have tended to hand the DAT or disk to the labels and try to forget about the release.

Small labels become frustrated because they front all of their own personal cash and by the time the releases are ready bands don’t have the enthusiasm or commitment to promote the music with live events, obviously there are plenty of exceptions, many bands have an amazing work ethic.

With First Fold Records we entered the project with eyes wide open, keeping costs and expectations manageable. First Fold is a co-op label, this means that every release is funded by the artist producing the music, an unexpected product of this is that lots of music that I might have felt was worthy of a release doesn’t make the cut, because I am doing it for myself, using my own money, money I am most likely not going to see again, so I feel the music must be the best that I can produce. Being involved in First Fold Records has definitely given my music a lot more focus, I am aiming for a higher standard of product, in my opinion anyway.

What are your plans for the other 11 albums of soundtrack continuing from Azmaveth. Will it be one story or interlinking stories?

When you are confronted with a piece of work for the first time, and that work relies on a language or visual reference that you are not familiar with, that work tends to look abstract or surreal, if the language is well developed and the visual elements are believable (not necessarily realistic) then you can accept the work and become involved, sucked in. I’m thinking of the work of Dr. Seuss, he created a body of work, with it’s own unique language, the drawings are sketchy and strange, the language has it’s own specific stile and pace; as a child when I first came across his work I liked it, I didn’t know why but it worked. Dr. Seuss’ work is referenced in film, for me the films simply don’t work, because attempting to translate his scruffy drawing stile into live action de-contextualizes the characters, they have no history and no language, they don’t look like something that could exists in fantasy or reality, unlike the characters in his books.

I expect Dr. Seuss had to start somewhere, I am sure his first attempts didn’t have the fluency of his latter work. His stories are not linked, however his characters do inhabit the same universe; that is the idea with Azmaveth’s world, the stories may link, they may form part of the same universe yet be completely separate, hopefully they will at some point become believable.

I really don’t know how something abstract or surreal becomes credible and believable, but it is definitely what I would like to achieve with the twelve soundtracks and stories.

Furthering upon the artwork question is that I was looking at your website and you even went as far as to display the sketchbooks of ideas building up to your final artwork, openly revealing influences. You are also now illustrating and showing ideas for Book 2: The Well. I am interested in this process as it differs greatly from the usual simple access to final graphics of an album.

I scanned the sketchbooks because I thought that no one would ever bother looking at them, unless they were genuinely interested and people that are interested deserve to have access to as much information about the stuff they like as possible. My obsession with the visual side of the soundtracks probably stems from the fact that I am a frustrated animator, the illustrated cells become storyboards that I have included as part of the CD packaging.

Tell me more about Nations Shall Rise - I have read about this project a few times and am very interested, will it be a First Fold project?

Nations Shall Rise is in turns First Fold’s house band as featured on Book One: Azmaveth and an improvised noise collective. The group features Ben Sadler from Them Use Them, Jim Davies from Spunkle and myself, we are all directly involved in First Fold and any recordings would be released through the label. In many ways it is the project that we are collectively most exited about, it is early days and we have already recorded some reasonable material, we are also looking forward to some meaty collaborations that I don’t want to jinx at present by talking about. Also it is very difficult to talk about future projects because, retrospectively, speculation always sounds naïve, or in the case of Nostradamus plain scary.

Papa November over and out.

Relevant Links:

Sync or Swim

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:56:40 +0100

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/sync-or-swim

Brighton Fringe Festival 2009, Prince Regent Swimming Pool, Saturday 9^th May 2009

Sync or Swim performance

An extraordinary hand-built set, created entirely from recycled materials conjured up into exotic Aztec thrones and gargantuan silver sea-horses, flickering and refracting hooded light down into the shimmering tropical waters of the Prince Regent Swimming Pool below.

An eclectic mix of Festival audience: exuberant proud parents come to cheer their synchronized offspring, side by side with what Thomas Pynchon would once christen “The Whole Sick Crew” in V, the Brighton experimental crowd.

A packed house then, murmuring with thinly-veiled excitement, as the lights dim… the water starts to take on a life, under-currents, whirling, snaking ripples move up and down the pool - a dark shadow barely visible in the depths-no-more than one shadow…

Now the music starts, low at first and then building, building, and Slit Pyramid materialize, in their feathered finery, to initiate the evening with resonant and vibrant drone incantations. The three sisters, born of fire, aiming daemonic violin salvos and broadsides up into the public gallery. And from the steaming, rippling deep, come the first of our “water babies” - children of all ages swimming round and around, creating more waves and precise aquatic dance manoeuvres, while Slit Pyramid’s siren songs continue to lure and attract inebriate sailors to their doom.

This was Siren’s Augury: the first of five movements. In the second, an old woman, crippled by the confines of age, descends, step by painstaking step, into The Fountain of Youth - only to be reborn in charmed waters as a svelte young thing of infinite grace and beauty, accompanied by live electronic dub by Robodub. A young baby, no more than two years old, swims across the pool in her mother’s arms & waves excitedly to the crowd above.

Weirding Vessel (members of Bolide Arkwardstra, Leopard Leg etc) lope on around the far side of the pool affecting Lon Chaney Jnr. poses and ambulating gait - and launch into their invigorating sonic mayhem. The spell is cast for The Elixir of Life and ladies dressed in black diving suits, swim the murky depths, only the spotlights on their heads revealing their whereabouts, a searchlight from on high sweeps the surface, seeking, searching… it may appear like espionage, but they are in fact puppeteering elemental spirits between worlds, eventually emerging to the surface and circling, shark-like, in the dimly lit arena of the pool, to rapturous applause from an appreciative audience.

The elegant figure of Alice Eldridge follows (receiving Lon Chaney hugs and kisses from the retreating troops of Weirding Vessel) and sets up complex hypnotic rhythms with her cello and self-karaoke machines to illustrate Gene Pool - the fruits of which generate and echo around the baths, as microscopic cells, on film, split and multiply, leading us ever deeper into the mystery of the imaginary Henri Rousseau jungle night - warm lapping tides under ultramarine light…

A spirited troupe of French cancan dancers, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, suddenly appear at the Pool of Knowledge direct from the ballrooms of Montparnasse, high-kicking and shrieking scandalously to Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (remixed by Blood Stereo). A closer inspection reveals an extra pair of legs under their skirts…

The entire performance, with its fevered dreams, its mood changes from light-hearted burlesque, intricate Busby Berkeley routines, to energetic and sometimes obscure dark mood, and a grand finale where the Fountain of Youth lady (in reality the daughter of the woman who originally brought synchro swimming to Brighton in the 1940s) reappears as Venus Rising, and all 25 synchronised swimmers come together to form a three-eyed futuristic singing head, was an absolute joy.

Sync or Swim is a development & adaptation of Lizzy Carey’s performance proposal for Wet Sounds 2008, the UK’s first underwater sound-art festival and a marvellous heady combination of avant sound and undulating image - and we were all smitten (even if we were dashed to pieces on the Atlantis rocks afterwards).

Photograph by Greg Neate - used with permission (thanks, Greg!). You might also be interested in an exhibition of photographs by Greg Neate and other photographers.

The Sound of Premature Ejaculation, 1981-1998

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:41:19 +0000

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/sound-of-premature-ejaculation

The majority of written word on the noise unit Premature Ejaculation concentrates on Rozz Williams’ work in his well known guitar based bands. Of course, an artist cannot be compartmentalised to one aspect of their work and Premature Ejaculation was as important as any Rozz project.

