Vatican Shadow
Last FM just reminded me that I’ve been listening to a lot of Vatican Shadow the last few days. It’s one of the many aliases of Dominick Fernow, better known for his work as Prurient. Now I don’t particularly buy into the idea of the guilty pleasure – this or that artifact of popular culture is either your thing or it isn’t – but if I did have one, a contender would certainly be Prurient’s cathartic (and dare I say a little emo) noise sculptures. Part of that is to do with the overblown lyrics (when they are actually discernible) and part of it is maybe to do with the fact that he occasionally seems to press some of the easy buttons, structurally anyway – I can imagine the true kvlt Noise guys seem him as a bit predictable - and part of it is certainly to do with the testosterone man-whiff that emanates from this type of power electronics, intentional or otherwise. But all that being said and perhaps because of some of those imperfections, Prurient is consistently my favourite Noise project, apart from Kevin Drumm (and if you’ve not got the Kevin Drumm/Prurient record All Are Guests in the House of the Lord, I urge you to go get it now, crank it up on your headphones as loud as it will go, and try not to shit yourself when the amazing bass tone drops on track two).
But I digress. Vatican Shadow. It is sort of the same thing but applied to droney Industrial Techno (what is with this noise trend of all these guys like Pete Swanson suddenly realising their machines can make beats as well? I like it at any rate). The result is kind of a sketchy, but intense, folk memory of Techno, filtered through Burzum, rather than Techno proper – you get the impression that, as with the tendency in Noise to document everything in exhaustive detail, the sheer volume of material means you are almost following the day-by-day development of Vatican Shadow as he teaches himself to do this stuff – and it comes swathed in slightly ropey political baggage, with the record covers emblazoned with pictures of Nidak Malik Hasan, Hilary Clinton, and various US war machines and track titles lifted straight from headlines and news articles like ‘Shooter in the Same Uniform as the Soldiers’ and ‘People in the Compound Kept to Themselves’. I find this stuff silly and unsophisticated (although maybe that is the only rational response left to the US military-industrial complex or maybe Vatican Shadow wants us to find this all a little bit pompous and overblown, I don’t know), but as an aesthetic it certainly chimes with the sinister qualities of the music. I know, I know, I’m probably supposed to reflect gravely on the current geopolitical situation whilst digesting these records, but what it evokes for me most, being an unashamed nerd, is this vision of post-apocalyptic rebels hiding out from Skynet, deep within their hidden bunkers, flooding the airwaves with brief snatches of gloomy industrial techno constructed on malfunctioning machines.
Of the two records I’ve got, Kneel Before Religious Icons is probably the keeper, as it fits the most with the above aesthetic. Washington Buries Al Qaeda Leader at Sea: Decks 1-3- see what I mean – is probably a step-up in terms of production, but is overly reminiscent of mid-90s Scorn for my liking. Unsurprisingly I’ve just read that he has a 12” coming out on Blackest Ever Black, which makes perfect sense.
Here is a bonus tasty Regis remix:
