In 1995 superstar porn queen Traci Lords released 1000 Fires an album of disposable dance anthems. The LP's Juno Reactor produced high-gloss thump made a certain amount of sense as the backing track for Lords. There was a connection to be made between the bright lights in dark places hedonism or 90s dance floors and the over-lit trashy glamor of pornography from the same era. At the time both industries were seeing an influx of cash and begrudgingly ceded credibility. The two scenes were beginning to enter the wider culture, becoming household topics of conversations even if those conversations were still had in hushed tones.
Jump ahead fifteen years and you would be hard pressed to find two industries more drastically effected by the rise of technology and the accelerating effect it has had on pop culture than porno and pop music. Pornography is now omni-present and as acceptable a part of the larger culture as perhaps it is ever going to be. Its many starlets are not only wealthy but also pop icons. This money and visibility, along with advances in video technology, have lead to lavish production budgets for pornographic films that involve over the top plots, exotic locals and lavish sets.
However, our hyper-saturated media environment also allows easier access to mainstream porn's darkling sibling. Cheaply made films cast with skinny, tattooed twenty year olds (boys & girls, unlike mainstream pornography and hollywood's, massive age disparity) shot in grainy DV offer up a cracked mirror image to the bleach blond, and absurdly augmented starlets of mainstream smut. Where mainstream porn is increasingly hard to discern from major Hollywood movies, so-called alt porn is full of slap dash edits, cheap visual effects and at its most extreme, an Artuadian relationship to its audience. The hallmarks of the art/film school drop out cannot help appear absurd wrapped around what is still, at its gyrating heart, hardcore smut. However, this pretentious self awareness is no more bizarre than the glossy high budget aping of Hollywood the blockbuster found in more mainstream fair. Like most cultural forms, porn's cross-over into the larger culture comes at the expense of innovation and content. However, just like other cultural forms, a relational other forms to fill the subcultural void left in its wake.
Pop music is currently generating its own darkling other to mirror its very own high gloss stagnation. Signs of this growing dark-pop trend are most obvious in the blacker side of Lady Gaga's Night Porter meets Weimar Cabaret shtick. However, for the more adventurous listener a the peculiar sound has begun to coalesce around a number of insufficient names including Drag and Witchhouse. These new dark sounds often see pop sensibilities, R& B vocals, catchy synth melodies, submerged below a veneer of drone and feedback and merged with melodramatic analog synths that would be at home at the Bat Cave circa '95. The music often disseminates through word of net downloads or on strictly limited vinyl or cassette releases. A patina of the static and hiss of basement studio production sunk beneath lyrics laced with a dark sincerity is the final touch on obsidian mirror image to Bieber and Beyonce's glossy pop sheen.
One of the more respected forces enabling these new sounds germination, is Brooklyn's own Pendu label (d/l Pendu's Horror Scores for the Dance Floor). Along with White Ring and Chelsea Wolfe, Pendu also releases music by aTelicine, a band whose founding members include porn starlet Sasha Grey (see what I did there?). aTelecine's music is probably the most challenging of any act on the label or within the man/label's musical orbit. The songs are born of old-school tape loops and analog synths. They have a relationship to both the avant-drone metal of Sunn O))) and early 90s Industrial. On the Industrial side, aTelecine have a clearer connection to the early experimental sound of Throbbing Gristle or Current 93 than the grind and stomp of Ministry. Lyrics (by Ms. Grey?) are lost in layers of distortion sinking into to thick atmospheric haze that is constantly being chided and shifted by off kilter percussion. Hints and flashes of lullaby melody than work against the drone to create the gentlest sense of impending chaos, a timidly prodding unease.
The experiments don't always work, songs occasionally never manage to fully form but simply stagger on as stillborn noise for its own sake. However, more often the layers of dark blistering sound blend into something rich and fully formed. These songs lure you in while still managing to transcend mainstream pop's reflexive capitulation to sooth and comfort, to entertain. This is in the end not the music of large heaving breast, neatly tussled hair and well timed moans. It's more the music of sweat and spit. It slaps you around and bit and makes you feel dirty and just a bit uncomfortable. Which for some of us is exactly what we are looking for.
from aTelecine's A Cassette Tape Culture LP:
for the lulz:
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