However due to Christian Death’s higher popularity the average interview would be very in depth in regards to Rozz’s guitar bands with a brief mention of Premature Ejaculation or Heltir if lucky. There is also an often narrow minded assumption that Rozz only did his more experimental work for advance money and other such crapola and now very tedious post-death mythology.

In any written word on Rozz, no one has tried to come to grips with Rozz’s more experimental output. Nico B’s book The Art of Rozz Williams (available from Last Gasp publishing.) has excellent Andreas Hoffman discographies and serves as a good catalogue of Premature Ejaculation’s visual aesthetic. Dave Thompson’s book Industrial Revolution gives a good Rozz interview regarding Premature Ejaculation live show and some sound methods during these shows; Thompson’s now deleted book is the only written project to take a more depth written interest in Premature Ejaculation and Nico B’s book serves a strong visual interest. My essay is an attempt to begin an attempt at a direct jump into the history and sounds of Premature Ejaculation and Heltir.

The First phase of Premature Ejaculation

Premature Ejaculation began as an audio and performance project by Rozz Williams with Ron Athey in 1981. Premature Ejaculation’s audio output from around this time was three self released cassettes. These included Premature Ejaculation Part 1, Premature Ejaculation Part 2, and A Little Hard to Swallow.

These tapes are very rare, having heard Premature Ejaculation Part 2 each side consists of long lo-fi collages of tape looped dreamlike ambient sound, incorporating drones and nightmarish samples of screeches, voices and anything else possible. The covers which were produced later on feature photos of mutated and injured body parts in sets of six.

As with much of the early Premature Ejaculation material there is a very organic natural sound, lacking obvious electronics or well known lifted samples as we would think of in Industrial. At this point Premature Ejaculation’s noise is experimental in nature and difficult to categorise, Sound Collage or field recordings being the only fitting title to attempt to label it with. Due to the early recording of these tapes and the early live performances dating back to 1981, Premature Ejaculation should be considered part of the second wave of industrial, along with SPK, Coil, Psychic TV. SPK must be noted as a major influence. I mention Industrial, because at that point the movement did not yet have a trademark sound only loosely related concepts.

There were eight live performances between 1981 and 1985. There exists some live documentation by Edward Colver that included Rozz being crucified and another image of Ron Athey eating and regurgitating a dead cat he had found by the roadside, this picture can be seen in the book Hardcore California (available on Last Gasp publishing).

The controversy generated by these performances ensured Premature Ejaculation had a bad enough reputation not to be offered a lot of live performances in the LA area, it also placed them in a taboo-exploring area populated by artists such as Monte Cazzaza, Non and Throbbing Gristle.

The outrage was not just that of gallery and club owners but that of black-clad fans expecting a similar material and styles to Christian Death’s Only Theatre of Pain. Thus exposing the conservatism of supposedly radical and different youth cultures of the time.

Premature Ejaculation did an article and photo shoot for Michael Gira’s (Swans) No Magazine in which Rozz dressed in PVC poses with a shrink wrapped Ron Athey a copy of this article can be seen in Nico B’s book The Art of Rozz Williams. This article also shows Rozz’s unacknowledged influence on Marilyn Manson’s image and concept (think “wrapped in plastic”). Christian Death’s music shows this even more, but we won’t go into that.

Premature Ejaculation was active when Rozz and Christian Death were doing Only Theatre of Pain and Deathwish. However as Ron and Rozz’s creative partnership ended, so did that phase of Premature Ejaculation. Rozz mostly concentrated on Christian Death up until 1984 - 1985 to work on the Catastrophe Ballet and Ashes records. It was after Rozz’s departure from Christian Death that Premature Ejaculation resumed activity.

Interview with Ron Athey:

Were you involved in the music making on the tapes Premature Ejaculation Part 1 and Premature Ejaculation Part 2?

I was not aware of the tapes until much later, so I’d imagine that was the Rozz/Chuck lineup. I would contribute text and vocalizing to Premature Ejaculation sound, but it was the live performances that I contributed to the most.

Were you doing performance art before Premature Ejaculation or did that come afterwards?

Premature Ejaculation was my first performance art project, I was about 19 years old the first gig we did.

Were there any artists/groups that could be considered an influence on Premature Ejaculation’s performance and sounds? Or if not were there anybody you considered to be contemporaries.

First and foremost we were influenced by Johanna Went, who performed locally in Los Angeles at night clubs, opening for bands like Black Flag, as well as artier parties like the Theoretical. High Performance magazine covered a lot of physical performance, so we were definitely influenced by photos of the Viennese Actionists, and COUM Transmissions (both COUM and Herrman Nietsch performed in LA before and during this time). Sound wise, we were influenced by the industrial scene (Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, Non/Boyd Rice, Monte Cazzaza) which was covered in the REsearch tabloids (before the Industrial Culture Handbook), and shows which were produced by Stuart Sweezey who founded Amok Books. Possibly more than that—those bands were slick and high-tech—we were influenced by William Burroughs/Brion Gysin’s cut-up writings/recordings. Our approach was naïve in some ways, but it resonated with the era.

The backup sounds you used in your performance Incorruptible Flesh were of a similar vein to Premature Ejaculation. Who did them? They were amazing!

Juliana Snapper, a colatura soprano and musicologist (who I collaborated on the opera, The Judas Cradle with). Her reference points are completely different, more Pauline Oliveiras, John Cage, more of the avant garde new music scene out of the 50s and 60s. There is a lot of influence of linkage that hasn’t been acknowledged between arhythmic and non-lyrical/noise sound movements, and also vocals of women in new music channelling hysteria and Diamanda Galas.

The Second coming of Premature Ejaculation

Chuck Collison

In 1985 Rozz had left Christian Death due to being keen to produce more challenging experimental output rather than continue the straight rock format of which Valor pushed Christian Death towards.

Rozz pursued self-recorded non-guitar-and-band structure tape activity. One release from this era is the self released Body of a Crow the line-up of this cassette release is unknown, but it is the first to use the name Happiest Place on Earth. It contains 26 tracks using similar loop and overlaid sound methods to Premature Ejaculation Part 2, a common misunderstanding is that this is a Premature Ejaculation release. Its artist name is listed as Happiest Place on Earth. It also features Rozz’s twangy bass a feature that would crop up again with his involvement in Bloodflag and E.X.P, think Monte Cazzaza’s track Climax without any recognisable structure.

Around this time Rozz resumed Premature Ejaculation with the addition of Kris Fuller, Lee Wildes and—most importantly—Chuck Collison.

Collison met Rozz during his time with Christian Death; it remains unclear as to exactly when this was. Collison is important on many creative and organisational levels to Premature Ejaculation. Once involved in Premature Ejaculation he played on the majority of Premature Ejaculation’s releases. He also started the label Happiest Tapes on Earth which was responsible for the release and sale of all the early Premature Ejaculation cassette releases. The name of the label is credited as Happiest Tapes on Earth or Happiest Place on Earth on different issues and releases. Happiest Tapes on Earth sold its releases through mail order, aside from Premature Ejaculation artists were Plecid, Bast, Shrilltower, Omewenne, Christian Death, Katharsis (distributed), Heltir, Blinding Black Light of Hate, Consumer Stress Institute, and Everlasting Happy Life.

These artists differed from the fashionable underground trends (Industrial, Noise, Punk, Hardcore, Death rock) that were prevalent at the time. Most were not so easily categorised, they were always of a high standard. Happiest Tapes on Earth also existed as a very early example of an active non-distributed independent tape label which has since become a popular method of releasing experimental music around the world rather than established and distributed mainstream or independent record labels that can sometimes have very little difference in their practices. Similarly-ran key examples of today’s tape labels operating from mail order, distribution through other small labels and some very independent shops, or a single website are American Tapes and Bone Structure. This practice on current labels has also developed into CDR/tape labels, other good examples also being Obscurica and Chocolate Monk.

As well as an improved label situation, the involvement of Wildes and Collison ensured better quality recordings were produced than before. However Collison’s full musical level of participation in Premature Ejaculation is unknown, an interview on Brainwashed.com with Eric Lanzillotta of Anomalous Records suggests Collison’s audio involvement was very high certainly on Assertive Discipline a later release. As a result of these factors Collison along with Rozz should be considered Premature Ejaculation’s primary member.

Chuck Collison

Most importantly the first Premature Ejaculation release on Happiest Tapes on Earth was the Death Cultures cassette created by Collison, Williams and Wildes. As with the Athey/Williams axis the new Premature Ejaculation did not shy away from taboo imagery. Of the three known covers, one is a simple hand tinted image of a female in a TV screen, true to form there is the second version Mickey Mouse with an opposite image of a bulging out eyeball and on the rear of the cover two photos of facial surgery (in progress) and the third most effective and well known cover featured a Nazi swastika with a dollar sign inside. It was this Swastika/Dollar hybrid that featured on much of Happiest Tapes on Earth adverts, posters, letterheads and compliment slips of the time along with the slogan wejustwantyoutoseethingsasclearlyaspossible.

Premature Ejaculation, were keen on pointing out the parallels between Nazi German society and Contemporary American society, something ahead of it’s time with America now labelled Amerika in some quarters. The name of the label Happiest Tapes on Earth as mentioned before was initially called Happiest Place on Earth a term used by the US film company Disney. It was changed to Tapes to avoid any potential legal complications. As mentioned with Death Cultures, corrupted morphed Disney images featured heavily in Premature Ejaculation’s early visual work in reference to corrupted childhood imagery a theme prevalent in the work of Rozz. The Nazi Youth photos on the later Heltir release Neue Sachlichkeit is a further example of this.

The sound of Premature Ejaculation was far more structured on Death Cultures, there are still the trademarked tape loops yet the choice of sounds are far more considered and effective than before. It also brings Premature Ejaculation at this point as late purveyors of traditional Industrial with samples including battery farms, slaughter houses, machinery, banging, laughter and inaudible conversations amongst many other things. The overlaid sound source technique was in a similar yet far darker and more pointed vein to those of SPK.

Collison states that Death Cultures was originally just intended for Premature Ejaculation’s resumed live performances. Premature Ejaculation was fully functional again as a live unit with Collison and Williams being the core members. Meat and dead animals still featured largely in the live set. With animal carcasses often being micro phoned, to serve as one of several live sound sources including guitars in addition to the backing tapes. Nauseous uneasy listening loops are favoured on tracks like Frightened. Video documentation of Premature Ejaculation’s live performance around this time exists on Happiest Tapes on Earth’s video cassette Not the Real Criminal.

Not the Real Criminal and PIG

Rozz Williams

The film Not the Real Criminal (1988), marks a busy year for Happiest Tapes on Earth and Premature Ejaculation. It also exists as a classic example of DIY Industrial film making. Like the Death Cultures release and Rozz’s visual work, Not the Real Criminal is a series of audio and visual collages.

The first chapter starts with a long montage of medical images of injuries and birth defects it is not for the faint hearted. It is backed by a Premature Ejaculation soundtrack. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this section of the video is the impersonal anonymous or the medical analytical nature of the images. There is a brief image of something squirting? Maybe a penis ejaculating prematurely?

It then moves into the second chapter of the film which shows Premature Ejaculation in live performance, there are big crosses hanging from the wall. There are bits of animal carcass attached to a wheelchair complimented by harsh lighting. Members work on electronic sounds and go about doing things on stage; it is impossible to tell whether the film is in real speed.

The live performance disappears and the screen becomes rapid colour-changing static montage backed by looped treated noise patterns. This changes to the screen to more varied colour static being broken into montages of four, backed with sharper noise loops. The static patterns change into different visual form as does the backing sound that compliments it. (The static visuals were also used in Premature Ejaculation’s live set as well as being utilised fully by the Happiest Tapes on Earth release Pulse which combined pulsing visuals on a video sound tracked by an audio cassette with pulsing sounds.)

Once the static and noise comes to an end on, the last chapter of Not the Real Criminal makes the first looks like a fairy story. For those curious about the cover of Death Cultures with its dollar inside the swastika, this section fully realises it. Different types of filmed footage is played in a collage held together by another noise collage that has a babies cry throughout. The images we see are slowed down Ronald Reagan footage combined with: American military, slaughterhouse, World War 2, concentration camp victims, mass burials, nuclear explosions, bestiality (woman and pig), Nazi military parades, body bags, police brutality, military graveyards, sea burials, happy adverts, the killing fields, army brutality and Hitler.

All in all Not The Real Criminal is the noise of Premature Ejaculation puts into visuals form the truth we do not wish to see.

PIG (1999) is a film based on an original story by Rozz Williams, Rozz and James Hollan play the two main characters. The film was entirely made by Nico B with sound by Chuck Collison; hence it’s inclusion in this essay. The film was shot in black and white with no dialogue only the soundtrack providing any audio.

PIG is based on the relationship of a murderer (Rozz) and his willing victim (James), from torture until death. Sound-tracked by the earlier sounds of Premature Ejaculation it can be seen as a final combination of the sound of Premature Ejaculation to visuals. The music serves as a different kind of soundtrack to the films story as apposed more abstract Not the Real Criminal by it’s working to accompany and alternate the mood of the film accordingly. PIG was initially released on VHS format, but later was beautifully repackaged with a copy of Rozz’s book Why God Permits Evil.

1988

Rozz Williams during underpass performance

Several releases: Death Cultures 3, Assertive Discipline, Night Sweats, Not the Real Criminal, Blue Honey/Pig Face Show & Tell, and Blood Told in Spine.

An essential 1988 release is Death Cultures 3. (Death Cultures 2 is said to have not been released properly due to dissatisfaction with the final outcome.) Death Cultures 3 bares much of the Premature Ejaculation mid-period sound, each track will use 2-9 different sounds that are played separately or overlaid onto each other.

Premature Ejaculation were not the first group related to Industrial to use sound collaging—Throbbing Gristle, SPK and many others did—but Premature Ejaculation were important in that they did this at this point as they developed the technique a lot further. The tracks on Death Cultures 3 vary from being simple to complicated depending on the amount of samples/sounds used. Sounds work against or with each other creating long dialogues of found sounds and noise throughout.

Night sweats is a live recording of Rozz performing under an LA underpass with various noises and samples compiled to a live audience. This performance has done the rounds in bootleg form dated as “LA Underpass performance 24.10.1986.”

The track Pig Face Show & Tell / Blue Honey was a small Happiest Tapes on Earth tape release. However it was featured on the 1988 Gymnastic Records compilation American Gothic. This began to expose the noise of Premature Ejaculation to a much wider audience for the first time. Happiest Tapes on Earth and Rozz self-released and self-distributed many cassettes by Premature Ejaculation to friends which, along with the Happiest Tapes on Earth label, have now disappeared from availability. This kind of “diary” regular-releasing is practised by many of today’s noise artists.

