In The Trenches: Wrnlrd

The State of Virginia is Pangaea. You can't convince me otherwise. Bookended by lumber trucks, fucked with by the occasional nanner-in-ass trooper, perfecting an indelicate and precarious balance between caffeinating and placating the wingman is the general fucking purview. Insufferable: Hisham has just discovered Sparks. In between his trailing, cartoonesque falsettos and hyperbolic gesticulation, I reinforce the trip's "reason." A quasi-business opportunity. Traveling – we're traveling – to bag in an interview. Incorrigibly, I need to know more about the subject. Oh, but he ain't into Wrnlrd so much. He likes the "whisperin'" and the "talkin'" on Pentagon. He tells me this while he Sharpies on a Hitler stache. He's singing "Barbecutie." And singing it well. There's really no way to prepare for the interview. There's already one in the can. Wrnlrd? He's allegedly working on a new record and in one of my brighter moments I suggested a drive from my native Atlanta to Washington, D.C. A few Artaud jokes later, I find myself in the car, fueled, fulfilled; eager to take to the road and play Punchbug with a former Al-Jazeera reporter. Sparks acquiesces to Dexter Gordon, George Jones, Die Kreuzen's Octoberfile. The Wrnlrd discs each get a play. There's Sid Sings. Christ, I've forgotten what a goofy gatch he was. Fucking Greil Marcus... "Chinese Rocks" gets a cockney'd transliteration; "CHAI-KNEES COXXX fuh all yah fahg-gotts!" etc. Ozzy's "Goodbye to Romance" the perfect match for my "convenience" store sandwich comprised of "mechanically separated chicken parts." Hisham throws mock horns: Randy's Rhoads is rule! It ain't long before we're seeing increased security and a palpable lack of liquor stores. Seems like days have transpired. I'm a husk of my former self. David Allen Coe's "Walking Bum" comes on the FM. I'm bluelighted for running a red. Look to the sidewalks; bums sprawled in drink, drunk dead as Dillinger. Must be the Nation's Capitol.

Wrnlrd's directions are acute, macrocosmic even. We pull into the "complex," lotsa red brick. Former barracks of some kind? Now apartments. One of dozens on this street, all identical. We enter. Mailboxes, staircase, everything painted over, years of painting to mask the carcass. The walls, steps, everything cocooned in a gunk of latex housepaint. Eggshell white and cat litter tan. Body odor like fistfuls of roasted cumin seed. Fragrant frying meat. I check the mailbox for #9. Name's been removed. Up the stairs. To the third floor. To #9. Nine Greek Muses? Nine Wrnlrd records? Banal profundity. Hair pulling psychosis. Hisham's laughing. He's outta Newports. A few "tenants" scuttle by, behind the walls. A deadbolt clicks. More sounds, less clear: people, doing what they do, in their own rooms. Any messages transmitted without knowledge. No punchline. No solution. Just roiling guilt in your gut. Listening to things you weren't meant to hear. A cockroach clicks up from the floor, legs struggling on the glossy walls, slick bright white. Hisham points out little insects dead, mummified in random stabs of paint. Hell, you can find this practically anywhere. But here: this particular building. Familiar.




The staircase winds around us; the "nexus" of all the building's rooms. A child cries. Bang. Thud. Laughter. Sounds fuckin' canned. Piped in from some failed '70s sitcom. Tenants scatter through the space; they open doors; escape into privacy held here in their heads. Easily penetrated by someone, anyone who stops to listen. All the tiny sounds are magnified, Hisham says. A woman grunts. Bass booms. Plaintive voices. Bachata? Hisham pisses his drawls. Hey, Stew… This is a four-dimensional model of the Haxanic Stairway. The door. The golden number nine. I knock. I can hear Hisham breathing heavy. A radio blasting guiro rattles around outside, twisting around bongos and noodled melodies dopplering down the street. Merengue… I knock again. There's no answer.

Hisham suggests that we should have brought something. Food, whiskey… The door opens.

It's not as awkward as I imagined. I'm relieved. I can tell everyone is relieved. But, Hisham: He won't stop babbling. He tells Wrnlrd everything we've done up until now. All the sites. The bar. George Stephanaopoulos. The cops. The cockroaches. He goes into his "theories." He asks Wrnlrd how to pronounce his name. He asks where he "got it from." Holy shit. It's maddening. I can tell the guy is overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. All I can do is look around his apartment and I can't tell if that makes him more nervous or if it puts him at ease. It would make me nervous. I realize this and stop doing it.

I'm going to make us some drinks, I say and sort of just lunge past Hisham towards what I hope is the kitchen and there's a fridge and countertop and I don't see any booze sitting out and now I'm feeling like I'm going to have an anxiety attack. I place the tape-recorder down on the counter. A cockroach clicks over the wall.

