Hearse Fetish,Tomb of Trinkets & Lurid Hallway interview
Ryne Barber
m[m]: What was your first introduction to noise as a form?
Ryne I started getting into noise as a natural progression from grindcore; the noiser bits of The Locust, Daughters, As the Sun Sets all led me to start finding new bands who experimented with sound more than traditional music. Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck was a big one, and with the proliferation of Last.fm it was easy to become entrenched with Wolf Eyes and Black Dice.
Ryne From there I sought out harsher projects, and Merzbow was probably my first harsh noise artist. Soulseek was big at the time, so I started drawing from people’s share folders to find harsh noise wall. Goat and Werewolf Jerusalem were my first experiences with HNW.
m[m]:Is there any particular album or track that made you start to want to making your own noise?
Ryne Not that I can remember. Many probably influenced me in some way - I know I was pretty taken with Werewolf Jerusalem's The House of the Yellow Carpet C30, as well as Dead Machines' very eerie soundscapes - but I don't think I can point to any one release and say that it definitively made me create noise
m[m]: Hearse Fetish was you first project which you started in 2011, focusing in on industrialized walled noise which often had a macabre or horror bound theme to it. Tell us the origin of the projects name, and what you wanted to do sonically when you started the project?
Ryne There was no deeper meaning to the phrase “hearse fetish” for me; I don’t have one myself. But I found the connotations of those two words sufficiently dark. To have a person so enraptured with death that their sexual fantasies revolved around a hearse - that was an intriguing thought, so I kind of explored the darker side of HNW, and generically, the horror side of that subgenre. It wasn’t so much that I thought it was a popular mechanic of HNW, but that it was a release of frustration and aggression that appealed to me as a person.
Ryne Sonically, Hearse Fetish started out as harsh noise; I had experimented with doing harsh noise stuff before but always found that consistently jumping from sound to sound was not really my style. My first releases were very rough and I wouldn’t recommend them as a listen. As I continued the project, I began to fall deeper into HNW style, allowing the sound to sit there and only changing it when I felt the need. In general, the project’s releases get better the newer they are, in my opinion.
m[m]:Tell us a little bit about the set-up you had when you first started Hearse Fetish?, and how it’s developed changed over the last few years?
Ryne Hearse Fetish has now ended, but the setup for that project was generally the same throughout the project. I worked with minimal equipment and forced myself to find the best sounds with that equipment. Toward the end of Hearse Fetish I began to get very tired of the limited possibilities of that equipment, which was one reason I chose to put it to rest.
Ryne There was mostly just a mixing board, some cords, a radio, an iPod, sometimes a synth, and for You Are Always Watched, cymbals from my drum set. Sometimes I’d leave cords disconnected to alter their sound, or use samples in the mix. It really depended on the theme of the release; sometimes it was straight HNW, sometimes there was rhythm.
m[m]:Which release where you most proud of from the 12 releases that you put out so far connected with the Hearse Fetish project? and explain why?
Ryne I have differing reasons for why I like all of my releases. The four-way split called Crimes of Passion is all-around just a fantastic release, so that’s one of my favorites that I’ve put out - not just for my own wall on that tape, but because I got to be featured with some great artists on a wonderful label.
Ryne My recent split with Nar (Hearse Fetish’s last release, that I’m aware of) is also great. That took a lot of work between myself and Nar to get out, because it had gone for over a year without being released on a label, so thankfully Nar took it upon himself to release it for us. It was a labor of love and time, and both tracks are really great.
Ryne If I’m to pick one release that I’m proud of in a sonic sense, it would probably be You Are Always Watched. I really went outside of the normal sound of that project to incorporate physical barriers with the cymbals, and I thought it turned out pretty well.
m[m]: In 2012 you started another project in the form of Lurid Hallway- which saw you focus in industrial & looped based walled noise that was themed around obscure and raunchy films. It’s first release was the rather excellent Door Two released on Frances Bad Rip Series. The track was themed around 1967 Spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse- what made you select this as a theme?
RyneThe first real release for Lurid Hallway was Door One, which I self-released, based around a sleazy XXX feature that hasn’t been revealed yet (no one’s guessed it anyway). With Door Two I didn’t want to do another porn, and I was really into spaghetti westerns, so I decided that I would cover Death Rides a Horse for this next one.
Ryne It’s actually not a very good spaghetti western, which is kind of the reason I picked this one over others. It’s not very well known, but it still stars Lee Van Cleef. Me and friend kind of joked about how we’ll watch anything with Lee Van Cleef, but it felt like he just wanted to get his name on this picture without the quality of his other films.
m[m]: Any thoughts on what other films you’d like to cover with the project in the future?
Ryne Lurid Hallway will be covering The Texas Chainsaw Massacre very soon in another door.
Ryne At this time, I haven’t thought of what the next release for Door Four onward will be. Begotten might be one of them, because I think the imagery would make for a great cover and the music of that film would be nice to use as source material.
Ryne I would also expect to see a door themed around The Telephone Book (1971).
m[m]: Your most recent project has been Tomb Of Trinkets, which has seen you mixing together power electronics, harsh noise, and some wall-ish dwells to great effect. So far the project has put out two releases: 2013’s Drugged Lunch & 2013’s Sweet Sound's Chasm( which saw you covering a few grindcore/ power violence tracks). What have you got planned next for the project?
Ryne Very soon, Tomb of Trinkets’ next release, a split with Crown of Bone, should be releasing on a C60 on Distorted Visions. This has been in the works for some time and I’m pretty excited about this. It continues the sound of Drugged Lunch - there are drones, and harsh noise, and power electronics, and even some more HNW pieces to it. The two tracks are pretty different, and though both of them utilize similar stylings of Drugged Lunch, I think you’ll find they sound different.