Amongst many lost Premature Ejaculation and related titles from Happiest Tapes on Earth and before are: Premature Ejaculation Part 1, Premature Ejaculation Part 2, A Little Hard to Swallow, Living Monstrosities/Descent, Blue Honey/Pig Face Show & Tell, The End Is Here (VHS), The Environments (Birth, Death, Decay), and Dead Horse Riddles.

1989 - The Emergence of Heltir

After this prolific period of Premature Ejaculation activity Rozz moved out to the desert with his wife Eva O (Super Heroines/solo) and moved to San Francisco were they formed the band the Shadow Project. Shadow Project is of little relevance to Premature Ejaculation. However they did a video of subliminally collaged images and sounds released on Happiest Tapes on Earth: Is Truth a Crime?

The first Shadow Project album was a straight forward (yet brilliant return to guitar form for Rozz and Eva O) dark rock affair with samples here and there. The second album—Dreams for the Dying—sees Rozz and Eva using far more difficult and challenging song structures, with keyboard player Paris comes into his own by adding a lot of heavy organ and samples in songs.

The artist Ace Farren Ford also contributes Saxophones and Mussete to the album. Ford was a founding member of The Los Angeles Free Music Society, amongst his many musical projects; he was in Smegma (who worked with Non and were an influence on Christian Death), Mystery Band and and made solo records. He was involved in a later project with Rozz called EXP and he would later work together with Rozz on Heltir’s last album. As well as his music, Ford is now a respected visual artist and tattooist.

During this time Rozz kept up releases on Happiest Tapes on Earth by beginning the Heltir project in 1989, Heltir carried on the fascination with Nazi/American parallels, as the name is an anagram of “Hitler”.

Rozz described this project as his angriest project and up until 1989’s Wound of Exit this was certainly true. Heltir carried on the tradition of noise incorporated by bands like Whitehouse and the noise genre they and Merzbow were responsible for. Heltir could be seen as an important late 80s example in the history of America’s now flourishing noise scene. The first Happiest Tapes on Earth Heltir release was II Banchetto Del Cancri/VC - 706 this was pure noise in the roots power electronics noise sense. Power Electronics being first created by the pioneering noise outfit Whitehouse. Layers of noise distortion build up to dizzying repeated climaxes. The tape is not broken down to tracks rather there are different passages of noise throughout.

The second Heltir release in 1990 was also released on Happiest Tapes on Earth it was called 69 Rituals. This release now uses a lot more sampled noises and sounds which are kept fairly low in how many are overlaid upon each other. There is a Smegma influence apparent69 Rituals and in a different way on Christian Death’s first album Only Theatre of Pain. Smegma are America’s long serving band of outright weirdness, existing on their own uncompromised terms now for over 30 years. Smegma has a distinct sound that compromises countless genres of music.

However the Smegma influence is apparent in 69 Rituals with its use of distinctly American sounds such as voices and music. Heltir on this release, favoured cutting up and re-contextualising American culture upon itself. The tapes source materials remain a mystery as does the full personnel, Rozz to knowledge being only or the only known member on these tapes.

Around 1991 Happiest Tapes on Earth ended as it was too much for Rozz and Chuck to operate due to their being so busy with their other projects and their lives.

Heltir would not release again until 1994 with the Triple XXX CD Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). On this release Rozz was joined by Ace Farren Ford and Christian Omar Madrigal Izzo (a regular percussionist/drummer on later Rozz projects). Neue Sachlichkeit differs from the two previous Heltir releases featuring tracks backed by peculiar percussion, treated sounds, saxophone, clarinet, broken string instrumentation and some vocal passages. The combination of Farren’s sax and Williams’ vocals gives it a similar feel in parts to the Steven Jesse Bernstein (1950-1991) and his SubPop release Prison (April 1st 1992). There are also uses of Premature Ejaculation methods such as repeated loops of sound and vocal. Rozz’s drawly spoken vocals mixed with the off-kilter jazziness offer a nod towards one of his favourite artists Lydia Lunch. The aggression is far from being as prominent as earlier Heltir tapes. It has a more expansive Heltir sound than before due to it being a group effort rather than being solo as before. Yet in areas it gives an indication of the directions Premature Ejaculation would later take.

1992 Anesthesia, the third wave of Premature Ejaculation with Oracular Dreams

During Rozz’s Heltir and Shadow Project time two record labels had issued some of Happiest Tapes on Earth’ Premature Ejaculation recordings onto vinyl.

In 1989 Anomalous and Baader Meinhoff had combined to make a vinyl release of Assertive Discipline. A year later in 1990 Gymnastic Records reissued Blood Told in Spine as a vinyl release.

These marked the beginnings of Premature Ejaculation’s sounds being released commercially. 1991 saw the inclusion of Anomalous Records’ compilation LP The Perpetual State of Oracular Dream. The Perpetual State of Oracular Dream is an important release as far as Premature Ejaculation’s output being on compilation albums as it is a compilation of genuinely experimental music at the time as apposed to being Premature Ejaculation thrown in with gothic bands and dark industrial artists. The album allows us to see Premature Ejaculation with several contemporaries who worked with related concepts and similarly interesting production methods. The best examples of contemporary sounds to Premature Ejaculation on the album are the Haters, Genocide Organ, Plecid, Blackhumour, Asmus Tietchens and Crash Worship.

Premature Ejaculation over the years would share compilation space with Non, Death in June, Anton Lavey, Sol Invictus and Blood Axis amongst many others.

One band who featured on the Happiest Tapes on Earth compilation, Happy Music of Earth, Volume 1 (1988) was Cointelpro. Their importance to Premature Ejaculation lies in member Erik S. Freeman’s close friendship with Rozz. Erik wrote with Rozz in the form of over 3000 correspondence letters back and forth mostly in the form of poetry which some ended up in Rozz’s work. Cointelpro also played live with Premature Ejaculation several times.

The vinyl releases brought Premature Ejaculation to the attention of the German based Dark Vinyl records and the first new Premature Ejaculation album since Blood Told in Spine 1992, the CD Anesthesia. This CD marked a new phase of activity, using heavy drones with overlaid samples. Anesthesia focused more on Premature Ejaculation’s dark ambient qualities, producing a new different sound from Premature Ejaculation Anesthesia builds up with heavy noises and drones compiled to high climaxes, whether they are too early is up to the listener.

Dark Vinyl is an industrial label with many established acts formed around the same time as Premature Ejaculation; these include Lustmord, Controlled Bleeding, Gerogerigegege, Nocturnal Emissions, Blackhouse and many more. By this time however “Industrial” also now meant sample heavy bands with backing beats and angsty vocals. This genre included the Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, and Nitzer Ebb. Anesthesia continued Premature Ejaculation’s progress, with no aspirations to rock out.

The release of Anesthesia marked a period of regular releases throughout the 90s on different established labels mainly on Dark Vinyl and others such as Triple XXX, Hollows Hills, and Cleopatra. These included Necessary Discomforts in 1993 on Cleopatra (Erik Christades and Ryan Gaumer must be mentioned in relation to this release), a reissue of Assertive Discipline in 1994, through Dark Vinyl, Estimating Time of Death through Triple XXX in 1994. All of these albums carry on a natural slow development of the Premature Ejaculation sound.

Throughout the label releases the Premature Ejaculation sound became smoother and had higher levels of production with each release into a more soundscape territory. The streamlining of the sound marks a new beginning in higher production standards and a less obviously cut up collaged approach to their sound, things become more hi-fi. However Premature Ejaculation’s political context is less obvious and they start delving directly into the comparisons they made on a level where the exploration is far more ambiguous than before.

