Photo: Caroline Voagen Nelson
This past Saturday (August 8), Santos Party House hosted a heavy-duty convocation of avant-garde visionaries, all of whom share a penchant for the dark side. Participants included Genesis P-Orridge (pictured), Non (the performance alias of Boyd Rice), Cold Cave, Prurient, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, Kid Congo Powers and more. Click ahead for a review of the event by Luke Teegarden and a photo gallery by Caroline Voagen Nelson.
Coiffed intellectual types, gaunt black-metal Hessians, drunk hipsters, even the odd neo-Gestapo dude (scary!) made up the audience at Saturday’s mixed-bag event at Santos Party House. Curated as a tag-team effort by webzine Chronic Youth (“Celebrating Brutal Culture”) and arty publisher Heartworm, this party featured a smattering of spoken-word and musical performances that strayed from the realm of the normal or even vaguely accessible.
Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart tickled the crowd with a breathless series of black-balloon haiku, delivered in his patented, misanthropic sad-sack fashion. One crowd-pleaser: “The Catholic school / Was destroyed by an earthquake / Ha-ha, you assholes!” Ex–Arab on Radar and current Chinese Stars vocalist Eric Paul read terse musings—tiny tales of sexual failure and pervy frustration—from his upcoming Heartworm publication, though the performance amounted to little more than a series of dirty jokes. Creepily mustachioed Kid Congo Powers (of Cramps and Bad Seeds fame) gave the most substantive reading of the evening, a hilarious tale of mixing quaaludes and methamphetamines while “swiping big meat” from an L.A. supermarket.
Musically speaking, the show was nightmarishly dark. The headliner was known satanist, think-tank founder and rumored neo-Nazi affiliate Non, also known as Boyd Rice, who famously presented Betty Ford with a severed sheep’s head in 1976. Surprisingly, the most notorious man in the room gave the night’s most yawn-inducing performance, consisting primarily of postindustrial metallic noise and repetitive chanting.
The openers, however, did not disappoint. Famously freak-flag-flying Throbbing Gristle member and gender-ambiguous performance artist Genesis P-Orridge kept the noir sleaze alive with an utterly chilling series of prickly incantations. “Make love to me as you die, my dear,” she croaked, as accompanist Bryin Dall provided unsettling aural stimulation on an instrument that can be described only as a double-necked Frankenstein of a guitar.
A brutal yet beautifully textured set by noise-scene mainstay Prurient may have been the best and loudest set of the evening, and a—gasp!—danceable, new-wave-ish performance by Philadelphia’s Cold Cave (featuring Caralee McElroy, Jamie Stewart’s former partner in Xiu Xiu) provided an otherwise absent dose of melody.
The odd yet visibly devoted crowd at one of Manhattan’s most awkward new venues couldn’t get enough of the evening’s eclectic offerings. And for all the darkness and morbidity, one never lost sight of the shrouded hilarity—ironic or otherwise—behind the performers’ perverse offerings.—Luke Teegarden
Genesis P-Orridge
Non (Boyd Rice)
Non (Boyd Rice)
Prurient
Cold Cave
Cold Cave
Kid Congo Powers
Chris Leo
Jamie Stewart
sorry, but Cold Cave were definitely the most yawn-inducing performance of the night, while NON was utterly triumphant
Well Leech I imagine that folks who write for NYC ZOG Island newsites have never said to themselves, “Yes in fact I do want total war.”
Hey Lewk,
It’s Bryin Dall, not Brian Dahl. No photo of him or his guitar? Genisis and Bryin’s set was by far the most exciting of the evening. I loved Boyd looking like the fascist from the movie “The Wall”
That was quite a quick correction on Bryins name, nice work
well not to be rude but I just have to do this if we’re correcting name-spellings: Mine1700- it’s GenEsis not GenIsis. ; )