Prurient: Cocaine Daughter

Prurient: Cocaine Daughter
Hospital Productions (2015)

I am in love with this old school Noise cassette right now.

Noise nerds will be familiar with Dominick Fernow and his Prurient project. Newbies should imagine a pale geeky kid in America’s midwest making ears bleed with only his voice, an amp and a microphone. He moves to NYC where he adds creepy synths and industrial drums to his mix, before settling in LA to produce a unique hybrid of goth, new wave and harsh noise. Dave and I talk about him a lot on the Antidote Podcast. Fernow has myriad fantastic side projects, too.

Cocaine Daughter was recorded back in 2011, in a Kansas City hotel. Its gritty textures paint a picture of Fernow alone in a dingy room at 3am still wearing his leather jacket, surrounded by pedals, wires and digital paraphernalia while paying tribute to Merzbow, Whitehouse and Cabaret Voltaire.

The emphasis is on dark waves of sound that swell towards synth driven miasma. Fernow expertly combines white hot static with sci-fi whirs, metallic clangour and walls of digital abrasion. It’s like your head inside a jet engine, immense layers of sound sucked through a gash in the hull and spat into your ears. Analogue tape and computers smash together and crumble into the void.

The overall vibe is gothic in nature, largely due to the damaged keyboards that constantly shift speeds and whine like klaxons in the murk. Occasionally some semblance of melody picks itself up out of the rubble to stop Cocaine Daughter from boiling over into aggression – this is no Harsh Wall Noise recording. Instead, the tension simmers in your speakers, thickening the air and hazing your vision. There’s none of Fernow’s spoken-word-slash-tortured vocals or industrial drumming on here, which is unusual for a Prurient release.

When this was recorded in 2011 the noise scene had peaked. The sun was setting on its entrails. Cocaine Daughter is a glorious reminder of how thrilling the sound was, and hopefully a reminder of what it could be again. I miss these sorts of Noise recordings, when things felt dangerous, anarchic and nihilistic. I’m having lots of fun listening to it.

The greatest thing about ‘Noise’ is that it’s void of meaning. Sure, much has been written about anti-capitalism and anti-authoritarian stances in relation to Noise, but the reality is you can project whatever you want to on it. Adolescent weirdos see it as aggressive; nerds try and force social politics on to it; but I’ve always appreciated the purity of its ‘nothingness’. It’s just white hot static that smudges all thought from your mind. If you’re willing to give in, you can have a transcendent experience.

Cocaine Daughter was released in a run of 150 copies. I hope for your sake Fernow reissues it sometime soon.

Digging: Prurient

Prurient: Pleasure Ground
Load Records (2007)

There aren’t many artists out there whose music juggles violence and frailty so well. It’s almost a contradiction to think that something can be brutal enough to peel off your face but precariously positioned to shatter at any time, and yet Dominick Fernow’s harrowed screams and buckled electronics do exactly this.  Prurient exists somewhere entirely of his own; equal parts Black Metal ethos, soothing drone, Industrial clank and harsh fucking noise.

Pleasure Ground is made up of four 10-minute pieces; kicking off with stabbing dissonance and subtly mutating towards a finale of release.

Opener Military Road starts out with piercing feedback and then limps along on a hollowed out pulse that sounds like machine gun fire slowed down and drugged. Fernow’s lung tearing howls float around until a bowel loosening bass frequency swirls everything up into a thick gelatinous mess.

Earthworks/Buried in Secret picks up and massages this low end into a descending drone, distorted and repetitive like a mantra. As you begin to zone out the ‘tune’ shifts up numerous octaves into a cheesy Black Metal synth line. Fernow starts puking his guts up again as thumping kick drums reverberate in the background. Occasionally a snare drum snaps up your attention and eventually all the elements start bubbling away in unison, a wall of aching, beautiful but ugly sound. Possibly my favourite Prurient track yet.

Things take a detour from here. Outdoorsman/Indestructible is based on a barely audible bass sine (think menacing late seventies horror movie soundtrack) and a trickle of wobbly keys. Cymbals clang here and there, mutedly, and the vocals take on the guise of an apathetic spoken word performance.

Volume returns for the final number, Apple Tree Victim, where a distorted melody endlessly repeats while Fernow gets back to sandpapering his vocal cords. The effect is nowhere near as intense as the opening tracks; in fact it’s almost pretty. Without the screams you could be lulled into a daydream, albeit something that involves long-nailed creatures hiding under your bed.

What I love about this record (along with Rose Pillar) compared to what I’ve heard of his other work so far (which is all pretty fucking amazing) is that here Prurient manages to take you on a journey. Pleasure Ground has a strong character arc and when you reach the end of this record, you’re never the person you were when it started.

New Release: Prurient

Prurient: Rose Pillar
The Heartworm (2009)

Holy crap! I may have found my record of 2009.

It all starts innocently enough. The muffled keys and distant rumblings on the opening track, Custer Aims his Arrow are gently hypnotic, disguising a thick fog that hides wolves and other Transylvanian nasties while gently hooking its jaws around your throat. Blown-out and icy cold keyboard drones emerge from the mist; something stomps and crackles in the distance while Dominick Fernow squeals garbled incantations into your ears. Then more distant rumblings and those lifeless, frozen keyboards, like a Dario Argento soundtrack but scary and so goddamn lonely.

Prurient has followed his interest in Black Metal to its furthest and most ambient depths. Rose Pillar is grim, empty and hopeless stuff made from keyboards and distorted vocals. It’s also deceptively soothing. This is the sound of a man pouring his deepest emotions into his noise. This isn’t about testing the listener’s limits or questioning the definition of music.

Is it Emo Noise? Fuck knows, but whatever it is, it’s absolutely thrilling.

Rose Pillar hits its stride on the fourth and fifth tracks where Hammer with Forty Names merges a Merzbow-ian rhythm with an undercurrent of guitar static and vocals like shattering glass. Indeed, the windows in my house rattle when I play this at even half-full volume. This leads into the album’s crescendo, Spins the World’s Wheels Again where a dislocated voice like Frank the psycho bunny from Donnie Darko gives a ten-minute eulogy over a sparkling keyboard drone. His voice rises from next-dimension distortion to blood curdling scream, in homage to all things David Lynch. Fuck me if this track isn’t scarier than anything I’ve ever heard from any Black Metal/Doom/Noise act. Ever.

Smartly, Fernow doesn’t allow Rose Pillar to outstay its welcome. 34 minutes of aching beauty leaves you hankering for more. I’m listening to this on repeat.

Currently the record is only available on 11” vinyl, with a 180 page hardcover book of Fernow’s artwork, and text from his mother’s memoir detailing the death of an estranged relative. I don’t own a turntable so I’m listening to a copy kindly made for me by a friend, but so good is this record I’m on the edge of forking out the AU$150 for it regardless.

I can’t recommend this enough, people. For me, this is the future of noise. Rose Pillar has purpose and meaning; noise for the sake of noise has been done already. If you dig Burial Hex, or thought Wolf Eyes’ Human Animal was mind blowing, Rose Pillar is gonna’ change your whole perspective on shit.