Premature Ejaculation always used some sounds they had used before but backed by differing samples, where as the Happiest Tapes on Earth releases were of a more collaged approach the dark vinyl and other label releases have a far smoother ambience in comparison. Whether this was due to the improvement and availability of samplers; Premature Ejaculation’s Happiest Tapes on Earth phase began as samplers were vastly improved and more easily available to musicians in 1986, so could the improvement of sound have coincided with the improvement of sampling and easily accessible recording technology? It remains unknown as to whether Premature Ejaculation recorded in a home studio or a professional setup. Cleopatra, Triple XXX, and Dark Vinyl were well established at this point so all these labels would have had access to studios and connections.

The releases up until 1994’s releases Estimating Time of Death continue the sound’s improvement but Estimating Time of Death marks a development of a more quiet to loud period of Premature Ejaculation, it uses distorted bangs and clangs to make soundscapes. These see the use of whips sounds being used percussively. Track 4 Pruguelknaben seems to pre-date Death Industrial legends Haus Arafna. Estimating Time of Death is more percussive and at times sonically aggressive than a lot of previous Premature Ejaculation releases.

Interview with Erik S. Freeman of Cointelpro

What was it like performing with Premature Ejaculation? Did you support or were you involved in their performances?

I was involved in some performances, but was not a key player a majority of the time.

How intense was it?

I think the important thing to understand—and I hope this doesn’t sound too clichéd—but, it really was a lifestyle.

I found early Premature Ejaculation to be an extreme political statement. Were you along similar lines?

We were very focused on some of the stark realities and really wanted to force it down some throats.

Did you end up on any Premature Ejaculation releases? If so, which ones?

Rozz and Chuck wove so many different things. I can’t say, “Hear that? That’s me on bass”.

What were Cointelpro performances like?

I think there were different levels of intensity for everyone involved. It had a lot to do with the banishing of demon ultimately. Cointelpro stuff was really chaotic and that wasn’t necessarily what we intended. We really were political activists more than anything and just sort of found that venue to express ourselves in.

Was it just the two of you?

It was Pete, Todd, Kendall (for a while) and myself.

What were Cointelpro’s instrumentations? Were you sampled, instrumented, collaged?

Lots of percussion and samples with vocals.

What was your role in Cointelpro? What did you play or do?

Percussion, samples, vocals.

What was your material like?

Experimental to the core, the output was extremely varied whether it was sound experimentation in a tunnel or a live show.

Like the legendary 1334 underpass show also known as Night Sweats?

Yeah!

Wound of Exit

Wound of Exit is the most personal Premature Ejaculation album, up until then they had built up a fairly consistent sound and development until this final release.

Wound of Exit immediately springs into a far more aggressive sound with Alone With the Devil; sharp sirens and percussive metal strikes form the backbone of the track. Wound of Exit’s difference makes it the bastard Premature Ejaculation release. The line up for this release was Rozz and former Shadow Project/EXP collaborator Paris. This double CD does not feature any contributions from Chuck Collison and is a massive change as a result. It lacks Chuck Collison’s sharp and obsessive focus and attention to detail, yet totally breaks away from the previous Premature Ejaculation sound hinting at many new directions in it’s full appearance of “Power Electronics”, Moog synthesizers and acoustics. Instrumentation had always featured in Premature Ejaculation in a broken and buried form right from the start, but becomes vaguely recognizable here.

This is the release that throws Premature Ejaculation’s output even further away from an industrial context; it pulses heavier than any Premature Ejaculation release and screeches way more than they did before. Part of its sound can be traced back to the Heltir releases as it embraces some of the methods used in Heltir. One aspect of Heltir contained throughout is the more aggressive electronic sound of the earlier II Banchetto Del Cancri/VC - 706 release and the instrumentation of Neue Schklinct. Coupled with this there are slight parallels to the sound of GX Juppiter-Larsen’s Haters project (Oracular Dream compilation).

Wound of Exit’s usage of actual instruments within the sounds also allows it to work acoustically and not be tied down purely by electronics; this is a common characteristic used by many of today’s US noise groups today such as Wolf Eyes and Hair Police amongst many others. The use of guitar as noise rather than riff or melody can be traced back to 1975 with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

However Rozz Williams’ death in 1998 leaves Wound of Exit as an unfinished and open ended conclusion to Premature Ejaculation. Wound of Exit was released posthumously, as was the film PIG. A solo Rozz recording 6 was released by the official Rozz site Rozznet in 2001 on a very small edition of 200.

The Legacy of Premature Ejaculation 1981 - 1998

Several artists continue and openly admit influence by Premature Ejaculation and Heltir today. Several recent examples are vastly the differing Nostalgia (US), Testing Vault (Italy), Error Genético (Argentina) and until recently; Atrax Morgue ( Italy) (RIP). They are all young—probably not around when Premature Ejaculation were active—so what makes the influence special is that they have a wide range of differing noise and experimental artists out there to have gained influence from, yet somehow Premature Ejaculation got there.

M. (musician behind Nostalgia): Premature Ejaculation was my introduction to the ambient/noise genres. Premature Ejaculation covered a wide spectrum with both genres, and to me… this defined what experimental was and still is. The concept behind Premature Ejaculation still breathes and has become a part of my life ideology. Life/death. Sanity/insanity. Dream/reality. To me, this is what Premature Ejaculation represents and evokes in its music. As musician creating soundscapes myself, how could this not be influential? An ideology and concept that speaks truth along with deranged soundscapes that any dark ambient artist could only dream of achieving. I have great respect for Rozz and those who collaborated with him in Premature Ejaculation.

Dani Alvo (musician behind Testing Vault): Premature Ejaculation and Heltir are two of the most influential projects I’ve listened to, Rozz Williams and Chuck Collison’s works on all those tapes and discs are undiscovered and underrated by the 90% of the entire, mondial, “industrial scene”, and that’s simply an awful thing. They were genial, old school in the sounds of their early works, but with an avant-garde and unique spirit at the same time. Their kind of approach was completely new and personal and, in their way, very ahead from their time. Rozz Williams was a pioneer not just in the “death rock” scene, but also in the “industrial” music, and Chuck Collison was one of the greatest too… you see, the titles of the songs, the graphic, the post-punk (and kinda pre-Dada) collages, their way to spread the sounds, their live performances… people should discover their work better, because all this stuff it’s better of the 98% of the other industrial bands of all the goddamn times. You will find “the sacred and the unclean” of the music, concrete sounds, cathartic drone chants… Premature Ejaculation and Heltir for me like influence inside my spirit are like the early Current 93 or Coil’s works… it’s simply ABSURD that they doesn’t receive the “hype” they totally deserve. This show how much of the industrial scene (musicians and above all, listeners) is composed by… you know what I mean.

Discover something of original once in a while.

Premature Ejaculation Booklet

Premature Ejaculation’s entire back catalogue is now criminally unavailable, with some releases fetching over with the vinyl and tapes reaching over $100 on eBay. Sure people download, but Premature Ejaculation like many artists is best enjoyed as a full audio visual format.

In my view the strongest releases by Premature Ejaculation were the Happiest Tapes on Earth tapes as well as Wound of Exit. Although the Happiest Tapes on Earth were only released minimally distributed tape with limited means, they serve as excellent critiques of US society of the time and they are even more relevant now. Initially they were purveyors of true Industrial methods such as the cut-up and collage methods before their time. Premature Ejaculation were always experimenting with their formulas to the point where it would become more cohesive, when this happened the project would break down and move on into new forms. Ideas from other projects were bought in, Heltir being a key feeder to Premature Ejaculation’s work. Also Chuck and Rozz were not afraid to use imagery that would make people do an about turn away from them, at times they were so unsubtle about it, only the most open minds could handle Premature Ejaculation.

