In The Words of Dominick Fernow {Prudient, Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, … }





I will say that I’m more and more drifting away from the idea of trying to participate in the so-called music scene, as I feel that there’s not enough emphasis or appreciation of content. I think there are too many people that have an attitude of “Oh well, if it sounds good, then it’s good, and I like it, and I don’t care where it’s from or who’s making it or what they have to say.” And there’s kind of a literalism to the approach toward subject matter that I find incredibly uninspiring and unsophisticated, frankly. If you use something about serial killers, then the only possible explanation is that you’re a serial killer or you want to be. If you address drugs, then you must be using those drugs, and so on and so forth. People associate music with identity so much to the point where they’re unable to separate the image that’s supposedly being promoted by the artist and the sound in any other way than at face value, and I find that extremely frustrating.

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I think that one of the saddest parts about the time we live in, the information era, is that there is an attempt to answer every question immediately. I think when you do that, you’re really losing the pleasure and experience of investing into something.

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Now every single tape is immediately online illegally within moments of it being released, which is an incredible disservice to not only the art, but to the people getting the material. I feel sorry for the children today who don’t have the pleasure of really going on the hunt for music and art. It’s like reading the last page of a book first. I think it’s really going to have massive cultural ramifications that we can’t even anticipate yet. When all the people our age and older are dead, and all that’s left are the people who have grown up online, I’ll be glad that I’ll be dead at that time.

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I don’t think it has to live in a world of nostalgia. I think that it’s more about literally the way things are being consumed. It’s like eating and digestion. If you get a gigantic plate of food that’s too big for you and try to eat it all as fast as you can, then you’re not going to be able to correctly digest the material. There’s this obsession with quantity over quality, and I think that the absolute epitome of the internet is “well if I can hear every album from a band in one day, then why wouldn’t I?” And I just feel sorry for people experiencing music now like that, because it’s no longer really an experience. It’s just consumption. To me, music and art used to be the escape from a consumer society, not the main root of it.

Source: Tiny Mixtapes - Prurient: Interview



“Harsh” is subjective. It implies sound that is undesirable. There is a lot of music that to me feels harsh that I doubt the creators intended it to be. However that isn’t to say that the sounds used in Prurient are desirable. The purpose of Prurient is not entertainment. It may be “entertaining”, but it’s goal is not comfort or enjoyment. It’s only purpose is to make you feel something, to make you aware of your body. That is why I often choose sounds which I dislike and make me feel uncomfortable. With discomfort comes awareness, and what follows are questions. What am I feeling and why?

In regards to “treble”, we live in a bass-centric society, obsessed by words like “heavy” and “full”. Treble communicates imbalance, tension and emptiness, because it hits the body in the ears, teeth, and forehead. When you approach this area, you are making sound personal. Bass affects the stomach and legs, and becomes more physical. By affecting the head and face, sound becomes more psychologically oriented. When we think of people we know, we think of their face first. The face is synonymous with identity. Prurient is personal and internal, and I hope to share that feeling with the audience by focusing on this area of the body.

Source: Noisecreep



I actually find Daft Punk to be incredibly dark in a non-obvious way…
But that’s just me. I don’t know. Clubs are dark; dancing is dark. There’s something about raw and revealing and grotesque about the need to interact with people, and the need for sex.

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Dancing doesn’t necessarily have to be fun. It’s an energy, a fearlessness.

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Techno has always been on tape. And on vinyl, of course. That’s something I find really disturbing—the tape movement that’s happening now, with manufacturing. I think labels doing cassette versions of albums that are shrink-wrapped and all that, that’s not tape culture to me. The whole point of the Hospital tapes was to have everything touched by hand. There was a lot of criticism, like, ‘Oh the cover’s not cut straight.’ No shit. The point was to create something that was full of imperfections and have that intimacy. What makes it beautiful is the temporary-ness of it. So what’s happening now is a disservice to what made cassette culture valid as a form of art. It’s taking things too literal, like, ‘Oh, it’s a format.’ And it’s missing the whole cultural element behind it.

Source: Self-titled



Something that was really important to me was to never be the orthodox kind of power electronics, in terms of a sense of domination or power. Really, my work is about vulnerability, weakness, desperation, anxiety.

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I had a conversation with my mom at an early age, when I was first getting involved in this. She met this blind man who was talking about sound, and he said that the sound of a jackhammer was soothing. She asked, “Well, what about the sound of a scream?” And he said, “A scream is a call for help.”  While that seems very obvious, it had a profound effect on the way I thought about underground music. At the time, I was really into metal and noise and extreme music that often utilized the sense of screaming, literally. So that just blew my mind in the sense of: “Whoa, what if this is really all about panic and fear and anxiety, and not about anger and aggression and power and domination?” It just completely changed my view of underground music. That really got me thinking, and so the voice was always a part of Prurient.

So from that very first tape, there was always this sort of desperate, or really twisted, voice. Not screaming a bunch of stuff in your face, but very animalistic, very childish, very weak; a strangulation [or an] act of suffocation more than pronunciation, projection, power. … I hear a lot of things like, “Henry Rollins-esque machismo” or something, and that always makes me feel like I’ve failed as a performer or as an artist. When people [say], “Oh, it’s just this totally aggressive, really intense stuff.” And it is aggressive, it’s an attack. But it’s not an attack on the audience—it’s an attack on myself that the audience is witnessing. There’s a reason I don’t ever face the audience, because there’s a big difference between screaming in someone’s face and screaming at the wall. …It’s not about this sense of outward aggression. It’s really important for me to create a sense of voyeurism for the audience, which is part of why I never have an introduction [when performing live]. When it’s over, I’m gone. I want it to be as if they’re just walking into a room, into an event that’s already taking place, not an event that’s characterized by their presence.


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The only thing that I care about in music or art is emotional impact and atmosphere. If I don’t feel it, I’m not into it. That doesn’t mean I’m rejecting anything, but whatever can generate feeling is what [moves me]. I don’t give a fuck if you’re a good guitar player, you know? If I don’t feel it, then I’m not interested in it.

Source: Swingset


All Full Interviews at Tiny Mixtapes, Noisecreep, Self-titled, Swingset