This Music Is Difficult

 

            So perhaps it is true when the loyalists of Genesis P-Orridge’s industrial stubbornly claim that Trent Reznor is not “industrial”.  But not for the typical reasons that such industrial-strength boneheads pronounce, most notably those magic words sell out.  The artistic success of industrial has always come from the ability to create and maintain an unsettling mood of terror.  This badge of terror so proudly worn by Coil, Laibach, and Skinny Puppy is the same terror manifested by Swans and the Birthday Party.  Despite these examples having thematic differences, all wholly divulge into their own abjection, an internal force that is lacking in Trent’s sappy S/M stories.

 

            The best definition of abjection lies in The Powers Of Horror by Julie Kristeva, the post-modern queen of the abject.  Working upon Kristeva’s theories, Biba Kopf has proposed the metaphor to abjection as “the trap between (one’s) own desires and prohibitions.  The pull between these polarities is irresistibly downward, tugging (one) deeper into a paralyzing depression.”

 

            At this time in the history of pop music, I have very little faith that the industrial of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, or Chem Lab will ever unveil a glimpse into the abyss of abjection.  Angst they may have down, but abjection, never.  So it seems that the legacy that Industrial Records continued in a long line of practitioners of the abject was never handed down to those who carry the name today.  Rather it has been passed into the hands of a small band of apocalyptic guitarists who have occasionally been associated with experimental or isolationist circles.

 

            What makes Keiji Haino’s solo work and his work fronting Fushitsusha so tortured is his inimitable voice.  The only voice that comes close to his ability in translating the abject is that of Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten; growling and wailing over a desolate lilting viola on “Armenia”.  While Bargeld and company employ a calculated precision in their explorations through their burning souls, Haino opens his version of Pandora’s Box, where shards of black energy erupt out of the white hot guitar feedback.  Such an infernal energy constructed from the guitar is matched only by a voice capable of both transfixing mantra and violent spastic howl.  Altogether, it is an exorcism.  Haino at one time considered becoming a monk, so applying the term spiritual to his music is quite appropriate… not in the sense of any structured religion, but rather a fragile spirituality based on introspection and wandering through the internal mazes of the abject.  As every performance and recording is improvised both musically and lyrically, Haino traverses sets of personal mythologies that have been developed through the ritual of improvisation.  Information and knowledge are what Haino gets from these rituals of the abject and are what keep him returning to his inner hell.

 

            In mentioning Einstürzende Neubauten’s precision, I have brought up a strong history of precision, austerity, and darkness with German art.  Once so strong that I wonder what secrets are held within the gray skies of Berlin to inspire such traits.  Caspar Brötzmann easily situates himself within the dark lineage of Germans that includes Goethe, Wagner, Anselm Keifer, Werner Herzog, Peter Brötzmann (his father), Neubauten, and Malaria.  Like Neubauten, Brötzmann rarely employs the most archetypical symbol for chaos within pop music… feedback.  Rather dissidence is created in a more Classical sense as a sound is placed with seemly incongruous sound, causing the perception of the two sounds to seem distorted, to seem dislocated, to seem chaotic.  The unfortunate side effect of the virtuosity required is that a few of Brötzmann’s recent compositions with his group Caspar Brötzmann Massacre resembles the masturbatory excess and pretense of seventies prog rock (i.e. Rush, Yes, King Crimson, etc.).  But for the most part, Brötzmann’s work pays homage to the abject fascination with the dislocation and fragmentation of the self.  This is in apparent contradiction to both the precision of the compositions and the primitivist mythologies constructed in the cover art  (Massacre’s newest album Home displays Brötzmann’s “cave” painting of a charging bull) and titles “The Tribe”, “Hunter Song”, “Schwarze Folklore”, etc.).  Yet the mythology of precision and these primitivist mythologies are constructed by Brotzman’s ego principally as the unifying signifier for an undefined brute force, whose primary functions are the simultaneous assemblage, fragmentation, and reassemblage.

 

            For those of you who avidly read Forced Exposure or Music From The Empty Quarter, Stefan Jaworzyn may be a familiar name.  As a music critic, Jaworzyn zealously attacks all the music that disgusts him.  Although UK music critics are known for their fickle attitudes towards styles and bands, Jaworzyn’s bile is still excessive and extreme.  Such disdain is not lost when he puts down the pen and picks up the guitar.  Having worked with the sado-electronics outfit Whitehouse and with the apocalyptic power house Skullflower, Jaworzyn’s black energy is not hard to decipher.  His newest project, Ascension, is far more abstract than either Whitehouse or Skullflower as it emerges more from a free jazz/ free noise aesthetic than from Throbbing Gristle or the Stooges, respectively.  Ascension constructs the aural metaphor of abjection as being trapped within an infinite number of glass boxes and the subsequent shattering of those boxes in an attempt to escape, despite the unavoidable lacerations that will follow.

 

            As technology has entered into the realm of the traditional rock structure to form “post-rock” (i.e. Seefeel, Disco Inferno, Labradford, etc.), pop music has entered a new era, where the synthesizer and the sampler blend effortlessly with the guitar, bass and drums moving towards an egoless introspection, the historical places of gothic, industrial, punk, and techno may have already been written.  Despite the fact that many of these guitarists have been recording for quite some time (Haino’s first recordings were made in 1970, the Broken Flag collective of Skullflower, Ramleh, Total, Ax, etc. has been around since the early 80’s), they have remained unheralded simply for the reason that this music is difficult.  Unfortunately, difficulty is not a trait that the pop music industry sees as valuable in pop music.

 

This was posted without permission from Permission (fall/winter 1995 ed.). 

Author: Jim Haynes. 

If you have a valid legal complaint about this, send me mail explaining such and it will be removed.  Thanks.

 

RGluck