I was thinking of trying to insert them into current schools of industrial and noise, but that proved impossible. To a lot of people—myself included—Premature Ejaculation were a special project.

Despite the morbid political subject matter and bleak artwork, I think Rozz and Chuck were a bit of a very dark comedy duo. There’s something very playful about how they liked to tie in curious little sounds into pieces - even Not the Real Criminals’ Reagan/Hitler slow speed visual comparisons are quite funny, yet at the same time extremely dark.

Perhaps they did not even try to do this, maybe their music sounds endure because they were real and not contrived? In interview or conversation, they both seem very humble and laid back about Premature Ejaculation, from listening they made great art but they also lacked the pomp and ceremony of a lot of their influences and contemporaries which is most probably why Premature Ejaculation made over twenty known releases, some released themselves, some on label and some just given to friends.

Premature Ejaculation were not innovators at first, yet by the time they reached the 1990s through sheer persistence of vision and sound they ended up on a path that veered away from their influences to another place that was entirely their own.

Discography

See full Rozz Williams discography on Rozznet.com.

Bibliography

Eric Lanzillotta article
NICO B: The Art of Rozz Williams, www.lastgasp.com
Dave Thompson: Industrial Revolution
John Collins
Scottie
Rozz Williams an interview by Melinda Lewis: Esoterra April 1993
Email from Chuck Collison to Zenon Gradkowski
Interview with Ron Athey by Zenon Gradkowski
Interview with Erik. S. Freeman by Zenon Gradkowski

More to See and Hear

Thank You and Dedicated to:

John Collins, Scottie, Ron Athey, Dani, Paul, Mark, Nostalgia, Testing Vault, Error Genético, Chuck Collison, Ron Athey, Erik S. Freeman, Rozz Williams.

Westhill Whimsicalities

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:20:39 +0000

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/westhill-whimsicalities

or “My Night with Monty Oxymoron”, by Sooty Kemp, with annotations by Michael Kemp

PTHHHH poster

Saturday evening and the taxi whisks us away through the chill February night towards Seven Dials and the Westhill Community Centre to see our dear friends, the ladies of PTHHHH perform for the first time in an age, or so it seems. An extra “H” to their name now, perhaps because of an extra musician in their midst tonight…

We enter the small single room and having paid our £5 and the back of our hand stamped, we find our way to a small table lit with tea lights. Everyone has brought their own refreshments for the evening’s entertainment, and the Kemps are no exception, having decanted a quantity of fine red wine into two large elegant waterbottles.

I spied Caroline Weeks at the other side of the room and waved, she hopped and skipped across and gave me a hug, “Sooty, I didn’t recognise you” and with a kiss on the hand from Michael, ever the gallant gentleman, we chatted until she had to dash off and get the music set up for the first of the evening performances.

Alice Eldridge is, unfortunately for us, still in Australia, so won’t be a part of the evening’s entertainment, but Lizzie Carey who I caught up with a little later most definitely is. “Sooty!!!” she exclaimed when I patted her on the shoulder, squeals and hugs and kisses, a very excitable little thing. I point out Michael, who is across the room wearing his Alfred Jarry shirt complete with painted-on tie in India ink, she giggles and waves.

First on the list of entertainment, curated by the girls of Pthhhh is “Terror”, a VJ mixtape by Ben Rivers, which is projected via laptop onto a screen at the front of the hall. Gruesome to say the least, composed of extracts from Ben’s favourite slasher movies from the 80s and combined into one long piece. 15 minutes of “Is that you out there?” “This isn’t funny any more” etc. - followed by five minutes of continuous screaming, bloody mayhem & dismemberment. I chose to avert my eyes when the power tools came into the equation (“Oh no, not the sander”) with members of the audience, myself included, choosing to look into the middle distance until we hear the safe reassuring sound of the last accompanying note crash away into silence.

Next up is Monty Oxymoron. Monty turns out to be (a) a travelling member of The Damned playing keyboards for Captain Sensible and (b) also works for the NHS. Michael has already bought one of his CDs from a little table at the side of the hall; and is now wondering whether the man he gave £10 to was anything to do with the sales/promotion of the evening, or if some fortunate stranger is now just a tenner better off…

Anyway, Monty Oxymoron, regardless of the name, is actually very good. He climbed under the piano, and proceeded to play it from the inside out (somewhat reminiscent of Ron Geesin in the old folkie days), and bang melodically on all manner of equipment including what looks remarkably like a piece of ophthalmology equipment, well he does work for the NHS. He ended his performance playing the community hall piano in a more conventional upright way, dense chord clusters suggesting a meeting between Claude Debussy and La Monte Young - getting on like a supermarket on fire.

Then we have another video piece, this one delicately entitled Crying and Wanking a line drawn composition about loss, very effective, by Alys Hawkins. This has to be Lizzie’s idea!

Peter Moyse then climbs onto stage with his guitar and to the film footage of seahorses swimming in the sea, he proceeds to play lovely melodic music which makes you lose yourself in the deep. Images by Jean Painlevé.

Moyse’s final piece, which he said he felt he ought to explain, was a fairy story written for his little girl, when as a tiny child had asked him why the jars on the kitchen shelves were called “story jars”. This explanation delighted the audience and so did the music.

We are now joined by Michael Sippings who we haven’t seen for ages and who is really looking forward to seeing PTHHHH, he says he’s not too sure who they are, until I remind him that he and they both appeared on the same bill at the House with Iron Gate, for the “Bam Caruso Christmas Special” video. Ahh, yes, he remembers.

…and finally before the ladies are due on stage, we have Blood Stereo, which is the reason we strategically seated ourselves at the back of the hall. This is because last time Michael saw them at the Marlborough Theatre one of them was repeatedly banging his head against the back of the stage over the sonic howl when he suddenly changed direction and lunged straight into the audience, heading for Michael. Luckily he passed by without incident. Maybe he was just making his way to the bar…

Anyway, Blood Stereo are more subdued this time around, sitting on the floor, and I don’t notice their threatened loudness, possibly because of the menacing film footage of the Japanese Shûji Terayama variety!! (Terayama being the controversial director of such films as Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Throw Away Your Books, Let’s Go into the Streets) which Blood Stereo are improvising to. An edgy insiduous scraping accompaniment, more than a full-blooded assault on the senses.

And now, finally, PTHHHH - and they do not disappoint.

The ladies arrive on stage with Rebecca, one of the original members of the group, but someone who we have never met before. They are of course all well accomplished musicians with instruments ranging from ’cello, guitars, flute, bowed saw, harp, violin, drums, piano and various other weird and wonderful electronic and other equipment.

They also have a sense of the bizarre in their performances, with Lizzie entering from the back of the stage dressed as a ghost, while Rebecca, unable to see through her outfit, stumbled onto stage to join her.

They put on an enchanting show: they all began with false beards (“Eleven Mustachio’d Daughters”?) dashing young Victorian soldier boy/girls drumming snares and prancing Footso cats (from Twizzle) stalking our nightdreams; bewitching stuff.

