My new EP under the And the Maiden moniker, Magdalen Burns will be coming out tomorrow through SGFF Records. I’ll be doing a couple of radio interviews in the next week or two to discuss it in full but, suffice to say, Magdalen Burns is a noise / industrial ambient exploration of the ugliness of the conflict with the TERF movement, and the beauty found in self-actualized queer and trans liberation.
The first run is limited to 10 physical copies, so don’t wait to get one!
(Given at the Punk Scholar’s Network’s “Anyone Can Do It: Noise, Punk and the Ethics/Politics of Transgression” conference, Newcastle University, UK, 17th December 2019.
As reflected in the abstract for this paper as it was included in the programme, it was my initial desire to do something of an artist study of both Richard Ramirez and Sam McKinlay here today. However, I did ultimately decide it would be best to focus on the latter for the purposes of the 20 or so minutes we have together, as McKinlay’s work can, for the most part, be easily and legitimately be synecdochised through discussion of his moniker The Rita, whilst an understanding of Richard Ramirez’ goals, aesthetics, methods and developments of those three require discussion of – at the very least – his group Black Leather Jesus and solo project Werewolf Jerusalem, if not also many other of his myriad projects, such as Crash at Every Speed, Last Rape, or his increasing output and performances simply under his own name. Accordingly, it is my belief that these artists deserve at least one chapter each, and I would encourage anyone interested to follow my blog, which will have this paper going up almost immediately, and can expect a follow-up relating to Richard Ramirez as soon as is possible.)
In the Instagram and Bandcamp-based copy for The Rita’s most recent release, Martine Grimaud, UK-based noise label Foul Prey introduced the EP thus:
“Few noise artists manage to imbue their material with such sensitive, intimate emotion as Sam McKinlay. Resolutely dedicated to his art form and the subjects therein, his work is nothing but sincere devotion.
On the face of it, Martine Grimaud is an actress known for her roles in various Euro-erotica films, but to The Rita she is much more indeed. An example of ‘aesthetic perfection’ and a most worthy subject for detailed contemplation, The Rita sets about manipulating his source material like only he can. Spoken exchanges and passages of film score are subjected to the trademark gated fuzz turbulence the artist has become synonymous with. Puckered folds of sticky, crunching noise gather and enfold, as voices become strangled and melody choked, occasionally straining out through the thick curtain of distortion. The result is a devastating and heady affair that breathes and throbs as if alive.”
Such a description can certainly evoke various responses, including criticality toward a male gaze objectification of a woman into a fetishized female object, rendered a dehumanising, pedestaled ideal. It is not my intention in this paper necessarily to rescue The Rita from such an accusation, rather instead to muse to a certain extent upon what it means to have a dynamic of relation, identification and power between two agents in which humanity may be reduced or discarded, when placed within the context of musical production whose sonic brutality is often celebrated and castigated, simultaneously by different parties, for its inhuman qualities.
In this paper, I shall engage with aspects of The Rita’s oeuvre, particularly charting what might roughly be bifurcated into two relatively distinct eras: the initially giallo slasher and horror-focused work of the late 90s and 00s, and the current era of albums and Eps, predominantly centred around classical ballet, and individual actresses from softcore and mondo pornographic cinema. My aim here is to open conversation regarding The Rita’s particular sonic interaction with ideas and bodies, the extent to which these may create specific sounds, and in what ways such a supposedly chaotic aural oikos can alter (or at least alter our perception of) the subject/object caesura of events that, pre-recording and manipulation are so routinely considered the very icons of such distinctions, not least of all within the context of power relations.
Skin Crime
Richard Ramirez
Moonbeam Terror
Ninos Du Brasil
Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement
My other noise project right now is under the name Prayer Rope, as a sonic expression of my interest in the particularities and imbrications of mystical theology. I was also frankly stunned there was neither a noise, nor metal, outfit by the name already.
And the Maiden is a moniker I recently began using whilst creating material (such as the first two tracks below) solely out of manipulated youtube audio rips of tourist and local footage of the waterfalls and gorges in and around Ithaca and the Finger Lakes area. This original project, titled Obstructing Egress will be my final submission for my current Environmental Humanities module. I’m excited to see where it will go beyond that in 2020.
