Whitehouse/William Bennett/Offensive Noise

[fatguyranting]

Never really dipped my toe into his world before, but I'm writing an article on him at the moment and after a few days of listening I'm amazed to discover that I might well be becoming a fan. At its best it's brutally effective despite the constant danger of everything threatening to collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness. I'm aware some people are put off by the allegations of dodgy politics and the rampant misogyny but I remain unconvinced about that having spent some time looking into them. Any fans?

[Puce Moment]

No, although as a teenager I used to own some of their records, which I managed to sell some years later after being turned down by Rough Trade and, weirdly, Reckless Records. Sister Ray were up for it, but they went to the Exchange people in the end.

I'm more of a Hanatarash and Ramleh person when it comes to that sort of music.

[Shaky]

Not a fan per se, but I'm glad Whitehouse exist (or, er, did exist?). Always found them genuinely disturbing and confronting - the aural equivalent of rubbing the human face in it's own vomit - and Bennett seems to be an intelligent man who can argue his case quite well. Some of his more hate-filled diatribes clearly see him taking on a persona so I think it's fairly easy to separate him from all that - especially now he's doing stuff like Cut Hands.

I was always more alarmed by ex-WH member Peter Sotos, who has a particular interest in paedophilia. Not suggesting he IS a nonce or anything - and I've always been too scared to read more than a few paragraphs of his writing tbh - but he's supposed to be a very unpleasant guy who revels in the notoriety.

[fatguyranting]

Sotos is quite terrifying on the surface, but bear in mind that is a construct really. I spoke to someone who met him a few times and apparently he comes across as a charming, highly intelligent man who has a lot so say about media representations about sexual violence. The books however are incredibly difficult to read, soul destroying in fact, but wiser critics then myself seem to think they have value. The French love him for some reason. If you were going to dip your toe in, I think his best work is the afterword he wrote for the Feral House edition of Ian Brady's The Gates of Janus. He manages to tear Brady's thought process apart and calls him out for what he sees as cowardice in taking responsibility for his crimes. Still pretty brutal though.

EDIT: Practically speaking Sotos has got a child porn conviction from a few decades ago but got a suspended sentence as he claimed he needed the material for an art project, namely his fanzine PURE, which repulsed anyone unlucky enough to pick up a copy in the 90's.

[Puce Moment]

I met Sotos a few years ago when he came over to the UK to do some readings, and was getting hounded/stalked by a Daily Mail journalist. He was surprisingly passive and knocked when confronted about his Pure stuff. His works on Creation Books were the only books I have ever destroyed (literally burned) in case they ever got used against me in court (I was getting arrested for other stuff around the time and did not need the heat). I used to be a Friend of Creation Books, sending them monthly subs in exchange for their books, and Sotos' unpleasant outputs were sent to me upon each release amongst other Creation stuff. I found them interesting from the point of view of having access to his mind, but I started to find them quite tedious, in the way that the writings of obsessives tend to be.

Sotos' involvement with Whitehouse is interesting though, but does take their more theoretical/philosophical stance in a more problematically real-world direction, given what I consider to be his dodgy leanings. He is good at making a case for the mainstream media's exploitation of children and their hypocrisy, but beyond that, it's meh and ugh.

[fatguyranting]

Ha. That's set me laughing Puce because I fully understand where you are coming from. I wrote an overview of Sotos's work for a university project a few years back and the tutor marking it was so violently repulsed by the short sections of text I'd included she threatened to write to the director of public prosecutions to make him aware that such hateful filth was widely available in book shops. I suggested she was over reacting and she eventually agreed, although I don't think she was swayed by the inept literary reading I'd handed in.

I think Sotos gets better with age, I paid out a whack of money for a limited release, no ISBN limited edition of one of his books recently and found myself managing to get through more than one paragraph per sitting, so that's something of an improvement.

Did you hear about all the shit with Creation books by the way?

http://www.creationbooksfraud.com

[Famous Mortimer]

Never really dipped my toe into his world before

I wrote an overview of Sotos's work for a university project a few years back

What gives, Mr Ranting?

I read a few things of Sotos' when another CaBber (maybe Cohaagen?) would write a lot about him - and I found it vaguely pathetic, like a teenager trying his absolute best to be the most shocking he could possibly be.

