I’ve been sort of crazy obsessed with Prurient, aka Dominick Fernow ever since I caught him playing some grotty noise event in Bristol back in 2005 (see above) and picked up his record on Load, Black Vase - a thoroughly despicable mix of tinnitus frequencies, pounding drums and vicious fucking TANTRUM vocals slithering out all cut and bleeding through a bramble of distortion. It was the immediate, visceral thrills that got me hooked, but there’s a certain depth and meticulous care to Dom’s records that separate him from most of the noise crop; these are clearly records about (and conceived in the spirit of) obsession, beautifully packaged and internally complex. I have a good dozen of his releases and keep buying more.

I keep meaning to sort an interview with Prurient for Plan B, but I haven’t got round to it yet. Soon, hopefully. I just stumbled on this one by Kristen Thomas online at Impose Magazine, though, and it’s pretty fascinating, and not at all what I expected: who’d have thought, for instance, that the dark synth undertow of Pleasure Ground was inspired not by black metal - one of the genre mainstays at Dom’s New York store, Hospital Productions - but the album Trance Nation America 3? it’s too tempting to quote a massive chunk and that’s bad blog etiquette but here’s just a little bit. I’d go check it all out, though, it’s a great read and sheds light on his records in a way that enhances them, not demystifies them.

“There’s two ways to look at [noise], the ideology and the philosophy of noise and the genre of noise. And people furiously, as fast as they can, scoop it into a genre. Like any other sort of music, with any other set of predictions and expectations. But at the real core of it it’s supposed to be the freedom to pursue personal obsession outside of audience or genre. So in that sense, making [noise] more musical at this point is further negating that idea of gentrification. But also in terms of lyrical content, there is this emotional sadomasochism or a sadomasochistic quality to it where there is this play between the abused and the abuser. But it’s also, in that sense of yin yang, what makes the yin yang what it is, is not simply the idea of two opposing forces, but that both of those forces and elements are constantly trading places with each other and transforming into the other.”