There's beer in the icebox, Wrnlrd says. Hisham shuts up. It's not mine; a friend brought it over. You can have it.

OK. And I'm on my second one before I join them in the den again. This time with tape-recorder and note pad. It's time for no bullshit Q&A and I can palpably ascertain that Wrnlrd and I are in agreement.




Me: Let's start with home recording...

He nods and just looks at the floor. Hisham has lit a cigarette and an inch of ash is hanging over the floor.

Me: What interests me about home recording is the immediacy of the ambience. There's no way around the noise, all the stray breathing, the domestic disputes, athletic fucking next door - above and below. Your music, uh, especially the last two releases build from the sounds that surround us in our everyday. Why do you, um, choose to not only incorporate them, but, like, have them play such a large role? What's gained from this?

Wrnlrd: Well, lately the ambient sounds of this apartment building have been accompanying what I'm doing with the instruments. Somebody slams a door: Well, if I had a drummer, and he beat on a gong, I might, um, you know, react to that in the same way. The bass player does something; you might play off of that. It's a little like the neighbors brushing up against the walls, talking, slamming doors. I, uh, let them steer me around. I guess a lot of music is meant to be an escape into some kind of fantasy. But I like the idea that you can, like, take your reality with you into the dream. Combine them. Redraw the borders. There are people in this building that I've never seen, and yet they, uh, they can push my buttons, make me a little angrier, distract me from my own thoughts... It's a strange communication, whispering through walls. It's like a feeble possession.

Hisham: Do you see any sort of nexus between what comes together in here - in this room - and the type of thing Lomax was picking up on: the total ambience surrounding a performer as he or she makes music?

Wrnlrd: Yeah, and I listen to those recordings a lot. I guess I like the element of chance you find in them. I like how a train goes by in the background, and changes the whole thing. Sometimes it seems like any stray sound could fit into that music, and it would be uh, meaningful, you know, against the performance. I guess I like that about it most.

Me: Obviously though you can't, um, enjoy the same sort of 'freedom' that say Son House mighta had... You know, you're here in this room, tryin' to put stuff down on tape. There's gonna be neighbors that get pissed. Sometimes it gets too loud, maybe. What about all these fucked up crazy noises that, uh, show up on your records? They're made in here, right? Like, what the fuck are the neighbors thinking? You had any run ins with them?

Wrnlrd: I'm usually amplifying quiet things. Whispers become screams. Like a microscope will show you all these things that are eating you alive. A lot of what I've done has come out of anxiety, unspoken drives, interior voices, you know? There's always the sound of your own, uh, solitude... It can be loud. You hear your own blood in your ears. Memories make you jump like shotguns. Anxiety makes the teeth knock together. That's, like, the first ideas of drums beating. You hum along to it and you have these embryonic guitars, it's all formless, it goes anywhere it likes. I try to remember where it went and never can. So, uh, now I just try to do it when the mic is on. I've recorded the teeth and layered drum samples over it. I've done it different ways. I don't usually get very loud except on the violin and the banjo. The other people in this building, ah, they are probably louder.

Hisham: Yeah, everything echoes in that hallway. We heard them when we were coming in.

Wrnlrd: There's a little girl downstairs who just comes out onto the stairs and screams. She's been doing it every day for years now. I used to record the vocals on the highway, just so I could get a quiet space to concentrate and, uh, get a clear recording without other voices on it. I'd play the music in one ear, hit record and just circle on the beltway until I had something I could use, take the engine noise out later... now I just accept the background noises of the building. In the end I think it adds something.

Me: One more about home recording and we'll move onto something different... Um, yeah, before - when we talked before, you mentioned these analogues - like the home studio as an asylum or haunted house... What did or do you mean by that?

Wrnlrd: When you're alone you can get up to shit that you would never admit to other people. Talking to yourself, you know, with enough practice you can start to believe its another person. Recording at home can be like that, capturing some uh, trace of that subjective world, you know, on tape. It's funny to tell you this now; it's like touring the haunted house exhibit at high noon, with all the lights on. You can see the paint and the brush marks on the witch's face. But when you guys leave, she'll come alive again. Maybe the recordings are a way to take those ephemeral experiences outside of this room without losing all their power. Maybe this kind of subjective experience survives the transplant into other brains better when it's delivered as sound.

Hisham: That notion... Those notions, I mean, very Foucaultian... Right?

Wrnlrd: Why not.

Me: You want a beer? I'm getting another...

