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Wolf Eyes and Prurient- Live at The Knitting Factory, 4/1/05

Will Weikart

After gracing the cover of a recent Wire magazine (UK), and an acclaimed full-length CD on Sub Pop, Burned Mind, I bought Wolf Eyes tickets well in advance for this April Fool’s day noise orgy. Maybe the simultaneous Lightning Bolt show in Brooklyn split the attendance, but the crowd this night was surprisingly medium and not near a sell-out.

Wolf Eyes are a trio of dudes (in the true sense) from Michigan who have both exposed noise to a new generation and further de-centered noise production away from the urban metropolitan centers of the US. Starting out in the late 90s as the project of one Nate Young, it would soon add John Olson (American Tapes label) and then Aaron Dilloway (Hansen Records label) to round out its current incarnation. Wolf Eyes have since shat forth a plethora of small-edition (as few as 50 or less) and often hand-decorated cassettes, CDRs, and albums. These have appeared on their own and others’ labels, buttressing a small but vibrant noise underground as well as a seething and nerdy collector micro-economy. All three members collaborate on any number of side projects, to boot. Today WE seem to exist simultaneously in a more visible sphere (Sub Pop album, etc.) and as a major node, unlikely stars, in a less visible and far less commercially viable cassette-based noise underground. Last year they headlined the first annual, 3-day No Fun Fest at Northsix in Brooklyn, delivering a ferocious and quite memorable set before a hairy, writhing crowd of stinky teens and twenties. This is their first time performing back in NY since then and so many of us were surely filled with eager anticipation.

The set’s opener tonight is the increasingly visible and prolific Prurient, the solo act of Bushwick’s Dominick Fernow, also of the Hospital Productions label. Prurient started out in the bourgeoning Rhode Island noise scene which gave us Lightning Bolt and Load Records (etc.), before relocating to NYC.

To those who have seen Prurient, we got more or less what we love and expect: Fernow standing shirtless, as always, approximating a mini-Glenn Danzig, back to the crowd and front facing a rather huge stack of amps. From there he proceeds to use mainly just a mic or mics, and a host of effects and hair-raising feedback, for an extended full-body spasm replete with all manner of mangled shrieks. Here the body truly becomes an instrument as the pasty-white form flails and convulses, dialectically creating and created by the emergent sound field, a fury of pure caloric expenditure. If it’s painfully loud in the audience, imagine how it must sound for Furnow with his face kissing distance from a wall of Marshall stacks. A modest Thurston Moore (yes, of Sonic Youth) accompanied his second piece on guitar and effects, basically adding another layer of thickness to the girth of total feedback screech and squalor. Prurient’s sets are usually a burst of manic energy that burns out quickly – a welcome alternative to other acts employing “excess” to an excessive degree. Tonight was no exception.

Wolf Eyes was joined by Mike Connelly from Kentucky’s Hair Police on guitar, horns, and gadgets, in replacement of Dilloway who is apparently still on hiatus in Nepal. Skeptical fans waited nervously when it became obvious that our favorite contact-mic-swallowing shaman would be sadly absent. Would the new guy measure up? Nevertheless, the stout Connelly produced and was a much welcome addition to the lineup. His perhaps unwittingly hilarious, grindcore-ish posturing and rigorous head-banging, along with requisite hand gestures encouraging pit-formation, were well in tact. Acts like Wolf Eyes and Prurient live represent an undeniable return (or perhaps arrival) of the body, and FUN, to noise performance that just recently was so dominated by dime-a-dozen, sedate laptop users and previously, so many power-electronics practitioners seated amidst a pile of gadgets and effects. They also represent a re-valuation of the analog to a “scene” that was likewise becoming hegemonically digital. Wolf Eyes’ “songs” consist generally of throbbing, primal, bile-soaked horror-flick death dirge, and are peppered with generous passages of meandering and delay-laden, spacious, super-stoned free improvisation. Many of their instruments are home-made or at least modified (note Olson’s “guitar” made out of a raw 2x4), giving us sounds that aren’t easily reproducible, and sometimes unidentifiable. Not ground-breakingly new, but perhaps new in combination, and improving with each album, WE have been described confusingly and convincingly as Throbbing Gristle meets King Tubby meets Henri Chopin meets Negative Approach. Dark stuff indeed, the practical direct personification of the dank mildew-y basements that nourish them – perhaps this is a new soundtrack to suburban, post-industrial teen angst and alienation, for the Columbine generation. Cro-magnon fist pumping never felt (so) right.

Will Weikart is a student in the PhD program in Sociology.