Noise and soul: Prurient

Curated by Alice Kundalini - She Spread Sorrow

Dominick Fernow is a well-known name among fans of noise and sonic experimentation, but not only them, because through the various projects he is behind, he draws a transversal line that touches extremely different worlds. Prurient, Vatican Shadow and Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement are his current musical projects, and Hospital Productions is his independent label, founded in 1998, when DF was only 16.

Prurient is certainly the project through which DF experiments with noise, the most aggressive, dark and extreme side of sound. Vatican Shadow is his more electronic soul, made for "sophisticated" dance floors. Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is his most ambient and atmospheric project. Over his career there have been countless collaborations (Philip Best, John Wiese, Wolf Eyes, etc.) and contributions to other projects (such as Cold Cave), and his discography is truly vast.

Today's pill is for Prurient, one of Dominick's souls, the first one, and the one I prefer. The first records date from 1998, when he was really just a kid and the noise was utterly dominant and at times almost unbearable. Amplifiers, pedals and feedback. No hope of melody or of finding a sound that was any less hard to swallow. The metamorphosis of this project over the years has been remarkable, seeking a sonic form that is more refined, considered, defined and emotional, while still keeping a noisy, extreme soul. Bermuda Drain from 2011 is certainly a record that marked a turning point, in which several tracks reveal a sort of aesthetic form that is more geared towards a concept than towards violent sonic impact. And indeed, for some of the "hardcore purists" it is far too melodic a record, with "even" synthesisers on it. Yet there are those, like me, who adore this record, in which the darkness of the lyrics, the voices, the distortions and even the more electronic sounds lead you towards internalising a tragic story, whose more emotional and communicative side you experience too.

Dominick is certainly a divisive figure. He comes from, and is part of, an "extreme" music scene, noise and power electronics, genres where it is sometimes hard to find room for change and to show different sides of one's creativity. It is greatly to his credit that he has managed to cultivate different aspects of his sonic vision, moving away from the genre's most uncompromising lines while still keeping strong credibility within his scene of origin. It is also to his credit that he has found a more intelligible way of communicating, which over time has allowed him to find spaces and audiences far larger than those one is used to in certain contexts, precisely those labelled "niche". Hospital Productions is one of the genre's reference labels, and over the years it has become better and better known and appreciated.

So, in short: room for contamination, for openness, for experimentation. Room to cultivate what we love, beyond the more or less clear-cut boundaries of genre, which cannot and must not define artists, as very often happens.

To find your way around this artist's very vast discography, I would definitely recommend listening to some of the early works, perhaps not in full if you are not used to the genre, in order to get into the most extreme and representative stylistic signature of his youth; then moving on to the records from 2005 to 2008, where we find a wave of extreme and powerful sounds, for example in Black Vase, Cocaine Death and Pleasure Ground; and then on to some of the records of the last decade, where we reach remarkable complexity and further sonic mutations, such as the aforementioned Bermuda Drain and the excellent Frozen Niagara Falls (from 2015, for many his finest record)

This is an excellent "guide" for anyone approaching this artist
www.electronicbeats.net

And here is an interview from Vice, in Italian
www.vice.com

Black Pills is a column that does not set out to teach anything. There are books, articles and manuals that deal with the biographies of artists, films and works of art in a detailed and exhaustive way. This is not one of those cases. The black pills are small glimpses of cultural and artistic landscapes, at times very broad, which offer the chance to explore themes that do not entirely belong to mass culture, but move along other channels and other circuits. In a world where the choice is often limited to what is defined, in the broadest sense, as pop, I highly recommend taking a few pills of a different colour and perhaps discovering something new, which in some cases, as in mine, can stay with you for the rest of your life.