Hisham and Wrnlrd go silent. So do I. There's one beer left and some kid is screaming from somewhere in the building. The screams are muffled and then they transform into laughter and it sounds artificial, maniacal. I'm beginning to get in touch with both notions. When I return to the den, Wrnlrd is dancing a puppet across his leg, making the fucker motion and undulate. Looks homemade, wood, brass, cloth. His head rolls about a limp and unpowered neck, chest. I stifle laughter but it doesn't do any good. Hisham is palpably affected, and it's so awkward it's funny. I ask more questions.



Me: So, um, what's the forthcoming record 'about?' How many more WRNLRD records will there be?

Wrnlrd: Three more. The next one is Myrmidon. That's the seventh album. We're working on that now.

Me: We? You're back to the three-piece format on this one?

Wrnlrd: Yeah Iksnis is back, in a more substantial role than what he did for the Pentagon album, and I'm splitting the vocals with a new singer. Its more song oriented, like Mldthr and Cperadt. But like all the other ones it's got a different range of sounds and just a different scope.

Hisham: How would you describe it musically?

Wrnlrd: Its slower, more melodic I guess. Xylophone. Trumpets.

Hisham: Is that, um, due to any influence or... just something...

Wrnlrd: Ive been listening to the Shangri-Las a lot. I mean over the last few years. And that music... you know, it's powerful. Um, it's psychologically... there's really a strong theatrical element to it, they're acting out these dramas.

Me: Right. They did ‘Leader of the Pack.’

Wrnlrd: Yeah, ‘Dressed In Black,’ all that. Very dramatic. I think Mary Weiss is unparalleled in that kind of work. People call them a girl group, I don't know. I saw her take issue with that term in an interview and I can definitely see her point, you know. It's hard for me to think of her as a female singer. I mean that's a fact, obviously, but it's kind of beside the point really. Listening to her music I identify with whatever she's saying, I feel, like, what she is doing is acting out a state of mind, and it goes beyond sex or time. It's a mysterious talent, but somehow she was just able to control you with her voice. There are a lot of singers who could do the same material and it just wouldn't have that quality where you forget who you are, what decade it is, you can even forget you're listening to music. I mean, I do. It's just, like, pure emotional transfer. So on this album I finally got the balls to try and emulate that, or pay some kind of tribute to it. I don't expect to actually succeed or anything. She's just out of my league. But. uh, something is coming out of trying though.

Me: We've talked a bit about cross-dressing in the past. And you've mentioned your affinity or fetish for several actresses, and even talked about, um, becoming them or something. [Laughs] I know you've couched this in some sort of act of satanic transcendence, namely, um, the macho satanic Heavy Metal stereotype vs. traditional idea of Satan as hermaphrodite... So, really, what the fuck's going on here? [Laughs…]

Wrnlrd: Shit, you make it sound weird [laughs]. I was just talking about, um. identifying with certain idealized women on a psychological level, rather than looking at them as desirable objects, you know. Lately I've been interested in that, making Metal that somehow delves directly into the ways women have inspired me over the years. And to make sense out of it for myself, like, in the context of this music, and the traditions of Black Metal, I've just thought of it as not being so different from a Satanic transgression of gender. Satan has tits, right? It's strange that people don't go all the way with it so much, even in their own minds, as an idea. But there are like these weird boundaries even nihilists wont cross. It's funny that all this demented shit can be embraced so easily, to where human life is supposedly meaningless to you, and you casually talk about suicide and shit, but you wouldn't be caught dead in heels.

Hisham: I think its actually Baphomet who has the tits, but yeah... Marilyn Manson does that stuff. Kiss: they wore heels. Motley Crue. And that's all pretty popular stuff.

Puppet: For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war...

Hisham: Huh?

Puppet: And in multitude of counsellers there is safety.

Me: [Laughs] Don't forget the whole Glam thing… New York Dolls, Stooges, T Rex, Bowie… Blah blah blah…

Wrnlrd: Yeah, exactly… Lots of bands, Metal bands – you know – they mess around with that, androgyny, transvestitism. Anyway, I think it's worth thinking about, what's going on there. I wouldn't bank on it shocking anyone, or try to use it that way. But I do think maybe it's worthwhile to think about ways to get around those hangups that might turn you back from a good idea. Maybe there's inspiration behind that phobia. I don't know. Going back to the old Country Blues thing again, you can find all kinds of, ah, songs from a female point of view being sung by men. Without irony. Those guys were telling human-interest stories. Male, female, animal. I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground. So, a whole, uh, range of experience was open to them, you know. Beyond the facts of their own physicality.

Hisham: What was that about the actresses?

Me: Yeah, we talked a couple times about uh...

Wrnlrd: Myrna Loy...

Me: Okay, and uh... Bette Davis.

