Inside the Current Issue

Evicted House

Noise progenitors Whitehouse make a rare US appearance at Rothko

Anicka Yi & Will Weikart

In the early 1980s, the English band Whitehouse (William Bennett and collaborators) became notorious for its uncompromising "extreme electronic music," confrontational live act (many shows escalating into violence or near violence), and taboo aural and visual themes aimed at the intersection of sexuality and violence (leading some to accuse them/him of being misogynist). Whitehouse was very much a part of an era or generation that produced what became known as "industrial" and "noise" music, and spawned other similar and highly influential acts like Throbbing Gristle and Merzbow. On Thursday November 3, William Bennett and longtime Whitehouse collaborator/member Phillip Best made a rare appearance in the US at NYC's Rothko. What follows is a collaborative review/interpretation by the writers, who were both in attendance.

Whitehouse performs live in Amsterdam, 2004.

 

What is this, behind a twenty five year old mystique? Is it feral, is it unconditional, is it fatal, inseparable from life? It is exciting, has it teeth, has it edge? Is it on?

Whitehouse came to New York and beached themselves in the cross hairs of an extreme mythical machine. Confirmed sightings have been rare, intensifying a zone of secrets cloaked in linguistic spectacle. "The listeners of these recordings will always enjoy the most intense reactions of all. [sic] because they are the most violently repulsive records ever conceived" (from Whitehouse's Buchenwald liner notes, 1981). As unsurpassable sonic conceptual terrorists existing in the margins of marginality itself - indecent exceptions to the exception, Whitehouse hook themselves to seductive annihilation. Secrets are linked to a promise, even if that promise drifts in limbo.

D.C. crowds in 1983 react to Whitehouse's performance.

All the things we heard, on/off record, sped along the guidelines of chaos: accomplished nihilists, speed dialers of animal spirits, violent psychic bandits, even conditioned in forgetfulness claim a hold over us. We cried for carbon monoxide, to kill what we can, to have it go whole. The possibilities of Whitehouse's past are too tantalizingly close. Their past links up to our moment. Their past picks us as well as we pick it as their syllables live in the present as it is revealed, however fugitive. To have been there at the Whitehouse show means to discreetly/indiscreetly seek a secret index to a legacy of conceptual terrorism, to notice possible futures. But the Whitehouse door is bound by what is in memory, in expectation. This expectation is inextricably tied to its mental connection with what is distant from it, smothering reference points.

However muddy the social memory, clarity is not desired, but force. Would a clarified conception of Whitehouse inspire me to smash bank windows or go on general strike? Unlikely, but vitality can boost enough of what you know to mean for yourself and sometime, sometimes, others will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, creating an affect of glowing language and perception. A tidy secret behind the Whitehouse grin?

What happened, happened. The Bennett/Best machine, once accomplishing more with the "limitations" of analogue under which they were born, used two Powerbooks which they goofily tag-teamed betwixt to produce a murky mush of midrange, quite unlike the extreme separation of blistering highs and sub-bass lows on many their recordings. "Vocals" (sung, barked, spoken) came from both and were almost omnipresent through the 45 minute set - unaffected, they sat awkwardly, distractingly over the sound field and seemed stuck in a rather self-righteous tone. The legendary transgressive sexuality themes were here reduced to mock butt-fucking, shirt removal and self-nipple-pinching, perhaps (unwittingly?) serving up some unexpected comic relief as falsettos conjured images of Judas Priest or a geriatric, noise Beavis and Butthead, their sexuality an object to motivate consumption. Whitehouse's performance was hollow, a case without a body. Static, unambiguous, self-contained, self-same and easily, painfully describable in impotent language. Memorable in times when it is radical to desire and need forgetting. Their performance raises questions about affect (the capacity of a body/bodies to affect and be affected). Was Whitehouse's show like this when they started in the early 80s? Is it possible that affect has changed this rapidly and totally? The Trux were probably right that a '50s orgasm is not the same as a present (late '90s) orgasm. But is the same true of phenomena as recent as 25 years ago? Difficult to say as we are left with an unfulfilled image of the past updated to an irrelevant image. Their history devised in cosmetic, featureless forgetfulness. They sneer. No, it's not fatal.

A few scars could connect indexical points of a taking place. They can persist as subjective signs of a potential violence in its absolute would leave nothing to surpass, nothing to resemble, no exception.

For more information on White-house please visit susanlawly.com.

Will Weikart is a PhD student in the Sociology department. Anicka Yi is an artist/writer working and living in New York City. They are currently working on the music project Pseudocide.