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An Interview with Rachel Haywire of Experiment Haywire
Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009
By: Lola Babalon
Writer

Since 2004, Rachel Haywire has been consciously bringing her own brand of creative chaos to the world of experimental noise and industrial music, first with the industrial performance art outfit Nuclear Riot Party, then with the more electro-oriented Experiment Haywire. Releasing her debut album, Annihilation Chic, last year, Haywire quickly followed up with Remix Riot, a collection of mixes featuring contributions from such noted artists as Leæther Strip, Ambassador 21, and Soman as well as up and coming acts like Uberbyte and Vicious Alliance. To further her agenda of in-your-face electronic music and to provide an outlet for other outspoken female artists in the industrial scene, she's also established her own label, MachineKUNT Recordings. Speaking to ReGen, Haywire talks about her long-term strategy of pushing buttons, ruffling feathers, and taking over the world – one medium at a time.

What inspired you to start making music? Was it a certain artist, a desire to express yourself, or a combination of factors?

Haywire: Mainly it was a desire to express myself. I've been expressing myself ever since I was a very little kid, and I don't think this would change if I had never been exposed to music. There are a lot of bands that have had an incredible impact and influence on me, but I can't say they are the reason I started making music. A lot of bands have had a negative effect on me, too, and this has also inspired me in its own strange way.

There seem to have been a few instances of controversy surrounding Experiment Haywire in the past. Why do you think that is?

Haywire: I eat babies! Actually, there are all several takes on this. Some people think it's because I run the all-female record label MachineKUNT – people have derogatorily called me everything from the industrial Tori Amos to the female Whitehouse – but what it really comes down to is that I have a loud and eccentric personality. This pissed a lot of people off when I first started going to clubs as a teenager. I never realized how many awkward social interactions I'd had would come back to hit me in the face as I began to get more well-known. People felt that I hadn't earned my place in the scene and were threatened by my competition. It was basic industry politics and juvenile territorial bullshit. I just took the controversy and ran with it, since it was going to exist anyway. There was nothing I could do to stop it, so what else was left? Controversy as art.

Is it difficult being an opinionated young female in this scene?

Haywire: I'd give this a major 'yes,' but there are many misconceptions about what is and what isn't acceptable. In other scenes it is practically the norm to be an opinionated young female, so I guess I just ended up in a different place by making dark electronic music. I meet a lot of other opinionated young females in the scene, but not all of them speak their minds in public because they don't consider it worth the effort. They just want to go out and have fun. Sometimes I envy them, but there is a drive inside me that doesn't seem to rest. I guess that's why everyone makes fun of me for being a martyr.

What was the writing and recording process for Annihilation Chic like? How long did it take you to complete?

Haywire: I wrote Annihilation Chic in about a year, and the recording took about seven months. To be honest, it was utter and complete hell. I was writing it at a time when I'd lost a lot of my friends due to industry drama that was beyond my control. People that I was once really tight with suddenly refused to be associated with me. This led me into a nasty depression, and when I got evicted from my apartment in Queens due to a raise in my rent, I pretty much lost it. I now had to finish recording Annihilation Chic when I was homeless, and the only people who stayed in my life were pretty much homeless themselves. It was like I'd climbed a gigantic mountain only to be knocked down full force. It felt like I'd never get back up again. Everything on Annihilation Chic is extremely angry and reflects my feelings and emotions during this time when I was on the brink of completely giving up. I had to sell almost all of my gear after I finished recording the album just so I could stay off the streets. I began developing an obsession for understanding the mob mentality and how large groups of people could suddenly unite through their hatred of one person. Everything was starting to become very surreal and it felt like I was in some fucked up film in which I was the lead character. I guess you could say that I dissociated.

What inspired the song 'Occult Casualty'?

Haywire: 'Occult Casualty' is a personal song, but it's also a song for anyone else who has explored the darker side of the occult and ended up with results that were less than desirable. We ended up becoming casualties of the alternative realities that we manifested for ourselves. We went off the deep end. We never returned from our trips. Instead of being centered among chaos we were now moving in a million different directions throughout the abyss, aimless, just another occult casualty. Many people passed through these darker areas of consciousness and came out 'normal,' but we, the occult casualties, got stuck. That's where the lyrics 'Stuck in your dark Disneyland' come from. While some people got stuck in worlds with UFOs and butterflies and Burning Man, we got stuck in worlds of hell and darkness. At least our worlds have a better soundtrack and the aesthetic is much hotter, so maybe it's not so bad after all.

Last month, you released Remix Riot. There's a wide variety of artists on the album remixing your tracks. How did you decide whom to collaborate with?

Haywire: I put out a call for remixers on various bulletin boards and I contacted a few artists who were personal friends of mine. I was most excited about Leaether Strip and Ambassador 21, because they are two of my biggest musical influences. XP8, Blank, Vicious Alliance, and The Synthetic Dream Foundation all did amazing work, too. I think the whole album is great, actually; it shows a broad spectrum of different sounds and genres and showcases some of the most innovative musicians in the scene right now. It was really hard to narrow it down, because I received so many great submissions. My favorite remix on there is 'Occult Casualty' by the Japanese cyberpunk band BAAL. Nobody else sounds like that. I can't wait to see what they do in the future.

What projects are you working on currently?

Haywire: I'm taking MachineKUNT as far as I can and have just signed the fabulous Cindergarden from Los Angeles. I will be releasing a new full-length album of hers this year. A MachineKUNT event will also be held this year, and I'll announce this when all the details are confirmed. There are also talks of signing several new artists to the label. I'm very excited about where all of this is going.

I'm about halfway through the new Experiment Haywire album, Grrl Interrupted, which is far my most personal album and shows a completely different side of my personality. This is the side that got me locked up, the side that people consider a trainwreck. The album is about my difficult past and focuses on the cynical glamor that comes from living a difficult life as a teenager. It goes back when all of us were slitting our wrists and listening to Hole because we'd gotten raped one too many times. Yet the album is also about getting revenge against the people who fucked with us. It's something that I think a lot of people will be able to relate to: revenge of the mental patient. It's like Lydia Lunch and Wendy O. Williams if they were to go dark electro. DestroyX from Angelspit is designing the album art. She's amazing.

Recently I started a new compilation to benefit victims of psychiatric abuse. It's not genre-specific and focuses on activism against the way the mental health system abuses human rights. They use oppressive terminology – 'mental disorders' – to convince us that we have some sort of disease because we think for ourselves, and that is just the beginning. I hope that this compilation raises awareness across the globe.

Oh yeah, and I'm a student again! I'm studying screen writing now. I want to write and direct insane musicals like Repo! and turn Experiment Haywire shows into theatrical performances like Amanda Palmer and Emilie Autumn do. I generally love the performing arts crowd: epic, spontaneous, dramatic, bold, beautiful, and unafraid.

How do your tracks translate live? Describe the Experiment Haywire experience for us.

Haywire: When I perform live people tell me that I have a freaky energy about me, and I always wondered what they meant by that. How can energy be freaky? I guess they mean it as a compliment. I opened for Android Lust recently. She is one of my favorite artists, so this was a dream come true. Even though I had an extremely early time slot, it was worth it. My crowd was quite small, but I gave my performance my all and tried to connect with everyone in the audience individually. Right now I'm looking for a live drummer and keyboardist. Until this point, it's just been me performing with a laptop, megaphone and guest performance artists. I definitely don't want to get rid of the performance art, but I do need an actual live band. Anyone want to perform in Experiment Haywire?