If I'm not mistaken, Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Hospital Productions) and Megan Griffin (Nuclear Pig Shit) used to be quite the item — Providence, Rhode Island's noisiest couple, I'm sure. An analogy might help: John Olson (Wolf Eyes) and Tovah Olson (formerly, O'Rourke) are quite the item now (Dead Machines) and certainly no less noisy. I can't even fathom the patience necessary to persist in such a relationship, one that involves so many surface microphones, distortion pedals, and scraps of metal.
Sometimes, and such is life, the noise of a relationship builds to such an extreme that the coupling falls apart. In the case of Nuclear Pig Shit, a move to Madison, WI, it seems, separated ties to Prurient/Hospital Productions.
I hate to use a failed relationship — and sorry for putting it that way — but it will help me make a point about the noise idiom, or at least how the genre has been canonized up to this point.
On one extreme, we have the "masculine" (read: sexist), death-obsessed; and on the other, the "feminine" (read: spiritual), and life-affirming. Allow me to elaborate. There's the "Night Stalking the Unsilent Boneyard" of Burial Hex on the one hand, and the GHQ-ing of Marcia Bassett on the other. We have John Olson self-injuring himself onstage with a medieval mace, and the kneeling of the Vanishing Voice. These things come from similar origins, but end in very different places.
So, when Tovah skronks her shit or when Megan scrapes her shovel, we take notice — women in noise turn heads because they are seemingly an exception to the rule: we've seen the ol' 4-track-tape-into-the-looper into-the-homemade-distortion-pedal operated-by-a-black-clothing-clad-fatso before.
Okay, Okay, but with all of that said, Hospital Productions has unearthed some of the long sought-after releases of days yore — more so the heavy, masculine stuff, but still — many of which were made available at the recent No Fun Fest and are now back in some general sense of "circulation."
"Circulation" being very limited quantities, of course:
Prurient – "Lily of the Valley"/"Return of Happiness" 2x10 min. cassette
Prurient/FFH – Women in the War 30 min. cassette
Malkuth – Mutus Liber LP
The New Blockaders – Live at Anti-Fest one-sided LP
Akitsa – Gothie CD
Akitsa – Sang Nordique CD
Ahlzagailzehguh – Bypassing Time Passing LP
Air Conditioning/Vegas Martyrs/Coughs/The New Flesh – Tiger Tongue Pussy Cactus: Terminal Fanatsies for Malefic Youth LP
MB – Symphony for a Genocide CD