Available now:
VIVA NEGATIVA! THE NEW BLOCKADERS: The Noise Of Art And Nothing
An authorized biography by Nick Soulsby
400+ pages, 450+ illustrations.
Forewords by Thurston Moore, Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), Masami Akita (Merzbow)
Includes a 2CD, Collaberrations, featuring a selection of collaborations between TNB and Coil, Organum, Ferial Confine, Vortex Campaign, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Vomir, The Haters, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Merzbow, Incapacitants, and others, plus a DVD including a previously unseen anti-film (1982) and a selection of live audio / footage 1983 – 2024.
Excerpt:
TNB / Ramleh / Whitehouse: Morden Tower, 1983:
'...Gary Mundy was looking for venues for Whitehouse as part of a stillborn idea to set up a U.K. tour with Ramleh in support. Richard had sent Mundy a poster for the July show and his description of Morden Tower led Mundy to inquire about the possibility of a 'live action.' With a degree of trepidation, Richard agreed to arrange it.
Whitehouse included an advert for upcoming shows, including Newcastle, in their Kata zine with a promising slogan: 'Whitehouse are coming to humiliate you — completely satisfy your perverted tastes! Who cares about abusing a few people when our pleasures are at stake?'
...As they had before the two prior shows, TNB spent part of the day scouring Newcastle's back streets and rubbish tips for waste with sound source potential. The show was certainly a big deal, one of the first Morden Tower shows to feature relatively prominent out-of-town acts, hence it was the first TNB show with an entry fee, the princely sum of £1.50... Whitehouse departed for a leisurely hour at a local pub, Rosie's Bar, from which they returned well-equipped with beer.
...Mundy spent most of Ramleh's blistering set with his back to the audience, focused on his sound while the Whitehouse entourage launched an occasional beer can at the small crowd to build an appropriate level of intimidation. The room was in significantly high spirits as TNB stepped up. On the surviving recordings, Best can be heard laughing as Mylotte clumped around in his plaster cast amid the metal detritus.
...Whitehouse opened with 'Rapemaster', their high-pitched synthesizer feedback had people clutching their ears while a number promptly left. Richard eyed the windows nervously hoping the ancient glass wasn't about to shatter. The risk of hearing loss in such a tight space was very real. Best took over lead vocals with Bennett coaxing appropriate noise from one of the synthesizers, for a semi-improvised piece, never recorded in studio or performed elsewhere: 'Penis Supreme'. The lyrics consisted almost solely of the title which was roared with gusto into the face of one of the only two females present. Au fait with Whitehouse's work she laughed it off but had become a focus for attention. Bennett returned to the mic for another track that never made it into a studio, 'Anal American'. Extrapolated from 'Phaseday' - a near instrumental from 1980's Total Sex - the song's official lyrics position it as a less coy successor to other Jack The Ripper-themed songs. It entered the set for Whitehouse's U.S. tour of 1983 and had been performed three more times since.
Newcastle would be the smallest show it was ever performed at. What unfolded over the next two to three minutes was a clash between different, coexisting realities. Bennett doubled down on Best's focus on the girl. To him, it was just a song, one of Whitehouse's experiments with audience reactions. As stated in the band's Live Action Dossier: 'This diatribe had a unique and extreme effect live especially when William Bennett accompanied it by touching up female members of the audience.' In a space of such intimacy, with no separation of audience and artist, with only a nerve-fraying screech of feedback still tethering proceedings to the idea that this was a song, it was near impossible for those present to see the line between performance and verbal assault...'
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