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An interview with ZooG and Destroyx of Angelspit
Posted: Monday, October 12, 2009
By: Breda Massmann
Writer

Formed in 2004, Australian electro/industrial duo Angelspit, a.k.a. ZooG and Destroyx, managed to gain a respectable following with their releases Nurse Grenade, Krankhaus, Blood Death Ivory, and the remix CD Black Kingdom Red Kingdom, not to mention their strong visual and lyrical concepts and steady touring activities throughout Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Recently, the two musicians unleashed their newest album, Hideous and Perfect, which is once more an energy-rich creation combining rousing rhythms, shimmering sounds, sporadic guitar riffs, and their trademark spoken word vocals. The release is accompanied and supported by the music video "Fuck the Revolution." Right before Angelspit hit the road as special guests on KMFDM's U.S. tour, ReGen caught up with ZooG and Destroyx to get some information on Hideous and Perfect and other happenings.

In comparison to your earlier material, you embrace the guitar as a more noticeable ingredient this time. How did this evolve? How do you personally view the evolution you've gone through?

ZooG: In this album, we set out to do something bare, rough, mean and punk...punk with synthesizers! One of the advantages of being back is Australia is access to space and 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 Marshall 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 'Ohrwürm' makes it memorable.

You recorded much of the album's industrial percussion at an abandoned shipping yard in Sydney Harbour. How did this idea come up?

ZooG: These recordings were done without the permission of the City of Sydney, so I can’t go into the details, but there’s a deserted island in Sydney Harbour. It’s covered in huge old factories, warehouses, rusting cranes, massive turbines and half-built boats and submarines. It’s mostly abandoned, but sometimes they have a rock concert, art festival or shoot a movie there. For example, Wolverine was shot there. We were so inspired by the surroundings of the island, we decided to go back and make recordings of bashing these huge metal turbines, boats, submarine corpses and cranes in the massive warehouses in which they were housed. These recordings were used as percussion, loops and ambiences throughout Hideous and Perfect.

Destroyx: We wanted to get back to the experimental roots of industrial music. We also built many acoustic metal instruments from junk found in back alleys. We built a two-meter-high cello from a long metal rod and a metal salad bowl. It sounds really freaky. It forms the basis of an ambient and evil song called 'As It Is in Heaven.' When you listen to the album, you might notice that it sounds quite organic; this is because we decided to keep most of the sampled sounds as raw as we could. The effect is quite unsettling. Instead of distorting a sound with a distortion pedal, we tried to do it physically. For example, with our homemade cello, we wrapped a spring around the tuning forks or threaded nuts and bolts to the strings. These elements produced harmonics that naturally perverted the sound. This is a technique called 'prepared piano' pioneered by composer John Cage. It’s good fun; we encourage people to try it.

Hearing the album, it's easy to imagine how great your songs are for a live presentation. When working on the album, was the live applicability something you had in mind?

ZooG: Yes! Hideous and Perfect is intended to be performed live. The instruments are loud and aggressive, the vocals are scathing and yelled. We wanted the album to have a live rock feel. It’s our dream to one day tour with a band – at the moment it's only two of us on stage – and this album was designed to be easily played by a rock band. As crazy as it sounds, we would love to perform this album 'unplugged.' To play these tracks with metal percussion and the other weird stringed instruments we built would be awesome.

Thematically, you have a close look at a phlegmatic, cashed-up population that is bored stiff. Can you deepen what influenced this theme? Were there certain recent happenings you had in mind?

ZooG: Conversations with friends, riding on peak hour trains, global economic collapse, the music industry changing, watching good hard-working people lose so much, seeing so many people who are just bored, glued to the TV or Web for their daily dose of doom, wanting a reason to justify the feeling of hopelessness inside them. We both struggle with consumerism. People might think that we’re hardcore anti-consumers, but it’s the opposite; we both have our vices. Destroyx is a typical girl who has a fetish for shoes; I’m a typical boy who is a junkie for old synthesizers.

Destroyx: Our constant financial situation will not allow us to buy the toys we want because we are spending all our money on pressing CDs, mastering, promotional costs, etc. Running a label and band can be extremely costly, so a lot of this album is about us dealing with our financial situation. We realized that we didn't have the money to make this CD, but we simply had to make it within this timeframe, so we challenged ourselves to make do with what resources we had at hand.

ZooG: I used to think it was 'luck' that got us to where we are, but it is hard work, determination and absolute personal sacrifice. I've noticed that the more you have, the less you seem to do with it. Our society is always telling us to buy more to become 'complete,' but we realized that's all bullshit.

Visually, you once more set up a whole new appearance. Destroyx this time spreads a kind of geisha vibe, in connection with erotic and doll-like imagery. What’s the background for the current visual concept, and how does it relate to the lyrics?

