Whitehouse/William Bennett/Offensive Noise

[thenoise]

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?

There are lots of Whitehouse interviews (and other bits and pieces) on their website.  I'm not sure if they 'explain' as such, but they are quite interesting nevertheless.

I became interested in Whitehouse pre-youtube and reading about them online and hearing little realplayer snippets of their music I had much the same reaction as William Bennett did regarding Throbbing Gristle.  Their actual musical output failed to live up to my fantasy of 'a sound that bludgeons the audience into submission', in Bennett's own words - on record at least, they opt for a whiney irritating sound, or repetative noodling, or (on the early stuff) pointless water splashing, etc.  The wordiness of later albums provides some more interest, but a lot of it is still more interesting to read than listen to.
I was expecting something more like The Incapacitants or Hijokaidan.

Wriggle Like a Fucking Eel is great and actually quite dancable and catchy.  It wouldn't be my first choice to clear a room.

My favourite album is 'New Britain' - I enjoyed the flirtation with extreme political ideas more than the serial killer worship, myself - but it's not really an extreme noise album, there is a lot of brooding atmospheric stuff, cold electronic sounds, indecipherable lyrics etc.  And great use of silence.

I used to belong to the Whitehouse forum and Bennett/Sotos had an absolutely hilarious public falling out, documented there and in Sotos' self indulgent literature.  I forget the details but I know Bennett accused Sotos of being a 'complete fantasist, a heterosexual conservative in denial' - which I'm quite relieved by really, having bought a couple of his books.  Bennett also laid into former bandmate Kevin Tompkins, of the ridiculous 'Sutcliffe Jugend', under a fake account.  He posted a photo of him dressed as a woman in a local pantomime.

[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.

Turns out it was this bloke.

[Why I Hate Tables]

The Push - Consumer Electronics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoRFAODZtBE
"I hate men, and their violence, their weak murderous minds".

Philip Best has really gone from strength to strength lately: the last two Consumer Electronics releases have been a revelation. Sex Offender Boyfriend from Estuary English is an insane, drooling, raving cut-up tour de force performance; he's speaking in tongues, spewing invective and rolling words round his tongue over derailed technoid atmosphere. Listening to the above track is it reading too much to draw a link between that shakey voiced pronouncement I quoted for you and his anger about being"co-opted by cunts" on Teknon from Estuary English? On the last few Whitehouse albums this was all pretty much laid out: Bennett was incorporating African percussion and Best was doing the lions share of the vocals and, I believe, the lyrics. It's still at their best when they're in gang bollocking mode, the two voices attacking out of the speakers, especially in Cut Hands The Solution (which makes me shiver) but Consumer Electronics....it's nice to be vindicated.

See that's what got me into Whitehouse. The catharsis and the sheer silliness of a lot of it. Laughter with a sack over its head. That's what I miss in a lot of power electronics I check out: it's full of lumpen machismo, serial killer cliche and well used newspaper cuttings where the spunk has blotted out a lot of the detail. Sotos' writing inspires a visceral reaction in me, anger, revulsion and fear: it must be why I return to it now and then. He points out that the coverage of sex crimes is often in itself pornographic, grist for the mill of sick fucks like him perhaps. There's always a mask slip, though, always a moment of righteous indignation. At one point in Selfish, Little, in the middle of one of his lurid tirades he slips in the phrase "I could not bear it if anything happened to this child" and it sends you reeling.

I still wasn't expecting Philip Best's words to reduce me to tears as they do on that track, though. On Dollhouse Songs there're some incredibly powerful performances: Sarah Froelich's impassioned screaming on Condition of a Hole and Philip Best alternating between full A Cunt Like You Fury and sounding like a sad old man. I can't wait to hear what he does next. Young Philip's just warming up it seems.