Re: Whitehouse, maybe I'm just bored of people who espouse the sort of views they did "as a character" (why not be a character who gives a fuck about the rest of humanity, it'd be more original), so never bothered listening to much of their stuff past the odd video.

[Funcrusher]

I got a Whitehouse comp many years ago out of curiousity and found it just laughably bad. Someone shouting 'I'm coming up your ass' over some Throbbing Gristle knock off noisy synths. The minimal sleeve art, shock value of the titles and somewhat shadowy presence was all very calculated to be intriguing, but the music is just nothing special.

[fatguyranting]

Mortimer, I ahould have clarified that I'm pretty bang on when it comes to transgressive/offensive litearture but the world of extreme music is very much a new thing for me. Although I've dipped my toe into some pretty mad metal in the past.

[Bobby Treetops]

No, although as a teenager I used to own some of their records, which I managed to sell some years later after being turned down by Rough Trade and, weirdly, Reckless Records. Sister Ray were up for it, but they went to the Exchange people in the end.

I'm more of a Hanatarash and Ramleh person when it comes to that sort of music.

Some of their music goes for silly money now a days so I think it's best not to look on Discogs.

I remember going to a New Years Eve party years ago where my mate, for reasons only known to himself, thought this would be an appropriate ditty to play to the revelers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83hAZU5rn98

Cue mass evacuation to the back garden with one women memorably coming up to me in a distressed state, asking me  'Why's he playing this? What's he trying to do to me?' In-retrospect I'd probably react in the same manner if I'd taken acid and listen to Whitehouse for the first time. 

[Neville Chamberlain]

Come on, everyone has to have their "I was a DJ and I inappropriately played Whitehouse" moment! ;-)

[Famous Mortimer]

Mortimer, I ahould have clarified that I'm pretty bang on when it comes to transgressive/offensive litearture but the world of extreme music is very much a new thing for me. Although I've dipped my toe into some pretty mad metal in the past.

I figured, but it was the best my brain could come up with at 7am.

I'm with Puce Moment and their choices of music of this sort to spin. Masonna too.

[An Actual Propeller]

Come on, everyone has to have their "I was a DJ and I inappropriately played Whitehouse" moment! ;-)

I was DJing a gig, and a bunch of EDL-looking cunts turned up, and the promoter asked me to play something in order to get them to leave.  So, I stuck on 'Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel'.  Then I flipped the record over and played the instrumental b-side after that.  Then I played the A-side again, and they finally left.  One lad was dancing madly to it, and looked disappointed when his mates dragged him out.

I once booked Whitehouse for a gig and got shit from the local DIY music scene for ages for it.  Probably because 19 years earlier they played the same city and hit a lass in the face who was sitting in the front row.

[prwc]

I'm nowhere as into them as I used to be in my mid-teens but they're an important and brilliant group. Not so much into the 90s material they did but everything else I find good to great. The ridiculousness of it all is definitely at least partly intentional (something a lot of later power electronics acts sadly/hilariously missed out on). Sure, a lot of it is juvenile and crude but that lends it a lot more visceral impact to me.

Some other noise worth investigating:
The Gerogerigegege. A lot of it's not noise noise but they are one of the most unique projects ever. Constant Ramones/gay sex/porn references, releases that consist entirely of shit vocals over untreated recordings of pop music from Japanese radio, releases that sound like they were recorded in a submarine, and one that's an hour long untrained piece of piano improvisation in tribute to the artists distant concert pianist mother. They manage to give doing seemingly anything a coherent aesthetic. Nothing else like them at all.

Incapacitants are the zenith of ear shredding Japanoise, ultra lengthy tracks of torturous trebly/mid-range electronic screech. So utterly extreme they've invoked trance like effects in me (and many others) at their best. I really enjoy their references to being bankers as their day jobs and the artwork that usually consists of them looking merrily drunk together too. Refreshingly free of transgressive posturing.

The New Blockaders are easily one of the most widely influential noise acts, their début record in particular is a beautiful bit of racket. Violent metal scraping in a shed with the sound of rooftop rain pattering above. Pirate all their music though as they're rip off cunts.