A predominantly subdued collection of tracks from various Richard Ramirez outfits (almost entirely duo / solo efforts), The Machines Will React is, despite the multicephalous variance of the album, the closest I have thus far heard Ramirez reach drone. Favouring reverb in a lot of these tracks, listening to Machines, I am transported back to London, and the various churches, temporarily converted into noise/drone venues in Hackney and Bethnal Green. Perhaps due to this live-performance association, there is a greater sense of the deliberate, even the human, in Machines than so much of Ramirez’ work. Though never as forlorn as Yellow Swans’ Going Places, there is a pensive presence that feels particularly reminiscent of Dominick Fernow’s work as Prurient and even some of the crunchier sides of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement. There are of course, exceptions to be found – most notably in the tracks performed as Werewolf Jerusalem (regular readers of my blog will be less than surprised to hear this is my favourite) and 12 Yr Old Proud Parent, both of which blast violently through the profound and thunderous fog.
Undoubtedly a personal favourite, Black Chapel was my introduction to Werewolf Jerusalem, and Richard Ramirez’ output generally, in anticipation for his UK tour with Skullflower – at the time, I was drawn to the show predominantly out of my genuine consideration of these being perhaps the two best band names of all time. I recall creating a “noise, no Merzbow” playlist for a zine around this time of year in 2015, the climax of which was indeed “The Last Witch,” which I described at the time as reaching “apocalyptic levels of pure damnation.” This is certainly true, though I believe Black Chapel carries considerably more introspection than for which I had credited it, half a decade ago. Recurrent low-end rumbles, akin to the foghorn introduction to Demdike Stare’s “Hashshashin Chant,” re-anchor the event to a mortal, sublunary phusis – or at least origin – even though it is an ontological point of stability from which the subject may feel frantically and brutally decoupled. Through the Black Chapel, we enter a new world, though the old one is not quite forgotten. In this light – or rather, darkness – the “damnation” is classically Dantean. In the layered distortion, I can almost make out harsh vocals reminiscent of Grief frontman Jeff Hayward. In the swirling confusion, I imagine for a moment I can hear the struck keys of Cecil Taylor, or even Thelonious Monk. The illusion breaks, and I am alone. Alone with the multiplicity of the demonic, howling wind.
I came to a place where no light shone at all,
bellowing like the sea racked by a tempest,
when warring winds attack it from both sides.
The infernal storm, eternal in its rage,
sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast:
it whirls them, lashing them with punishment.
When they are swept back past their place of judgement,
then come the shrikes, laments, and anguished cries;
there they blaspheme God’s almighty power.
…
And as the wings of starlings in the winter
bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks,
so does that wind propel the evil spirits;
Now here, then there, and up and down, it drives them,
with never any hope to comfort them –
hope not of rest but even of suffering less.
(Dante, Inferno, Canto V)
At the Punk Scholars Network conference “Anyone Can Do It: Noise, Punk & the Ethics/Politics of Transgression,” held in Newcastle, UK on the 16th and 17th December
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Although, with such a record, there is an urge to be such an expert in the nuances of harsh noise wall, that one could pick out a specific frequency and specify the individual source, I cannot help but feel that would rather defeat the intention of Threesome Slitting as a collaborative piece. Rather, approaches and aesthetics form an assemblage as constant as it is fractured: a battle in which all sides achieve ultimately the same ends.
Richard Ramirez and Romain Perrot, under their respective monikers of Werewolf Jerusalem and Vomir, emphasize notions of immobility in their work: the former labeling his output specifically as “static noise,” whilst Vomir’s various drives to categorize proudly the (or at least his) HNW aesthetic have included the pithy statement “no change, no development, no remorse.” Sam McKinlay as The Rita, especially in his more recent work, tied as often as it is to the topic of ballet, naturally conjures images of motion, even if these images appear in their own way frozen, as photographs of a whirling dervish, limbs appearing at once viscous and effervescent. An ectoplasmic multiplicity. Certainly, the influence cinema has had, at least on Ramirez and McKinlay, by virtue of their recurrent acknowledgement, if not use as a source, of giallo invokes certain questions of tensions between meanings located in horizontal vs vertical modes of temporality.
Accordingly, the violence of this record – and it is, most assuredly, a violent record – is the polar clash of a frenzied paralysis. Slamming against a door, locked from the other side, or struggling and failing to free oneself from bondage. A heart pounding against a chest. A body convulsing on the floor, bleeding out from the jugular vein. Threesome Slitting‘s invariable privileging of the lower end of the sonic register only furthers the affect of suppression, a sense of muffling, gagging, even when played at the appropriate, wall-shaking volume. And yet, there is not the air of introspection I have come to expect from each individual artist, in their own idiosyncratic modes. Rather, the sound forever retains a closeness, but one still of the most thinly bridged distance. The proximal, coercive alignment of a victim, and the killer, slitting their throat.
Wyrdsystyr 