Prurient


(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
Collaboration (2000), 6.5/10
Fossil (2004) , 6/10
Pleasure Ground (2006) , 6.5/10
Bermuda Drain (2011), 5.5/10
Through the Window (2013), 4.5/10
Frozen Niagara Falls (2015), 6.5/10
Unknown Rains (2016), 6/10
Rainbow Mirror (2017), 5/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

British-born New York-based super-prolific noise artist Dominick Fernow aka Prurient (who released more than 20 works in 2007 alone) blasted vomit-like shouts, nuclear eruptions of feedback and grotesque rhythms in the hour-long Collaboration (2000), his Dada-artistic manifesto, a tidal wave of extreme, dense and sticky noise (the second part is particularly vicious), in the two colossal and anarchic pieces of Fossil (2004), With You and especially Waiting, and in the 30-minute piece of The Baron's Chamber (2005).

The four suites of Pleasure Ground (2006) paint an apocalyptic soundscape. Military Road opens with a shrill hiss that soon turned into screams and crackling noise. Apple Tree Victim is an obnoxious loop of distorted chords eventually joined by a screaming man Outdoorsman/ Indestructible is just a low distant rumble which at the end reveals a ghostly preacher. Earthworks/ Buried In Secret, perhaps the peak of pathos, is raptured by frenzied violence. His reputation was established by visceral live performances.

Fossil (2004) was the manifesto of his free-form phase. With You is a sadistic collage of brutal ear-splitting noise and shrieks in various shapes ending with the annihilating crescendo of a cosmic drone. Where this piece is structured as a sequence of variations on a theme, Waiting concocts a denser, monolithic mass of noise that is less about morphing and more about insisting in its self-destructive metabolism.

Pleasure Ground (2006) refined his psychological art of contrasts with better focused compositions. Military Road explores an extremely shrill drilling sound, a filthy crackling sound and a thick repulsive drone while declaring war to the world. Earthworks/ Buried In Secret, possibly his most harrowing piece yet, overlaps and juxtaposes a dense noise containing a vibrating melody and a wildly distorted vocal pandemonium.

All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord (Hospital Productions, 2007) was a collaboration between Prurient and Kevin Drumm.

The mini-album Arrowhead (2004 - Editions Mego, 2008) was relatively trivial. Sternum is twelve minutes of a ear-splitting hiss with sparse random beats. Ribcage is 14 minutes of ear-splitting cacophony designed for maximum discomfort.

Ash Pool was the black metal project of Prurient's Dominick Fernow that released Genital Tomb (Tour De Garde, 2006) and World Turns On Its Hinge (Paragon, 2007).

Prurient's EP Rose Pillar (Heartworm Press, 2009), containing five short pieces and the ten-minute Spins The Worlds Wheel Again, was a requiem to a family member of Dominick Fernow's and was originally issued with a book. Drones and repetition help to shape the pathos of Yellow Trumpets Grow In Darkness and Gardener Of The Broken Arm, displacing the extreme dissonance of his early days. Drumm collaborates on Hammer With Forty Names, the piece that is closer in spirit and practice to the orgies of the past. Spins The Worlds Wheel Again has the most touching drones, which, coupled with the usual beastly vocals, deliver a semantics and not only a syntax.

Ash Pool's For Which He Plies The Lash (Hospital Productions, 2010) veered towards a more humane style, closer to garage-rock than to the stereotypes of black metal (Holocaust Temple, Big Bang Black Metal).

Prurient returned with the user-friendly synth-heavy Bermuda Drain (Hydra Head, 2011), eleven short songs (with prominent vocals) that disposed of both the lumbering white noise and the gothic droning ambient music of the project's best albums. Through the Window (2013), containing the 20-minute Through The Window and the ten-minute You Show Great Spirit, delivered poorly recorded techno leftovers from the Bermuda Drain sessions.

Dominick Fernow and Furisubi's Kris Lapke launched Christian Cosmos with two EPs of industrial dance music: Enthronement By God As The First-Born Of The Dead (2011) and The Sharp Lines That Delineate His Robes (Bed Of Nails, 2012).

Fernow also launched Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, that debuted with Water Rose Above The Head (Bed Of Nails, 2013), Bronze Age, etc.

