Dominick Fernow can’t get any satisfaction. His Prurient project is more than a decade old and still it appears he hasn’t attained the spiritual nirvana he purports to be seeking through his dark form of “negative meditation.” Over the years, Fernow has roundly rejected any sense of comfort or happiness in his music; I dare you to find one nanosecond of joy, one infinitesimally small crack of light penetrating the void in his expansive discography.
Along Prurient’s (often shirtless) ascent of his own hand-sculpted holy mountain, he has tackled issues of sex, perversion, death, Roman Catholic ascetism, and the obligatory sado-masochism imagery that has become associated with noise music, mainly due to people like Dominick and Ur-Porn-Noise heroes and collaborators Macronympha. Fernow has sewn an impressive yarn under his Prurient handle, creating a personal mythology that on the surface is frightening, but upon closer inspection reveals a demented fracture, a mental disconnect seemingly brought on by the immense data-lava-stream of death, pain, sex, isolation, violence, and depression that gushes through every facet of our modern lives.
"Memory Repeating" opens And Still, Wanting with the standard squall. False starts and stops add to the tension, as layered synths create an environment well-suited for Fernow's lyricism. “I woke up today,” he intones in a rye manner. “Only hours ago, I was laughing.” The deadpan incantations and creepy praying demon vocals are reminiscent of his collaboration with Kevin Drumm on All Are Guests in the House of the Lord.
There are other aesthetic continuities from recent Prurient projects, such as the layered Bianchi-inspired synth drones of last year’s 3 x 7” boxset Cave Depression and the black metal-inspired feedback symphonies of Pleasure Ground (specifically "Apple Tree Victim"). In fact, And Still, Wanting incorporates almost every musical form of malcontent expressionism known to man (or jaded suburbanite), from hardcore to black metal to noise and any other style your average masochist would subject his/her eardrums to.
While not his most daring or abrasive, And Still, Wanting may be his most effective, well-rounded, and dare I say best album to date.
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