Angelspit: Hideous and Perfect

"Hideous and Perfect" the new album by Angelspit out September 9th

Australia's Angelspit gained world-wide attention with their raw, synapse-frying albums "Krankhaus" and "Blood Death Ivory". Their new hypnotic, blood-broiling album, "Hideous and Perfect" releases September 9, and their U.S. tour launches September 23.

By Gally Lines

Angelspit's ZooG and DestroyX took time from their overloaded schedule to discuss their album, tour and inspirations.

Your latest album, Hideous and Perfect, promises to be your most riveting release to date. What about this album separates it from the others?
ZooG: In this album, we set out to do something bare, rough, mean and punk... punk with synthesizers! One of the advantages with being back is Australia is access to space and to Australians. Australians like to go into wide open spaces and make lots of noise. Our guitarist is Graeme Charles Kent from the band The Grand Fatal – he's considered a punk rock star here. He has a gloriously vicious sound and his twin Marshal stack is as loud as fuck. Graeme is also very awesome because he likes to experiment. For several tracks, we recorded his bare naked electric guitar, then mutilated it with our modular synth, then fed the modular synth into his poundingly loud guitar amp. It’s a technique called re-amping... and it can result in some very tortured and aggressive guitar sounds.
Destroyx: Another thing with Hideous and Perfect is that we purposely set out to make it sparse....more sonically empty than anything else we’ve ever done. All of the space in the music has allowed the listener to hear the layers of random bleeps and squeaks that hold up the music....this detail is like the mortar between the bricks. We design our music so you cannot hear all the details in the first few listens – this gives the music the effect of growing on you. Plus, we lace the music with 'Ohrwürmer' (small catchy melodies), so although the song makes a small impact on its first hearing, the Ohrwurm make it memorable.

Was there a new theme you had in mind, or did one emerge as you were creating the music?
Destroyx: Through presenting highly polished almost hyper-real imagery, we are attempting in a way to use the language of advertising that we are so constantly bombarded with in society. However, we are subverting the message in a disturbing way. People seem to be repulsed and confused by the message which is our intention. It's meant to be an alluring yet terrifying image... it's basically 'Hideous and Perfect'.

How did you choose the title for the album?
ZooG: Hideous and Perfect is a lyric in a track called Sleep Now. It supports our concept of The Beautiful Grotesque – that is, something that is so confronting that it can either be beautiful and grotesque, or Hideous and Perfect.

Is there any particular song that raises a lot of emotion or passion in you?
Destroyx: The last track is called "As It Is In Heaven". ZooG sings in it, the music is dark, unsettling and pulsating. The lyrics are about Heaven going insane. It's calming, beautiful and creepy. It's laced with subliminal messages... it will give you nightmares.

Why did you decide to do some recording in an abandoned shipping yard at Sydney Harbor?
ZooG: There's a deserted island in Sydney Harbour. It's covered in huge old factories, warehouses, rusting cranes, massive turbines and half built boats and submarines. It's mostly abandoned, but sometimes they have a rock concert, art festival or shoot a movie there. We were so inspired by the surroundings of the island, we decided to go back and make recordings of bashing these huge metal turbine, boats, submarine corpses and cranes in the massive warehouses in which they were housed. These recordings were used as percussion, loops and ambiences throughout Hideous and Perfect.
Destroyx: We wanted to get back to the experimental roots of industrial music. We also built many acoustic metal instruments from junk found in back alleys. We built a two meter high cello from a long metal rod and a metal salad bowl... it sounds really freaky. It forms the basis of an ambient and evil song called "As It Is In Heaven". When you listen to the album you might notice that it sounds quite organic, this is because we decided to keep most of the sampled sounds as raw as we could. The effect is quite unsettling. Instead of distorting a sound with a distortion pedal, we tried to do it physically. For example, with our home made cello, we wrapped a spring around the tuning forks, or threaded nuts and bolts to the strings. These elements produced harmonics that naturally perverted the sound. This is a technique called 'Prepared Piano' (pioneered by composer John Cage)... It's good fun – we encourage people to try it.

What is your favorite instrument or device to work with?
ZooG: Our modular synth – it is a huge upright synthesizer (about six feet tall, four feet wide). It's a pure analogue device so we have to connect all the parts together to make the sounds – they are rich and complex sounds! Increasingly, we are recording more 'real' instruments and putting them through it, like our voices and guitars. We love to experiment with sound.

How did you come up with the cover art?
Destroyx: For our previous albums we have often looked towards history for our visual concepts. This time we decided to do something fresh and completely new. We tried not to reference anything in particular from history. The concept for the shoot is loosely based around the idea of a T.V. studio gone crazy. We decided to play with a few strong visual elements, different kinds of lighting and, of course, the colour red. I worked with an extremely talented makeup artist Karen Hopwood to develop the makeup look. The outcome is something edgy and quite horrific, yet is also strangely alluring. The overall look is quite alien, a weird mix of fetish fashion and screwed up geisha makeup. The makeup is a mask which covers my recognizable facial features, thus contorting my identity. Most responses to the makeup have been very interesting. Many people have been confused and disturbed by it, which is definitely the intended outcome. I'm not trying to look glamorous as many people do for their promotional looks. I guess I'm still trying to get people to re-address their attitudes towards beauty, which is always an ongoing theme.

What is the idea behind having slightly different CD releases for Australia/Europe, Japan and the U.S.?
ZooG: We have no global record label that limits us to the same design for different territories. We had so many amazing photos from the shoot that could not fit them in one booklet - so we made three! We did different artwork for each region and label, Metropolis (USA), Darkest Labyrinth (Japan) and Black Pill Red Pill (Europe/Australia). We enjoy designing, so it was a fun challenge to make different versions.

What was your favorite part about making this new album?
Destroyx: The early conceptual stages are always the best – this lasts about one month and involves watching cult movies, going to galleries, researching abstract ideas and playing with sounds, working on basic tracks. I guess this is the 1% inspiration part. The other 11 months is the gruelling 99% perspiration part.

How do you feel about your upcoming tour in the U.S.?
ZooG: Extremely excited! Playing live is awesome, plus meeting people is really cool. It's great to encourage new bands and get feedback on our music. Live performance allows us to be enveloped in the music and visuals – and that is awesome.

Is there any particular place in the U.S. that you're excited about visiting?
ZooG: New York and L.A. – we have several friends there. We're also looking forward to the smaller areas – these places usually bring people from surrounding small towns... I have a soft spot for anyone from a small country town, I was bought up on one and I know how hard it is trying to find yourself when you’re surrounded by red-necks.

Many fans and reviewers say that you are one of the most innovative industrial bands in the world. Do you consider Angelspit innovative?
ZooG: We work hard to create art that is fresh and new - we pride ourselves on this. We try and be unaffected by what everyone else is doing. Our new album is a massive risk for us. Musically, there are only two tracks that are club friendly – everything else might be considered too fast, although it's great fun to dance too! Clubs are militantly focussed on 124-140 BPM. We write songs from 80-170 BPM... and you can dance to all of it.
Destroyx: Visually we have experimented with something completely different with this new album and I hope we will always be pushing ourselves to create new worlds and never repeat ourselves. At the moment I am inspired by avant garde high fashion, films and art. Although we think that current trends in alternative and industrial fashion are cool, we are always trying to do something new and push our own personal boundaries.

What can fans do to support Angelspit?
ZooG: Tell their friends, bomb forums and web sites, come to the shows and get inspired to make their own art! Experiment with music and visuals – push the boundaries!
Destroyx: Get involved online, visit our blogs (destroyx.com and angelspit.net/zoog), join our street team, tell your friends!    angelspit.net

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