Vatican Shadow is documented on the four-cassette set Kneel Before Religious Icons (2011), with sophisticated industrial pieces like Chopper Crash Marines' Names Released (the highlight) and Gods Representative On Earth as well as incursions into ambient funk (Worshippers At The Same Mosque) and polyrhythmic horror dance (Missing HMM364 Squadron Purple Foxes Assassins). Ornamented Walls (Modern Love, 2012) simply collects a cassette and live rarities. After the mediocre Ghosts Of Chechnya (2012), the four lengthy suites of Atta's Apartment Slated For Demolition (2012) continued the original program of minimalist rhythmic repetition with a stronger appeal to the dancefloor (There Was A Black Banner On The Floor) and a bit of existential anxiety (Al Qaeda Possess Nuclear Capacity, that could be the remix of a dark-punk song from the 1980s). The highlight of Remember Your Black Day (2013) is the eight-minute gallop of Remember Your Black Day, but this is another inferior work. on which the gothic overtones of the heavy-metal guitar riff of Enter Paradise lead nowhere and the funky shuffle of Jet Fumes Above The Reflecting Pool borders on lounge music instead of industrial music.

Prurient became one of the most prolific musicians in the world by releasing cassettes of instrumental distorted rhythm-less screeches: Annihilationist (2011), containing four ten-minute pieces of droning ambient music (Fallen Shrines, Personification Of Eternity, Vines Grow Through Columns Atop Successors Ashes, Emperors Corpse Enclosed In The Plaster Wall); Of The Memories Of Friends (2012), containing four twelve-minute pieces of power noise (You Weren't Worth The Paper You Were Printed, They Found You Shattered On The Concrete, Two Golden Stick Webs, Annihilation Of The Vagina); the even more extreme Oxidation (2012), containing four colossal pieces of chaotic cacophony (Ecstacy Slave, Ketamine Slave, Vicodin Slave, Cocaine Slave); the even more indulgent Tiger Smells A Corpse (2012), containing six 15-minute pieces of unrelenting noise (Different Ways Of Seeing, Awaiting Execution, Yosemite Fulfillment, Dungeon At Seringapatam, The Tiger Is Peculiar To Asia, Males Had Themselves Painted And Photographed With Their Feet Firmly Planted On The Skin Or The Carcass Of A Dead Tiger); and Cocaine Daughter (2015), whose lifeless hurricanes seemed to mark the end of an era (the ten-minute BTK Machine Sugar, the 19-minute Nylon Flourescent Insect Bound, the ten-minute World Nail, the ten-minute Transparent Child, and the eight-minute White Phosphorus Baths).

The three-LP set Frozen Niagara Falls (Profound Lore, 2015), one of his most accomplished recordings, contains 16 pieces of various duration and style, from thirty seconds to eleven minutes, from power electronics to melodramatic prog-rock that tells a story. The three longest tracks are all different. Greenpoint, that begins quasi-folk and grows into noise and then sinks in a spoken-word section, is an example of Prurient's limitations as a composer. On the other hand, the sparse sinister instrumental Christ Among the Broken Glass, driven by an acoustic guitar, crafts an unusually subtle atmosphere; and the ten-minute Myth of Building Bridges, perhaps his all-time zenith, buries a gentle nostalgic guitar melody inside waves of uncontrolled noise.

Likewise, the double-LP Unknown Rains (2016) contains two melancholy noiscapes, namely the trance-y quasi-shoegaze melody for hyper-distorted guitar Before Rain Becomes Snow and Red Poppy Laughter, plus the sung techno rhapsody In The Ruins Of My Brother. These works photographed Prurient during a transitional stage.

To celebrate his career's 20th anniversary, Prurient amassed three hours of lengthy live improvisations performed by a trio (Walking On Dehydrated Coral, Midnight Kabar, Chaos – Sex, Falling In The Water, Okinawan Burial Vaults, April Fool's Day Aspect Sinister, Cruel Worlds, Naturecum, Blue Kimono Over Corpse, Path Is Short, perhaps the highlight, Buddha Strangled In Vines (Part One), Buddha Strangled In Vines (Part Two), Lazarus Flamethrower Sleepwalk, Buddhist State) on the seven-LP box-set Rainbow Mirror (2017), which originally also included the cassette Unknowns (2017) with two lengthy pieces cowritten with vocalist Patrick O'Neal, aka Hanged Mans Orgasm (aka Skin Crime).

Later releases include: Noise For Halloween Night (2019), Casablanca Flamethrower (2020), Gotham Steel Gardens (2021), Serial Killer I-IV (2021), Creationist (2022), Cain And Abel S/M (2023), Electronic Storms (2024), and countless collaborations.

(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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