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!
Even leaving to one side its recurrent use of dissonant synths and forebodingly driven electronic beats, Xiu Xiu’s A Promise shares with a highly select handful of records, including Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me, or Giles Corey’s eponymous debut, the capacity utilise crushing sadness in such a way that it is at least as effective as distorted atonality, run through a looped effects chain.
Though it may appear a less than obvious comparison, A Promise bears to me a striking similarity to D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Both albums display a remarkable variety in generic format and instrumental content, whilst this panoply of styles feel linked enough to function as chromatic dimensions to the prismatic event of a single origin. Both albums make use of lifted conversations between clandestine queers: where Throbbing Gristle used actual audio recordings of gay sex workers, dealing with and discussing rough trade in “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” in A Promise, many of the lyrics in “Sad Pony Guerilla Girl” are ostensibly lifted directly from the conversations of an oblivious lesbian couple, meeting above Jamie Stewart. That such lyrics as
You leave me out on the steps
You dress me up like a boy
You say that I am your secret love
you say to be quiet but
I want to tell the whole world
…
We do it in the back of our little car
Pull up my pants and fix my bra
Go on home, go home to your kids
I’m not going to be quiet and
I’m going to tell the whole block
Clearly indicate the nature of this relationship – closeted, divided by at the very least age, responsibility and class – we can ruminate on the ethics of the archive of queer experience, at a level of recording (in one mode or another) secret conversations and secret identities, when we can also recognise the extremely disparate desires in relation to the secrecy, itself.
Just as D.o.A had “Weeping,” A Promise has its own heart-wrenching acoustic number: a cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Stewart’s mode of address, so often placing himself in the feminine position as he – a queer man – repeats the words of queer women, speaks at once to the paradoxical potentials for unification across all manner of social lines, through isolation, hardship and despair. It is as such that, for all the challenging alternativity of A Promise and Xiu Xiu’s output throughout their career, it is abundantly clear there is not a hint of irony in this song’s rendition. The capacity for finding similarity within difference, through surprising requisition, reappropriation, recontextualisation and reconstitution is, I believe, an expressly queer one.
The vinyl edition I have of A Promise is relatively unique in its design, lacking the infamous candid photograph of a nude Hanoi sex worker by the name of Hang, holding the baby doll that remains in this alternative cover, upside down. Stewart’s own account of the photographs provenance is a remarkable mixture of moving, comedic, uncomfortable and frustrating in its simultaneous presentation of self-consciousness and insensitivity. Stewart’s ultimate philosophy regarding his decision to take the photograph in question, “sometimes, you’ve got to do the wrong thing,” is by no means a denial of the slight sickening response many may have to it. Whether the alternative cover here is the result of bowdlerisation is difficult to determine, but the spartan abstraction of my own edition does bring to mind Tony Just’s series of photographs of empty, sanitized restrooms that were sites of cruising – what Muñoz considered to be the spirit photography of the “ghosts of public sex.” The spectral presence of Hang remains, noticeable in his omission.
Noise’s capacity to make itself known through its own violent radical alterity allows for it often to reshape its own contexts. Accordingly, a series of live recordings reissued on vinyl, twenty years after their initial performance, and eighteen after their original 2xCDr release, neither commands nor is commanded by the same engine of cultural nostalgia that drives most such artifacts. The vibrancy and dynamic queer energy of Amplified Tactics, however, elevates these recordings to a dominating affective immediacy that fully realises the corporeal dimension of the genre. Contrasted to the greater degree of punishing consistency in Ramirez’ best known projects, Amplified Tactics oscillates at times wildly between ranges , timbres and sources – moving from high-EQ hissing to pseudo-melodious low-end rumbles from what sound like an electric drill, reminiscent of Sunn O))). By halfway through the final track, that effectively collapses space and time, creating an almost seamless blend between a performance in Monterrey and a performance in Reynosa, we begin to have intrusions of clear vocal records from gay porn, and eventually a genuinely funny gay radio talk show, listening ten overtly lascivious reasons “to go to the rodeo,” the celebration of Southern queer disregard for decorum feels entirely consistent with everything else we have heard for the past hour. An essential document of the North American queer underground, toying with conventions of masculinity
(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)
Wyrdsystyr 