Whitehouse | |
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 Whitehouse (William Bennett & Philip Best) live at Consumer Electronics Festival, 2006 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | United Kingdom |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1980–2008 |
| Labels |
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| Past members | Philip Best Peter Sotos Kevin Tomkins Glenn Michael Wallis Peter McKay Paul Reuter John Murphy William Bennett |
Whitehouse were an English noise music band formed in 1980. The group is largely credited for the founding of the power electronics genre.
The name Whitehouse was chosen both in mock tribute to the British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, and in reference to a British pornographic magazine of the same name.
The group's founding member and sole constant was William Bennett. He began as a guitarist for Essential Logic. He wrote of those early years, "I often fantasised about creating a sound that could bludgeon an audience into submission." [1] Bennett later recorded as Come (featuring contributions from the likes of Daniel Miller and J. G. Thirlwell) before forming Whitehouse in 1980. Bennett's first release as Whitehouse was Birthdeath Experience, released on his own Come Organisation label, which was immediately followed by the album Total Sex. [2]
In 1981, Bennett released Erector, which was pressed on red vinyl and packaged in a shiny black sleeve with a photocopied picture of a penis. Erector deviated from the first two releases in experimenting with subsonic frequencies and contrasting low synth drones overlain with high-pitched screeches. [2]
The group began performing live in 1982, with members Andrew McKenzie (The Hafler Trio) and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound). In 2009, Bennett claimed that his pre-eminent inspiration was Yoko Ono: "Yoko's amazing music was by far the biggest influence on me, and Whitehouse, in the formative years (despite what some would have you believe)." [3]
Philip Best joined the group in 1982 at the age of 14, after running away from home. He was a member on and off ever since.
The group was inactive for the second half of the 1980s. A "special biographical note" on the Susan Lawly website states, "All members of Whitehouse went to live outside London for varying reasons and pursued separate lives. There was a feeling in the group that all that could be achieved had been realised." [4]
Eventually, Whitehouse re-emerged with a series of albums, recorded by the American audio engineer, Steve Albini, beginning with 1990's Thank Your Lucky Stars . Albini worked with the band until 1998, when Bennett took over all production duties.
Through the 1990s the most stable line-up was Bennett, Best, and the writer Peter Sotos. Sotos left in 2002, leaving the band as a two-piece.
The band had numerous other members in the 1980s including Kevin Tomkins, Steven Stapleton, Glenn Michael Wallis, John Murphy, Stefan Jaworzyn, Jim Goodall and Andrew McKenzie, though many of these participated only at live performances, not on recordings.
Bennett terminated Whitehouse in 2008 to concentrate on his Cut Hands project. He also has found success as an Italo disco DJ under the name "DJ Benetti". [5]
Whitehouse specialised in what they call "extreme electronic music". They were known for their controversial lyrics and imagery, which portrayed sadistic sex, rape, misogyny, serial murder, eating disorders, child abuse, neo-Nazi fetishism and other forms of violence and abjection.
Whitehouse emerged as earlier industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK were pulling back from noise and extreme sounds and embracing relatively more conventional musical genres. In opposition to this trend, Whitehouse wanted to take these earlier groups' sounds and fascination with extreme subject matter even further; as referenced on the sleeve of their first LP, the group wished to "cut pure human states" and produce "the most extreme music ever recorded". In doing so, they drew inspiration from some earlier experimental musicians and artists such as Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and Yoko Ono as well as writers such as Marquis de Sade.
The signature sonic elements on their early recordings were simple, pulverizing electronic bass tones twinned with needling high frequencies, sometimes combined with ferocious washes of white noise, with or without vocals (usually barked orders, sinister whispers, and high-pitched screams). In a 1990 interview, Bennett recalled: "I remember seeing an issue of that punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue and it said that all you needed to make music was to learn three chords, and I thought why do you even need to know three chords to make music? Why do you even need to use a guitar? The idea of thunderous extreme noises appealed to me." [2]
In the early 1990s the band phased out the analog equipment responsible for this sound, instead relying more heavily on computers. From 2000 they began incorporating percussive rhythms, sometimes from African instruments such as the djembe, both sampled and performed in-studio.
Whitehouse were a key influence in the development of noise music as a musical genre in Europe, Japan, the US, and elsewhere. The early music of Whitehouse is often credited with pioneering the power electronics (a term Bennett himself coined on the blurb to the Psychopathia Sexualis album) and noise genres.
Alternative Press included Whitehouse in their 1996 list of 100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years, opining that "many will argue [Whitehouse] have beaten Throbbing Gristle at their own game." [6]
The band's 2003 album Bird Seed was given an 'honourable mention' in the digital musics category of Austria's annual Prix Ars Electronica awards. [7]
As Nick Cain of The Wire put it,
By the end of the 1990s, power electronics was in a deep freeze. Fast forward a decade, and ... Whitehouse ... were enjoying an unlikely vogue, universally hailed by Noise makers from Peter Rehberg to Wolf Eyes ... and their work officially inducted into the avant garde canon through a collaboration with the German New Music ensemble Zeitkratzer. [8]
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.
Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music" that was "initially a blend of avant-garde electronics experiments and punk provocation". The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by members of Throbbing Gristle and Monte Cazazza. While the genre name originated with Throbbing Gristle's emergence in the United Kingdom, artists and labels vital to the genre also emerged in the United States and other countries.
Industrial rock is a fusion genre that fuses industrial music and rock music. It initially originated in the 1970s, and drew influence from early experimental and industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and Chrome. Industrial rock became more prominent in the 1980s with the success of artists such as Killing Joke, Swans, and partially Skinny Puppy, and later spawned the offshoot genre known as industrial metal. The genre was made more accessible to mainstream audiences in the 1990s with the aid of acts such as Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, both of which have released platinum-selling records.
Throbbing Gristle were an English music and visual arts group formed in Kingston upon Hull by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti, later joined by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter. They are widely regarded as pioneers of industrial music. Evolving from the experimental performance art group COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle made their public debut in October 1976 in the COUM exhibition Prostitution, and released their debut single "United/Zyklon B Zombie" and debut album The Second Annual Report the following year. P-Orridge's lyrics mainly revolved around mysticism, extremist political ideologies, sexuality, dark or underground aspects of society, and idiosyncratic manipulation of language inspired by the techniques of William S. Burroughs.
Psychic TV were an English experimental video art and music group, formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and Scottish musician Alex Fergusson in 1981 after the break-up of Throbbing Gristle.
Noise rock is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, artists indulge in extreme levels of distortion through the use of electric guitars and, less frequently, electronic instrumentation, either to provide percussive sounds or to contribute to the overall arrangement.
Noise pop is a subgenre of alternative and indie rock that developed in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom and United States. It is defined by its mixture of dissonant noise or feedback with the songcraft more often found in pop music. Shoegaze, another noise-based genre that developed in the 1980s, drew from noise pop.
Power noise is a form of industrial music and a fusion of noise music and various styles of electronic dance music. It should not be confused with "power electronics", which is not influenced by electronic dance music and is closer to harsh noise. Its origins are predominantly European.
Come Organisation was a record label started by William Bennett in 1979 as a way to release albums by his own band, Come, when he was unable to find a label willing to release them. It is best known for releasing the work of Bennett's subsequent band, Whitehouse.
Steve Albini is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer, and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman, Flour, and is part of Shellac. He is the founder, owner, and the principal engineer at Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago. In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums over his career. He has worked with acts such as Nirvana, Pixies, the Breeders, PJ Harvey, Gogol Bordello, and former Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
Tesco Organisation is a German record label, mail order company and distributor, specialising in industrial, noise, neofolk and ambient music. Tesco has also organised music festivals in the past such as "Heavy Electronics", "Tesco Disco" and "Festival Karlsruhe"
Come was a British noise music project, which was founded in 1979 by William Bennett. In the short time of its existence it had such prominent members as Daniel Miller and J. G. Thirlwell. Bennett would later end the project in 1980 in favor for his then newly formed power electronics project Whitehouse, however a second studio album under the Come moniker was released in 1981 titled I'm Jack. The independent record label Come Organisation was created as a result of the lack of interest other labels showed in the group's recordings. They never performed live.
Psychopathia Sexualis is the seventh album by Whitehouse released in 1982 on the Come Organisation label. It was on the liner notes for the album that principal member William Bennett first used the term "Power electronics" to describe the group's music.
Power electronics is a style of noise music that typically consists of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds, with sometimes screamed and distorted vocals. The genre is noted for its influence from industrial.
Disconnected is the debut album by experimental music act Greymachine, featuring Justin Broadrick, Aaron Turner, Dave Cochrane and Diarmuid Dalton. Produced by Broadrick, it was released on 4 August 2009 via Turner's own record label, Hydra Head Records. In February 2018, Disconnected was reissued as a limited 2xLP with unique artwork and clear vinyl.
Thank Your Lucky Stars is the tenth studio album by power electronics band Whitehouse, released in 1990 through the newly formed Susan Lawly label. Recorded in September 1988, it was the group's first studio album after a period of inactivity during the later half of the 1980s and the first to feature contributions from writer and musician Peter Sotos and production work from Steve Albini. A special edition was issued in 1997 on CD format that contained bonus tracks previously released on other Whitehouse albums and singles.
Quality Time is the fourteenth studio album by power electronics band Whitehouse, released in 1995 through their Susan Lawly label. The cover art was illustrated by Trevor Brown, who made artwork for the band's previous album, Halogen, and their 1991 album, Twice Is Not Enough. The album was reissued on vinyl format in 2009 through Very Friendly.
Mummy and Daddy is the fifteenth studio album by power electronics band Whitehouse, released in early 1998 through Susan Lawly. The album mostly focuses on domestic violence and is considered by many to be one of the band's darkest recordings. The cover art was illustrated by Trevor Brown, who previously worked with the band for their albums Quality Time, Halogen, and Twice Is Not Enough.
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