Whitehouse

Whitehouse, originally an open collective led by William Bennett (a classically trained guitarist who also played in Essential Logic, before turning to electronic keyboards), were protagonists of British industrial music at the peak of the vogue after the success of Throbbing Gristle.

The original idea was not entirely trivial: two analog synthesizers (deliberately anachronistic in the digital era), operated by Jim Goodall and Peter Sotos, and Bennett�s psychotic vocals, combining to create extremely abrasive electronic and vocal music with infernal overtones (if not outright Nazi ones). In that style, however, the trio recorded some twenty albums between 1980 and 1985 (for the Come Organization), without showing the slightest mastery of their tools or the slightest bit of imagination: Birthdeath Experience (1980), Total Sex (1980), Buchenwald (1981), The 150 Murderous Passions (1981), which was a collaboration with Nurse With Wound, Dedicated To Peter Kurten Sadist And Mass Slayer (1981), Erector (1981), New Britain (1982), Psychopathia Sexualis (1982), Right To Kill (1983), Great White Death (1984), which was perhaps the best of the batch, etc, Another Crack Of The White Whip (1991), Twice Is Not Enough (1992), etc.

One had to wait until the 1990s, until the four mini-suites of the EP Thank You For Your Lucky Stars (Susan Lawly, 1990), before listening from them some true music.

The mediocre Halogen (1994) and Quality Time (1995) paint minimal landscapes.

Mummy And Daddy (1998) is a concept on sexual violence and contains A Cunt Like You. Instead, The Dead C (Siltbreeze) and Cruise (Susan Lawly, 2001) turned towards a sort of psychedelic ballad (Princess Disease).

Whitehouse never abandoned the nuclear sound of its beginnings. Bird Seed (2003) contains two of their most visceral numbers, Why You Never Became A Dancer and Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel. as well as the "African" Cut Hands Has The Solution, and Asceticists (2006) boasts Nzambi Ia Lufua.

Meanwhile, Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor formed another outfit of power electronics, Sutcliffe Jugend that released Pleasure Corpse, Sutcliffe Jugend and Death Mask. Sutcliffe Jugend evolved into Bodychoke, that released Mindshaft (1994), Five Prostitutes (1996), Cold River Songs (1999 - Relapse, 2009).

Having fallen in love with African music, Whitehouse's William Bennett started a parallel project, Cut Hands, devoted to polyrhythmic African hand percussion without surrendering the noisy electronica, as documented on Afro Noise I (Very Friendly, 2011), Black Mamba (Very Friendly, 2012), Festival Of The Dead (Blackest Ever Black, 2014), etc.