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Hospital Productions 20th Anniversary @ Warsaw, N.Y.C.; November 5, 2017.

A gray, rainy day was the best setting for a show like this. Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn was the locale for a very special event: Hospital Production’s 20th Anniversary. For some reason, I felt somewhat nervous leading up to the event not because of what was in store, but the feeling of taking the train solo and experiencing the rare day out in New York City. I felt this way a couple of times before. Maybe because it stemmed from the time I went to Webster Hall to experience Unsane and the Melvins during my life wake-up call. It’s been five years since, and it’s a different deck of cards consisting of noise, electronics, techno, doom rock, black metal, and more. This event was the answer to Dominick Fernow’s twenty-year output as an artist, producer, and label-head. It would supersede everything I seen up until now, from the scope of sound to the length of the entire show. At ten hours, it would be the ultimate endurance test of style, philosophy, and sonic aesthetic I would attend. It wasn’t long before we were wrist-banded, i.d.’ed, and bag-checked by the venue brutes before finally being admitted.

Upon entering, some of us head to another room to form a line where Hospital sold rare cassettes and vinyl. What caught my eyes were three books all of Peter Sotos: Index (1998), Lazy (1999), and Tick (2000); out-of-print titles asking for lots of money on the secondary market. The myth is now legend. Also sought after was Buddha Strangled In Vines (1997), the companion cassette to Prurient’s massive upcoming four-disc / seven l.p. album Rainbow Mirror, released only at this very show. It might be the only time I could buy anything from Hospital. Years ago it had its’ own store and who used to be a friend of mine offered to come with me for the first time. She never put up her half of the deal thanks to constant excuses and putting off. The store closed down forever and so did us being close friends. I couldn’t wait any more to see what else were at the tables because I heard the first blasts of interference and noise exploding from the main stage from Dust Belt and Dual Action; whom were wearing shirts nodding or snarking Whitehouse depending on who you ask. “Rise, William” and “Nobody’s Ugly After 2 A.M.” were the sarcastic references of one of noise’s most controversial acts. Ames Sanglantes, who just released the eight-cassette Crackdown, came next with a quick but honorable and powerful set of earthquakes and power noise. It wasn’t until when Fernow and company arrived as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement that Hospital turned to lengthy sets and intermissions. Fernow made his first appearance delivering damp humid environmental atmospheres and ethnic overtones with periods of mesmerizing techno beats that put the crowd to the test.

Husband-and-wife duo Mike and Tara Connelly played next as doom-rock outfit Clay Rendering, one that we played on our first year at Omega Radio and hadn’t thought much of. That was until the moment when we saw them perform and realize that maybe there was more to them than we expected. That’s on us. It was interesting to see how the opposing dynamics of each half played out. Tara Connelly was more calm and at ease, swaying her hips so serene as she stood before the synth lines and drum patterns while Mike Connelly drove linear guitar riffs at revved-up speeds into wide blurry gazes of sound. He was very into it, so much that towards the end of their set he started peeling off Tara’s torn stockings and wrapped his mic- cord around her neck loosely. They kissed each other to seal the deal, as Fernow waited to happily greet Tara on a set well done. Gears shifted drastically as Geography Of Hell, dressed in hoods and full-face moon masks, arrived for their first-ever states performance delivering their world-wide horrific atrocity noise to the backdrop of World War II and post-Hiroshima footage. Dedekind Cut followed thereafter, who joined the roster as last year’s $uccessor was released through the imprint. Cut was rarely seen out in the open, mostly hiding behind the high-stack of knobs, wires, and electronics dealing a wide assortment of wild-card splices ranging from white-noise dirge-loops, house samples, goth, and even gabber beats as those were demonstrated on “Fear In Reverse 2”. He was even more obscured in the physical realm as the smoke machines behind him pushed themselves to the maximum, creating a sweet perfect gradient complimenting the fluorescent vertical lighttubes thanks to the overhead stage lights.

The second of three collaborative sets was on deck. Italy’s Lussuria paired with label artist, producer, and designer Alberich / Kris Lapke of Hospital. Both became spectres of a dreary, colorless, and drab period of time during a more primitive world once inhabited by fallen kings and princes. It was a sharp contrast of when I first witnessed Alberich two years ago for a line-up headlining Consumer Electronics at Saint Vitus, who Lapke was victorious in creating a dense powerful maelstrom of noise which I picked up to be more militaristic. Eras of time and weapons systems were severely fast-forwarded when Orphx took the stage. Thanks to Hospital, their long lost Xcreteria cassette releases 01 and 02 (1993, 1994) were finally re-released, showing a huge disparity of time between their noise phase and their current techno one. What really had the crowd going were their very tightly interwoven techniques of improvised thumping bass, techno, and intense rhythmic noise; extremely dense metallic industrial corkscrews made of iron, steel, and titanium made by Richard Oddie and Christina Sealey, both of 25 years of recording history together. Skin Crime would be the final purely electronic-noise act to take the stage and their first set in ten years. The trio of Mark Jameson, Patrick O’Neal, and Shawn Smith would start with minimal power, gradually becoming more ferocious and forceful as their output became more turbulent by the minute, eventually becoming an unstoppable and destructive force of low rumbles, distortion, and screetching glitched electronics. They would be a figurative downpour that steadily came and went, leaving a path of destruction in their wake.