Wrnlrd: Yeah, well this is related to drag, you know, drag queens. And bodybuilders... you have these different ways of amplifying aspects of the physical appearance, and strangely making gender somewhat, um, irrelevant in the process. Muscles can develop so much the body is beyond masculine. It's almost beyond human. You know how breast enlargements can increase the outward femininity, and they can go further into the monstrous? Some actors really tap into that kinda thing on a psychological level, and, so, yeah like Bette Davis. She is superhuman, emotionally, psychologically superhuman.

Hisham: She's the one with the big eyes, right? Kind of homely.

Wrnlrd: I guess usually it's OK for a man to admire an actress as long as it's strictly as an object. You want to screw her, or whatever, and that's why you like her. Everybody high fives. But if you're a man and you identify with that actress psychologically in some way, you're weird. I love Bette Davis. I never wanted to 'get with' Bette Davis. THAT would be weird. I can't even imagine that. She's beyond that shit. Myrna Loy, too... you don't touch women like that. Even in your mind. I mean, I don't. But because of their skill as actresses, a man can identify with them psychologically, very deeply.

Hisham: [grunts]

Wrnlrd: Look at Myrna Loy in Mask Of Fu Manchu… If this glamorous Caucasian Hollywood actress can play a sadistic Chinese sex fiend in 1932, I mean that's almost a miracle. It's audacious. It's a kind of drag, you know. And as a performance it's so powerful, I can only look at that and envy the vision she had, the talent to pull that off. And to me its really interesting to find these great actresses who have invented whole new levels of performance... they are literally showing you different modes of behavior that you can bring into your own life, work, you know. Bette Davis is all about that, in many ways. With her, that drag queen shit its happening more inside, even when she's young and pretty. Its mental, emotional drag. Everything is intensified, you know, melodrama in the true sense of the word.

Hisham: Interesting.

Me: But you know, when you think of women in drag, I mean, women dressing as these hyper-feminine monsters, I think more of Joan Crawford. She ended up looking like something riddled with mad-cow disease.

Hisham: [Mumbles]

Wrnlrd: Yeah, she's the queen of physical drag. Wigs, painted-on eyebrows, its desperate. It's vaguely horrible, sad in a way, like an old bodybuilder in a dress. Look at her in Trog; she's like an imposter.

Hisham: I never saw that.

Puppet: Trog.

Me: Trog is fuckin' great.

Wrnlrd: She's a drag queen in that movie even though she's, uh, biologically, a woman. Age took her sex away. I don't know.

Hisham: Like in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? I saw that. She was scary in that.

Puppet: Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

Wrnlrd: Yeah, Joan Crawford is good. But Bette Davis is the one I really get into. Mentally. For the new album I've been watching Now, Voyager a lot. To get things moving. It's inspiring.

Hisham: Haven't seen that either.



Me: One last question... uh, about the name. A lot has been made of the name and the lack of vowels... And honestly, I don't really, uh, see the problem with it especially considering how fucked Metal bandnames are... But this one, WRNLRD, is interesting for a number of reasons. It looks like a graffiti tag, or a password. A sort of, um, 'abracadabra,' or curse. I know this is annoying, but: why WRNLRD and what's the thought behind it?

Wrnlrd: All those things you mentioned. Its got possibilities, like ideas do when they're not completely fixed. This has been a solitary work, you know, even when I have collaborators I'm writing to them, telling them what I want, they write back, they mail me what they've done. It's all mute. And I usually have headphones on when I'm working, so this shit never really leaves my head until it gets into someone else's. So I always thought of this music as being internal, from, like, one brain to another. That was one of the original ideas behind it. So the name came out of that. And to me, two people sitting in a room talking about Wrnlrd, even like we are now; I mean that was a fantasy I didn't even bother indulging two or three years ago. I was alone with it. So it wasnt necessary to make things pronouncable. Who cared? Now some people care, and I really appreciate that, its great, but I expect sooner or later I'll be alone with it again. Yeah some of these people have issues with the 'lack of vowels' but I doubt that's really what's on their minds.

Hisham: Doesn't that hinder the uh, word of mouth, though? Having a name that people can't really pronounce?

Wrnlrd: Most people seem to type nowadays.

Hisham: Well how do you personally pronounce it? In your own daily conversation?

Wrnlrd: I usually just say 'the band.' Usually don't have to be any more specific really, with people who know me. They know I only have the one band. If a band is really what it is.

Puppet: Works for me.

[Stewart Voegtlin]

type: articles    keywords: black metal, interview, lhp017, d.c., in the trenches, trog, drag, scream, hisham, the tenant,   

• Posted by Invisible Oranges on Aug 29, 2008 at 4:48 PM
  
  Interesting subject, interesting trip. Good work!
  
  
• Posted by -cja on Sep 07, 2008 at 4:57 PM
  
  great work stew... i only wish there were more!
  
  

 

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