They sang, they danced, they played, they ad-libbed when equipment broke down, and Caroline Weeks hop-skipped down into the audience and proceeded to dance the hornpipe. A raise of eyebrows… Cath (aka Quinta Quinta) charmed on violin & musical saw, playing as beautifully and evocatively as ever and the other girls all coming together to create a wonderful sense of fun and a slight tongue-in-cheek approach to performance. Wonderful to see them all again and so glad that they are back together as a group (even with the continued success of Bat for Lashes whom Caroline and Lizzie are fully-fledged members of).

So, there you have it, an evening with the ladies of PTHHHH - somewhere between a virtuoso string quartet recital and Open Day at St Trinians.

Ta-daa!!

Testing Vault interview

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:04:03 +0000

Source: http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/articles/testing-vault

Testing Vault

Testing Vault first started in 2003, it was conceived by DANIAlvo and over the years has released a few great CD. My introduction to Testing Vault came through a trade of rare discs and tapes. The Testing Vault disc in there was Some Voices Say Rosemary’s Not Dead.

What struck me was the combinations of looped instrumentation samples and noise in the work. However upon hearing them live there was an apparent madness within it all. That was great but then I received a limited disc (10) called The Complete Shit Exorcism that perfected all the existing Testing Vault strengths and added more, after that I had to do this interview…

When I started researching Testing Vault more, I read a description describing it as “Traditional Industrial”. But listening your album Some Voices Say Rosemary’s Not Dead I noticed it did not sound like what I thought industrial to be, there seemed to influence by European artists like Luigi and Antonio Russolo basically early 1900s avant garde music. There is a lot more to the Testing Vault sound than just those influences. What are the influences on Testing Vault?

Well, you are not the only one that was kind of, let’s say, “disappointed” with the description of my music like “Traditional Industrial”, but maybe it’s above all just an easy way that Pierce and Massimo of BSP labeled me in their “Artist Section” to describe my work to people that have not heard what I was doing at the time of Some Voices Say Rosemary’s Not Dead. But I agree with their description, you know, I must admit that I feel the early years of Dada (surely more than the Futurism) Art Movement were the very first kind of “traditional industrial music”. They were a bunch of people escaped from the war and who tried to exorcise the horror through their “Anti-Art”…

In a certain way, this was the same spirit of Throbbing Gristle and the “Traditional Industrial” Artists you want to meant in your question… their spirit was not just to disappoint people or scare them, but find and give different information, to shock people to make their thoughts more alive than before… that was the common point, and, of course, the noise like art form, just thinking about Hugo Ball or Tristan Tzara’s “phonetic poems”, they sound like a sort of old industrial band that played with Throbbing Gristle! You know, Karawane and Zyklon-B Zombie could fit together in a gig!

Regarding the influences in that first disc of Testing Vault, I must put in the same line early Coil (especially with their album Gold Is The Metal With The Broadest Shoulders), Throbbing Gristle, Joseph Beuys’ “neue muzik” like Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee and all the Zurich early Dada movement… now I’m more open minded and trying to put into the new Testing Vault work also influences like Premature Ejaculation, Nico, Madonna Wayne Gacy (I know that now some people can think “oh no, a Manson’s member?” But for me Madonna Wayne Gacy is a true great manipulator that has taught me a bunch of tricks and moods), Tom Waits, John Cale’s Islands Era, and a bunch of other persons or bands… but first of all I had created Testing Vault to express what kind of dreams I hear or see, I keep a diary of what I dream and I try to apply the atmosphere of the dream to a concrete sound, it sounds egocentric but I’m the first influence on Testing Vault, being the creator!

That answer in itself raises a good question in that “when did industrial really start?” Perhaps those artists of the 70s were the first in a while to make something that reminded people of those works of Dada and Surrealism. But what I notice in your work is a lot of use of instrumentation rather than any purely electronic sound, this is most certain in Some Voices Say Rosemary’s Not Dead. Are you responsible for any of the instrumentation ever? Or do you use samples?

I also appreciate how you mention Gacy’s noises in the Marilyn Manson sound I think he adds a lot of interesting quirks behind all the Rock instrumentation.

About your impressions on “when did industrial really start?” I agree with your words, Genesis P-Orridge admitted that in the early Throbbing Gristle era that the whole scene seemed like “a sort of new Dada Movement”… after all, Throbbing Gristle were born in an Art Gallery, so there’s one connection…

Oh, about the instruments I can assure you that they are all real! Maybe I can create some loops with organic sounds; I can modify them and give to them a completely new form. But it all starts in a really physical way… not just trying to use a PC to some sounds, it would be too easy and I would miss hours of fun searching out the maddest sounds to put into my compositions! But in some songs, of course, like everyone in the electronic scene I also take some samples from old songs in films like Strange Kind Unborn (where I use a sample from Un Chien Andalou) or new pieces like The Complete Shit Exorcism (where I’ve taken a voice from Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle film), it’s a way to allow your song to breathe, especially if they are long. Wayne Gacy is a very very strong impact on my life… Marilyn Manson would be just a good shock-rock band without him, and their last record demonstrated that, the keys in Eat Me, Drink Me makes me laugh and desperate for the loss of Gacy in that disc… without Gacy there’s no atmospheres, there’s no concept at all (Gacy helped Manson in concept albums like Antichrist Superstar and Holy Wood with symbols, connections and numerology… of course, no one mentioned it, especially now Gacy seems to have disappeared)… he wasn’t a simple “keyboardist”, in this way he’s just like me… of course he can play a normal riff, but he plays like Anton LaVey a normal keyboard, he also uses some “magick notes” and dissonances that are unique, so, at the end of the road he is more a sort of “sound manipulator”, completely out from every kind of “rock” forma mentis… I would love to hear what kind of sounds he could create now he’s alone, I’m sure that will be something of truly scary sounds that could destroy and erase completely all the “Album and all the rest for my Girlfriend” and “Absinthe” shit that Manson is making now… Let’s hope Twiggy Ramirez’ comeback will bring also Wayne Gacy back… I miss hearing his sounds.

What was your musical experience before Testing Vault?

I’d made a bunch of things before Testing Vault, it’s difficult to make a point of the situation but I’ll try… I started to play the 5 string bass (that remains my favourite instrument ever) at 14 years old for a hardcore punk band… I remember we sounded like Discharge or some easy CCCP or PIL songs… but well, I’ve joined around 15 bands in total as bassist, voice, second drummer and at 16 I created a noise/experimental project called ironically “Rosemary” with PR, the same guy and friend who plays with me on a track of my new album The Laughing Torso, and that was my first experience with tapes, loops, keys and other strange instruments… anyway I play everything that they needed, I’m adaptable to more options and I learn fast, that’s why I became in the past, let’s say, “famous” in the underground of the land where I live and that’s why I’m collaborating also now with other bands or people (like Val Denham, Egida Aurea, Teatro Satanico, MuzaKiller Foundation, Black Sun Productions etc.) playing harmonium or percussions or loops!

Anyway the last “band” I joined was in 2000, it was really fun for three years: I played that kind of Godflesh industrial metal bass that I adore, and played shows and drank tons of beer and met girls, it was all very professional… the singer left the band after one year so I’ve started to sing but I drank too much alcohol and no sleep, that lifestyle brings me into a nervous breakdown that has completely blocked me and stopped me doing that kind of music… I wasn’t able to stand being in a band, I got too many noises and ideas that didn’t fit in a normal song and the performances were more like a panic attack than a normal concert… so when I choose to form Testing Vault, it was the only way I could make music without becoming mad.