Ryne I’m in the process of working on a release called Halo Misappropriation. I’ve been working on it for a while because I’m not quite sure where it’s going yet. Tomb of Trinkets releases generally take a lot longer to put together because of layering.
m[m]: Over the last few years you’ve been running your own noise/HNW/ drone blog Memory Wave Transmission. Tell us a little bit about how/why/when this first came about?
Ryne Memory Wave Transmission didn’t start out as a noise blog; I used to use it as an outlet for everything not horror-related covered on The Moon is a Dead World (see next question). Somewhere along the line - I think when Justin Marc Lloyd sent me some of his Dementia and Hope Trails stuff to review - it morphed into a review blog for noise. The Chondritic Sound forum helped out a lot with getting my reviews out there, and people started sending stuff piecemeal where I could keep up with it.
RyneThen things progressed to the point now where I have a list a mile long to review. It’s nice to have all of these artists interested in my writing, but at the same time it gets a little overwhelming. Still, I’m working through it steadily. I take a long time with each release which is why it can be a while before I’m done with a review.
m[m]: Also as well you have a horror movie review blog called The Moon Is A Dead World. Equally tell us a bit about the origins of this?
Ryne The Moon is a Dead World has been going on for much longer than Memory Wave Transmission, about eight or nine years now. I started that when I was a freshman in college, sort of bored with sitting around in my dorm room. I started watching horror movies and decided I would write up reviews of them. It wasn’t a really serious thing, but I tried to get a few reviews a week up.
Ryne Now The Moon is a Dead World has basically become work. I try to post at least once a day, and I’m getting packages everywhere from Scream Factory to Kino Lorber to DC Comics to smaller indie film companies looking to get coverage. Again, it’s a lot of work to do along with my full-time job (unrelated to writing, unfortunately, although I would like to get into editing or PR work), but it’s always worth that extra effort.
m[m]: As you write about both noise & horror regularly- what do you see as the most recent treads in these forms?
Ryne Surprisingly, I think we've seen a turn away from the giallo representation in HNW. Of course, some people are still upholding that tradition, and I don't think that they were ever driven by a need to fit into that subgenre characteristic anyway. But there's been a turn toward lighter subjects as inspiration for HNW, which is neither normal or abnormal because of the way that noise is - neither dark, nor light, but infused with the representations of the artist's artwork, titles, and samples.
Ryne In horror, there's definitely a trend toward found footage in Hollywood film, and there's also that idea that bigger is better. It's not, unfortunately; I was very let-down by the Evil Dead remake because it traded off smart filmmaking for heightening the gore as much as possible. With that said, I think some companies are really killing it by remastering old, obscure films for newer audiences - Scream Factory, Kino Lorber/Redemption, Twilight Time, Synapse Films, are all the place to go for some great films that might have been lost over time. More and more I'm finding myself less intrigued with the new big-budget horrors and opting to watch a gem from the past.
m[m]: What are some of your recent highlights from both the noise & horror scene?
Ryne For noise, Ink Runs Recordings has been putting out some outstanding releases, and unlike his previous label Slow Death, these aren't just HNW. There was an older Mark Van Fleet (from Sword Heaven) album I reviewed a few months ago called Veiled Front that was also excellent.
Ryne For horror, see above question - the imprints I listed have been churning out great special edition releases like Pumpkinhead, Curtains, Prom Night, and a whole lot more. Other than that, I actually did enjoy As Above, So Below in theaters, though it's not the best representation of found footage I've seen. And I hear the new 70s-style giallo The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is great, but I haven't seen it yet.
m[m]: What of you got lined up next for your various projects release wise?
Ryne I have a lot of releases that are or should be on the horizon.
Ryne Lurid Hallway’s Door Three will be coming out soon on Burial Recordings as a CD-R.
Ryne The Crown of Bone/Tomb of Trinkets split should be out within the next few weeks on Distorted Visions.
Ryne I am waiting on a release from my new project Neighbor’s Nightshade, which should be coming out on Palemoon Productions.
Ryne Another Neighbor’s Nightshade release, Enforced Somnolence, is being shopped around to labels.
Ryne I will be working on a retrospective release for Hearse Fetish with remixed tracks done by Neighbor’s Nightshade. This is just a glimmer of an idea right now, but I am hoping to do an eight-disc set, ending with an unreleased Hearse Fetish album along with a booklet of writing about the project.
Ryne Finally, another new project, No Body Outline, will be self-released within the coming weeks. This is a rather stoic HNW project themed around online crime scene photos of dead bodies. The artwork will be black-and-white and framed around the body but not directly upon it, attempting to give dignity to the dead. This will be a series project like Lurid Hallway.
m[m]: Can you tell us anything more about your two new projects Neighbor’s Nightshade & No Body Outline?
Ryne Both of them are actually more unchanging HNW; whereas I often took liberties changing the sound in Hearse Fetish and even Lurid Hallway, these are fairly solid walls without much change. Neighbor's Nightshade releases tend to be a little longer with maybe one shift in the wall.
Ryne So far No Body Outline will probably have little change at all. These will all be around half-hour walls themed around online pictures of death scenes. Not sure of what I'll be using consistently for sound and setup yet as it is still a fairly new project.
Thanks to Ryne for his time & effort with the interview. To keep up to-date on all of Ryne’s sonic work pop along to his projects face book page here
Ryne’s noise review blog can be found here
Ryne’s horror review site can be found here