Destroyx: For our previous albums, we have often looked towards history for our visual concepts. This time we decided to do something fresh and completely new. We tried not to reference anything in particular from history. The concept for the shoot is loosely based around the idea of a TV studio gone crazy. We decided to play with a few strong visual elements, different kinds of lighting, and of course the color red. I worked with an extremely talented makeup artist, Karen Hopwood, to develop the makeup look. The outcome is something edgy and quite horrific, yet also strangely alluring. The overall look is quite alien, a weird mix of fetish fashion and screwed up geisha makeup. The makeup is a mask which covers my recognizable facial features, thus contorting my identity. Most responses to the makeup have been very interesting. Many people have been confused and disturbed by it, which is definitely the intended outcome. I'm not trying to look glamorous, as many people do for their promotional looks. I guess I'm still trying to get people to re-address their attitudes towards beauty, which is always an ongoing theme. Through presenting highly polished, almost hyperreal 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.

After being with Dancing Ferret, who eventually stopped with the label business, you release the new album through Metropolis Records in the USA but through your own label, Black Pill Red Pill, in Europe and Australia. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of doing this?

ZooG: Running a label is not easy, because it's costly, and for newcomers like us, it is difficult to build up new promotional and business relationships. We are learning about how much hard work it is to properly promote a CD, and we still have a lot to learn.

Destroyx: The advantages are worth it. It means we can have complete control over 100 percent of the final product. We have always had struggles with labels not allowing us to indulge in unique packaging or design, but now we can finally bring the production standards of the packaging to a level which matches our music. The music industry is now in a state of flux, and we know now that we have to adapt to survive. Our own label allows us to initiate our ideas quickly, and we don't have to ask anyone for permission.

With the tools of the Web, many bands decide to release their material themselves, which is a double-edged sword. It’s great that bands have the possibility, but on the other hand this leads to a giant flood of releases people simply cannot follow; they feel swamped and supersaturated. How do you view this, and do you think labels are still needed to a certain degree?

Destroyx: Personally, I feel it's difficult to find the quality in all of the shit that people put up on the Internet. Anyone can make a track in GarageBand and put it up on MySpace, so it's becoming increasingly difficult for good bands to be recognized. However, I don't believe that Angelspit would have reached any audiences without Internet promotion, so of course it's an essential aspect for any band. I find it difficult, because I enjoy the creative side of being in a band, but the promotional side can often be tedious. Nowadays, bands can't simply make music; they have to be designers, copywriters, video editors...it's nuts!

ZooG: I see this as an advantage. Everyone is plugged into the Web now. They are constantly hungry for something that rises above the mediocre. The challenge is to make the best art possible so you get noticed. Plus, there is now an opportunity for people to express their unique style of music or visuals that deviates from what labels are putting out. I think record labels are definitely still needed. The greatest musicians sometimes can be the worst managers and promoters, so they need record companies to get their music out. Record companies bring wisdom and a huge pool of contacts. They know the DJs and magazines; they know how to promote and get it into the right hands. But since the cash flow of the music industry is drying up, labels cannot afford to spend as much time on promotion, so the onus is back on the band to produce great music and great Web presence. In a sense, it's making it much more DIY for the bands. Everyone has a heated opinion about the new set of rules that is being forced onto the music industry. It is radically effecting everyone: labels, bands, magazines and festivals. Ultimately, everyone has to work together to make the most of this situation. Personally, I think music industry upheaval has proved several things. One, music can either been seen as a valueless file on your iPod or an extremely valuable piece of tactile art....it is up to the musician to decide which it will be. Files get downloaded, but quality CDs and vinyl can get purchased. Two, fans want to support bands. If the bands provide a quality product, then they will be supported. Three, it’s not 'just about the music.' It never has been. Music is as visual as it is audible. Music, fashion, art and politics have always been the core elements to any subculture.

What’s on your schedule for the near future?

ZooG: We are moving to Europe in 2010 to play as many festivals as we can. When we play live, it will be ballistic, so bring a helmet!

Destroyx: At the end of this year we will be hanging in the USA to finish our remix CD. We want to do something radically different and not simply fill the CD with standard EBM dance-floor-friendly non-offensive boring as fuck remixes. The tracks we have worked on so far are exploring the disturbing musical textures that we evolved for Hideous and Perfect. We discovered once you remove the big loud guitars, smashing drums and screaming vocals, you are left with the most eerie soundscapes. We want to explore this new mood; it will be something completely different for us.

ZooG: We’re also planning on doing more 'Blipverts.' The reaction to our short video interviews/rants has been extremely positive; many people have told us how beneficial they have been. We are planning on doing more video tutorials on electronic music creation and sound design using modular synthesizers. We will also continue to upload recordings from our massive barrage of analogue synthesizers. These recordings are free to download, and we encourage people to use them in their music! We cannot give our music away for free, but we will gladly give our knowledge and experience. It is our hope that these Blipverts continue to inspire people to make new and innovative music!

Destroyx: I am currently working on promoting my new cosmetic line, Miss X Aesthetic Laboratories, a new makeup brand created for and inspired by alternative culture. The response to the line has been fantastic in Australia, so I hope to get distribution for the line within Germany soon, so stay tuned. I will also be continuing to update my blog with design, art, fashion and makeup articles.