I write in a calm environment at home, all the ideas I have and put those visions in a form of music that I could explore, it’s forever an extreme experience being in Testing Vault for me, but I feel it’s the good way to go on, in the last year I’ve started to feeling a bit better with my brain so I have experimented more, but too much stress can cause me a nervous breakdown at anytime, so I must be very beware of my health…

After all this, I can tell you that I’m still friends with all the guys in that last band, now they play death metal, they understand why I’ve left the band and they appreciate and support what I’m doing now… also if they don’t understand this kind of music, ha ha ha ha ha!

To me your greatest release so far is The Complete Shit Exorcism. It is also the first to use unbearable noise to a lower level were it becomes bearable, it still has the effect but is overlaid with other samples. To me that recording works on such a subconscious level. How did the recording come about?

First of all let me thank you for appreciating this rare released piece! I must admit I’m planning to release it in a larger run after The Laughing Torso with two or three other unreleased songs, I have asked some labels because the people’s response to this work was incredibly good…

So it’s hard to explain clearly how the record was born because I was really confused and had survived a strong psychotic reaction and the consequent nervous breakdown, so that period was a bit difficult to remember… I can only tell you it was recorded on the 27^th August of the past year, one month after that strong nervous breakdown I had… I made this record that day to exorcise the panic, the fears, the weakness I have and trying to work on my soul shocking the body, so it really works on a subconscious level, because I was working on myself in that moment, binding myself with adhesive tape and a pig face mask (that was a link to Rozz Williams—clearly—and Jhonn Balance—in the most shamanic way to express the creative process—two dead musicians I feel close to me in some moments) and covering my body with black ink… all this while I was playing tape loops and modified samples from some films like the Testing Vault’s old style, and you can hear that because I have used microphones in my body to give the piece that part of reality while I was creating and giving noise to the composition… I believe The Complete Shit Exorcism it’s not “industrial music”, it’s more like Hermann Nitsch’ music… “Art Muzak”, you know… a performance (here we come back the Art connection!). But yes, it was the first piece where I also used pure noises, also if they are low and not really aggressive like in the normal “noise music”… they show how I was at the time… rabid, but not really dangerous because I was weak.

I don’t know why I have released this private part of my life… is not beautiful at all for me to remember that period, I was completely freaked out and in a mental institute, it was AWFUL… but at the same time when I listen to The Complete Shit ExorcismI am really proud of it. So, excuse me if my reply about this release sounds confused, but it’s hard for me to tell you something more about this release… it was really a shit time.

Your live CD, Dressing Well Is The Best Revenge gives a good overview of Testing Vault as a live experience. I was looking at the live shots from 2006 and it’s just you doing everything. Have there been many Testing Vault live appearances and what is your live musical set up?

I’m happy you’ve liked it because it has a rough quality… that was a bootleg that a friend recorded for me because he has known me from 13, 14 years, his name is PR and he was not sure if I had pressed the “record” button of my little high resolution recorder during the performance because of my anxiety! So, yes, on that occasion I was completely alone on stage, and was very difficult for me to “entertain” the public, also because I don’t use playback tracks or shit like that, I play all in the moment because of this Testing Vault doesn’t make so much live… One is for the loss of “entertaining”, the other is because… I don’t like the audience at all, hahaha!

Anyway now with my new album The Laughing Torso I’ve choose to take with me my longtime friend and musician PR in a little tour with me for have some fun and cause some damage in some Italy’s places, so he can stay at the bases and control the noises with me, and I will have a sort of “Einstürzende Neubauten” irons I’ve set-up to have a superior “tribe-live-form” and a “mood-ianic space” where I can sing and dance, I’m sure it will be a complete success and we will be filmed by another guy we know well and make a DVD of the events including backstage scenes and all the rest, we are also planning to make some covers of Rozz Williams and Coil material… backing to the performance point, for me is truly important to express myself with the body in a Testing Vault’s performance, let’s say I agree with those people say that the front man must have a sort of “shamanic” power on the audience, he must not just play the clown, but try to spread his soul with screams, hands, phrases and poetry… about the other live appearances of Testing Vault you can hear the truly first Testing Vault live appearance in Some Voices Say Rosemary’s Not Dead is the live title-track… It was in an Art School, I’d asked to my girlfriend to assist me in this performance half naked and on the ground while I “mummify” her with colours and paper… was very intense for both of us and for the audience too, someone was disappointed and scared by the music that never changed during this covering process… It was great to see how people reacted to some sounds. I’ve also made some other little shows I call “ghosts concerts” because they were made in empty places or without any advertisement to an audience, and that was really funny too, because I’d surprise the audience with white noise, screams and other things… I can say that the live form of Testing Vault it’s more wild and lunatic than the studio albums, where I try to create some little paranoid images with completely different ambiences. But on the stage this music must have another kind of strength so I rape it in the worst way I can.

I think it would be good to expand the Testing Vault live experience as you can expand the sound more through other people and I can see live performance art fitting in brilliantly with the Testing Vault aesthetic.

I’ve been teased by having heard the demos for the new CD The Laughing Torso and look forward to hearing the full album, tell us more about that.

About the live experience, I definitely agree with you… Testing Vault has a strong surreal aesthetic and I want to show that in the purest form of live concerts, sooner or later!

About The Laughing Torso, it is a work I’m very proud of, it’s released by Final Muzik, an Italian label that is very talented and composed by positive people who work with enthusiasm and joy on a release of “old industrial music” like the mine… I really appreciate this, I’ve became friends immediately with Gianfranco, the boss and his assistant Deison, I love them both! About the work I can tell you, this is the first Testing Vault release that has a larger availability first of all, so the fans won’t be disappointed and they can find the album in a very simple way; second point is it is also the music release I’m most proud for a combination of elements that for Testing Vault are new: the production is done by me and it’s very clean, also if the sounds are lo-fi like ever, they are powerful and “dirty” in the right way to be dirty… I’ve also collaborated with Val Denham on one track and was a real honor for me because I love his artworks, poems, music, voice and personality, we have been friends for two years and we felt a strong emotive connection between us, so for this I’m now also working on Val’s next album called Titania… I’ve played on a couple of songs, six, seven, I don’t remember, and they rock!

There are also other two guests on The Laughing Torso. One is my longtime friend and collaborator PR that has played on one song with a carpet of noises in total freedom while I played the slide guitar, the mixer and sang about an old man eaten by zools, it’s a nightmare I had years ago, when I was a, well, let’s say “punk”… an extreme situation anyway… and the other guest is Flavio Rivabella aka D.B.P.I.T., who is a great trumpeter and he played on two songs, Sexasperate and Out From My House, maybe one of the most powerful songs on the album… his style is amazing and he has played his parts in a few days with a bass I sent him with descriptions like “this piece must sound like a sort of spot for the Manson Family with an addiction for Shamanism in the present years”, or things like that so, it’s difficult after all to work with me because my inputs aren’t clear at all… Doriandra of EXP was to play on the disc too, but had problems with her machines so unfortunately she’s not appeared on this album, but we are currently working together on some songs for the next Testing Vault release, she is very talented and lovely and it’s a pleasure to play for her voice and ideas. Coming back to your question, The Laughing Torso is a photo album of surreal, paranoid, ugly photos that comes from my mind… it’s a drama exposed in music and (few) voice. It will have a strong impact on sensible people, I’m sure of this. It’s not just noise, it has more inside… and, an important thing, it’s influenced more by Premature Ejaculation than Throbbing Gristle or Coil this time, and this little change of style has given me a bunch of new ideas for other songs… just thinking I’m planning another release for this year!

For more information on Testing Vault visit: www.myspace.com/testingvault.