Angelspit: Hideous and Perfect

Last Updated on Friday, 04 December 2009 22:25 Friday, 04 December 2009 20:49

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.

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