Macronympha make distinctly American sounding harsh delirium, rapid tape cut ups and loops, hands on physical carnage all fed through blown out 90s cassette distortion.

Plenty more I could go on about but that's enough for now. For this post I'm specifically talking about acts that primarily use very abrasive/loud textures but noise is such a broad term, it could be applied to so much sound/music. Which in my eyes is a very good thing, the openness of it is a major part of the appeal, but it can make discussing it difficult sometimes.

[Dirty Boy]

Who was that mad bald guy that used to fuck himself up onstage? Think he was Swedish or something... He had the most disgusting album covers i'd ever seen.

[ndrwkrtn]

Do you mean G. G. Allin (who sadly passed away in 1993)?

[Dirty Boy]

Ha, no. He was a noise guy/performance artist. I did make him sound exactly like GG though, admittedly (although mr Allin was obviously German).

[Petey Pate]

So are they one of those bands where a "Best of"/"Greatest Hits" is plenty?

[fatguyranting]

Some great tips here. Thanks. Very much enjoying this thread.

Just been on the Susan Lawley/WHITEHOUSE message boards and some of their fans are best diplomatically described as complete fucking nutters. There's some disturbing links I'm to afraid to even think about clicking on. I guess what I enjoy about the stuff I've heard over the last few days is that as intense as the music is it's always threatening to collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness, so I do think that there's a sense of humour at work beneath the po-faced transgressive exterior.

[Dirty Boy]

I don't get it really, or maybe i do and just can't get into it. I like extreme music, but usually stop at the far end of noise-rock or industrial, so the likes of Whitehouse or Merzbow's Venereology are a leap too far. I know it takes effort to listen and pick apart the different sounds and layers of extreme noise, but i've never got to the stage where i found it particularly worthwhile to listen to.

A sense of humour helps. There's an awful lot of pretentious guff surrounding it though, not to mention the occasional far right nastiness (which to be fair seems more prevalent in the neo folk scene).

[Neville Chamberlain]

I saw Merzbow at Supersonic a few years ago and I was surprised at how bloody good it was. I also saw William Bennett as Cut Hands and that was fantastic. That said, this is stuff I could never just sit down and listen to at home. "Extreme" music I listen to at home would be, I dunno, Ruins and early Residents or something - at least they've got actual proper tunes you can tap your foot along to!

[Dirty Boy]

Tap your feet to Ruins and they'd fly off.

I mentioned that Merzbow album because it's on the more harsh/extreme end, but he's done other stuff that's less abrasive as well as albums that are more minimalist and spacey and (almost) ambient. He's not just an extreme noise guy, but that's mainly what he's known as.

Eye from the Boredoms was in a noise band called Hanatarash who sounded pretty funny.

Hanatarash was notorious for its dangerous live shows. Some of the band's most infamous shows included Eye cutting a dead cat in half with a machete, strapping a circular saw to his back and almost cutting his leg off, and destroying part of a venue with a backhoe bulldozer by driving it through the back wall and onto the stage.

At a 1985 show in Tokyo's Superloft, the audience was required to fill out waivers due to the possibility of harm caused by the show. The show was stopped due to Eye preparing to throw a lit molotov cocktail onto the stage. The performance cost ¥600,000 (approximately $9,000 US) in repairs.

After several years of the intense live shows, Hanatarash was forbidden from performing at most venues, and were only allowed to return to live performances in the 1990s without the trademark danger.

Daft sod.
Bulldozer+aftermath

[Neville Chamberlain]

Tap your feet to Ruins and they'd fly off.

Well they do knock my socks off!!!

[kngen]

Don't think I could stomach reading Sotos now that I've got a kid of my own, but I read a few of his books back in my nihilistic 20s and 30s. As distressing as they could be, even then, I never felt they were just being transgressive for the sake of it. When I found myself defending him (and my interest in his books), the best way I could describe it was that he was providing dispatches from the fringes of human psycho-sexual experience, and as such, offering a moral outpost to let us examine our own hypocrisies and venality.[nb]That's the short version. Anyone unfortunate enough to engage with me on the subject would have to endure a 30-minute rambling treatise that eventually circled the drain and got to the point.[/nb] It's no coincidence that around the time I was heavily invested in his books, the paedophile witch-hunts were in full force, the BES outrage juxtaposed with 'She's chest swell' headlines abounded, as did that whole bizarre mix of the prudish and the prurient that was redolent in British public life back then.[nb]eg the screeching of an 'anti-paedophile' campaigner on the news who somehow didn't see a problem with allowing their 12-year-old daughter to wear a parody Maltesers T-shirt that said 'Manteaser' on it is one that will forever stick in my mind[/nb] Amid all this confused bloodthirsty racket, Sotos did occasionally seem like a sane voice, albeit one that said: 'Look, you're all scum. I'm just the one that's brave enough to admit it.'

And, as was written above, his skewering of Ian Brady was majestic - and absolutely underlined to me that this was a moral man using the very basest of his instincts to reflect our worst aspects back to us. Would be interested to know what the falling out between him and Bennett was though. As far as Whitehouse goes - they never really appealed, as I found the actual noise of their noise to be a bit one-dimensional (as with most power electronics really). Much preferred Merzbow, Hidjokaidan, Hanatarash etc. But the story of them being the live act at a bank holiday weekend Optimo is fantastic though. Kudos to the organisers for knowingly attempting to alienate as many of the wankers that turned up to their club as possible.

[Famous Mortimer]

When I found myself defending him (and my interest in his books), the best way I could describe it was that he was providing dispatches from the fringes of human psycho-sexual experience, and as such, offering a moral outpost to let us examine our own hypocrisies and venality.

I think considerably less of him than that, but as I'm unlikely to ever dip into any of his stuff again, I appreciate your defence of what he does.

Out of interest, have any of them ever explained what they were aiming for with their hate-filled diatribes, or is it just their fans filling in the blanks?

[benthalo]

A fan. Always have been.

I was at the launch event for the reprint of David Keenan's England's Hidden Reverse last Sunday. Keenan read from his new foreword which was a really interesting analysis of the use of sex and violence in music such as Whitehouse (and the rest) as a channeling of what is always just below the surface in mainstream rock and roll - night vs day. Keenan finds more honesty and profundity in Whitehouse's "Buchenwald" over the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and their songs about war.

As to noise in general, I get irritated by the assumption that it's always "angry" music. There's a whole spectrum. I recall Edwin Pouncey in The Wire, when writing about Merzbow, rather brilliantly describing the sound as a hug. I listen to it an awful lot.

Consumer Electronics in Shoreditch tomorrow night will reunite me with the joys of Philip Best. I haven't seen him since one of the final Whitehouse shows in Angel.

I have too many Sotos books. I've read one. Someone sent me a pile of them unsolicited, and I'm so glad they weren't stopped at customs.

[Famous Mortimer]

I have too many Sotos books. I've read one. Someone sent me a pile of them unsolicited, and I'm so glad they weren't stopped at customs.

I think you're alright, as you can build a decent collection via eBay, should you wish.

[Dirty Boy]

What's so bad about these books? Are they just really misanthropic, self hating Mike Gira-esque tomes, or am i right to assume they're filled with graphic child rape fantasies and the like? Not sure i want to be going for a look is all...

Glad Englands Hidden Reverse is finally coming out again. I've had it on order for ages and it kept getting delayed. I'm mainly interested in the stuff on NWW.

[Squink]

Good thread. The comp titled The Cream of the Second Coming is the most Whitehouse I've listened to. I'm not sure what will happen when my kids rifle through my record collection in later days and find that one. Should be an interesting conversation.

As to noise in general, I get irritated by the assumption that it's always "angry" music. There's a whole spectrum. I recall Edwin Pouncey in The Wire, when writing about Merzbow, rather brilliantly describing the sound as a hug. I listen to it an awful lot.

Agreed. Noise works across a full spectrum. I find certain strains of it good for getting rid of a hangover/headache, when you'd think the opposite would be true. Even totally wild stuff can be quite meditative.

[kngen]

I think considerably less of him than that, but as I'm unlikely to ever dip into any of his stuff again, I appreciate your defence of what he does.

My caveat for that being that it's indeed been a while since I've read any of it, too, and that was before parenthood, and marrying a woman who worked in Child Protection Services, which really brought home (literally, at the end of a working day) the horrors of abuse and its legacy. But I'm in no rush to reappraise, it has to be said.