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Zeitkratzer, "Whitehouse"
The noise/orchestral ensemble, lead and directed by Reinhold Friedl, have performed the work of power electronics titans Whitehouse before, with their 2010 Whitehouse Electronics release drawing heavily from the band’s final three albums. Following recent performances of Metal Machine Music and collaborations with Keiji Haino, Whitehouse succeeds even more than its predecessor by taking a wider swath through the nearly 30 year catalog, and even featuring an all-too-brief vocal contribution by William Bennett himself.
Other than the opening "Daddo," this live performance sticks largely to early to mid period Whitehouse compositions, an era defined by piercing feedback and droning analog synthesizers. Compared to the later vocal and computer-centric works, it is a sound that this nine piece, working largely with stringed and brass instruments, are able to emulate very well.
"Daddo," from 1998's Mummy and Daddy, was the beginning of a digital-heavy era for Whitehouse, and thus its interpretation here is a bit less direct.Originally a piercing piece of digital clipping and stuttering, the Zeitkratzer version emphasizes the original’s clattering, disturbing opening very well with shrill scrapes and churning bass sounds.Bennett's vocal contribution mimics the original’s disturbingly calm introduction and conclusion, excising his manic middle performance from this version.His spoken performance is unnervingly clear and up front:a pedophilic narrative that, 16 years ago, conjured images of the notorious JonBenet Ramsay case.In 2014 and a post-Toddlers and Tiaras world, it has lost none of its unpleasant and uncomfortable impact.
The four remaining pieces have Zeitkratzer drawing from less vocal-heavy eras of Whitehouse's discography.On "Foreplay," from the sophomore album Total Sex, the string section emulates the emergency siren like oscillator tones from the original perfectly, with the remaining players creating a dirty, organic sounding mass of sound that is completely unidentifiable.Vocals by Hilary Jeffery are processed in a Luddite manner:rather than any sort of digital effects, they are performed through a trombone and result in a different take on the originally unintelligible screams.
"White Whip," from Twice is Not Enough, is a bit more boisterous than the slow malignance of the original.With the woodwind and string players generating a massive low end drone and feedback, its sound mix of the original with the unique instrumentation work very well.The weakest part of the album, for me, is the ensemble's take on "Fanatics."Previously a vocal oriented piece that mixed the lyrics with an extreme high/low frequency pairing, it feels less faithful to the original, especially lacking the extremely effective cracking whip noise surge that was featured heavily in the original song.
While it does sound superficially gimmicky having performers use traditionally classical oriented instrumentation to reproduce some of the most dissonant and abstract electronic works, the truth is it results in a unique and compelling approach using familiar sounds.Far more than any of those symphonic versions of rock band collections, the way in which these performers are able to reproduce some of the most inhuman sounds with only centuries old instruments is impressive on a practical, but also conceptual level, and results in a fresh, but different take on the Whitehouse material I have known for so many years now.
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