As I waited tensely for what’s next, I seen many shifts of people inbetween sets going back-and-forth from the main ballroom to buy rare noise records, cassettes, and reading material. They were all decked out in black from head-to-toe. Black hats, black shirts, black leather jackets, black skinny jeans, black boots, black coats, black skirts. At least 9 out of 10 people were decked to the nines in black. This was current Greenpoint, New York City’s contingency of the noise and anti-culture. It was perhaps the largest tee-shirt nirvana I had ever took part of. Looking around me and I seen people wearing Front Line Assembly and Front 242 shirts. Lussuria, Con-Dom, Vatican Shadow, Burzum, Testament, Sacred Bones. Nine Inch Nails. Cold Cave (“People Are Poison”). Yours truly was wearing NON (Rise). There was one grand-prize winner wearing a Whitehouse (Dedicated To Peter Kurten) shirt and a blonde East-Asian girl who wore a massive black leather hood over her head as if she was about to take out many innocent victims in blood. But without a doubt the most iconoclastic show-goer I seen there was a petite college girl wearing a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt and I swore she could’ve took a wrong turn and got lost. And there was never a shortage of good music played through dee-jay sets courtesy of label friend Becka Diamond and techno legend Regis, the Downwards founder who just released a collaborative recording with Prurient on the four-cassette four-artist compilation Various Auras. We all stood there and hear “Into The Groove-y” by Ciccone Youth, “Nuclear War” by Sun Ra, and the entire 20 minutes of “Western Mantra” by Cabaret Voltaire. Even “Kick The Habit” by Monte Cazzaza. How many people still hold Cazzaza in their little black hearts? Amazing. And make no mistake, the ever-familiar Nikki Sneakers was there to take photos from start-to-finish; the same Nikki Sneakers of buns, bangs, and a shaved head who took photos of not only the above-mentioned Saint Vitus show I went to but also Red Bull Music Academy’s 2015 noise bill at Output.

The crowd neared the end of a monumental night when we came to the guitars-and-drums meat of the show. Guess who decided to join us up front? Ames Sanglantes in a great mood wearing his Testement shirt and a can of Miller Lite in his hand. Novato, California’s Bone Awl took the stage after a long hiatus of running their Klaxon label and Raspberry Bulbs releases, whipping the crowd into a manic killer frenzy. Mosh pits were formed and bucked the front line forward with aggressive force just like Bone Awl’s set was: rambunctious choke-out black metal from He Who Gnashes Teeth, He Who Crushes Teeth (Marco Del Rio), and an extra third member. So intense and furious this set that Rubio suffered a nosebleed playing drums in this cataclysmic delivery of blood-moon proportions. If we weren’t already in a violent swirl, Fernow decided to run up on stage and vault himself into the crowd for a powerful “fuck-yeah” black metal crowd-surf. This all set the stage for the ultimate three-headed Cerebus of Philadelphia’s Nothing, Fernow as Prurient, and Justin Broadrick as Jesu forming the ultimate triple threat. Nothing, known for their split release with Whirr and releasing last year’s Tired Of Tomorrow with Relapse Records, had their recording start in Hospital’s studios which their demo is now highly sought-after. Each of the three artists shared their best qualities of shoegaze, bombastic drums, slow-burn guitar riffs, background electronics, and alternating vocals with each other. Broadrick performed “Tired Of Me” taken from the post-Godflesh post-Techno Animal debut album of Jesu (2005), the calmest of all metal storms of the night before Prurient delivered “I Have A Message For You” from the Lily Of The Valley / Return To Happiness double cassette (2007). But Fernow wasn’t finished yet. Nothing subsided for the night and Broadrick stepped back (for now) as all eyes were on Prurient performed the title track to 2008’s Cocaine Death, classic Prurient replete with agonizing catharsis and painful screaming to the heavens of loss, unanswered questions, and enduring torture through drowning noise.

“Be nice!” smiled Broadrick to the crowd as he took the stage with G.C. Green as Godflesh, headliners of the legendary noise night. (Guitarist Paul Neville, who guested for a few tracks on the landmark album, wasn’t present for the occasion.) They came to deliver most of the larger-than-life debut Streetcleaner (1989) with bone-shattering soul-crushing results. The audience praised them when they ignited Streetcleaner’s opener “Like Rats” and the Henry Lee Lucas-laced title-track. On disc, their debut became the stuff of legends fusing metal guitar riffs with drum machine rhythms, pioneering industrial metal as Ministry had around that time with The Land Of Rape And Honey (1988). They continued to perform to devastating, punishing results to the likes which were even heavier and personal live than on record, and even then Streetcleaner was one of the most intense releases from metal or any genre in the decade. That’s because it was born out of Fall Of Because’s Life Is Easy (1987), the one-and only horrifying pre-Godflesh document that became the spring-board of their no-future world that started in 1989. Previously, Broadrick released splits with Prurient and cassettes on Hospital. Now Godflesh would be releasing Post-Self, their return to destruction since 2014’s A World Only Lit By Fire. It couldn’t have come at a better time. In the end, Godflesh won a huge standing ovation. We didn’t get encores. Instead, we got Broadrick signing an Earache promotional poster and a Napalm Death Scum square flat for one lucky fan whom waited decades to finally meet him. That’s a huge risk he would’ve taken if it wasn’t Broadrick. Luckily, he is an endlessly prolific musician of what’s conscious around him. He knows what he’s done throughout the last 30 years of making music (he’s only 45) and is super-appreciative of his fans. You wouldn’t jump off a bridge or in front of a moving car if your friends told you to, but if the house was burning in flames and Godflesh asked you to go to hell, you’d all say “yes” in a heartbeat.

As for Fernow, who else would have built one of noise music’s most recognizable go-to labels? Following him for years since the Mothers Against Noise online hoax, he’s made a world that was and is still unlike any other. As mentioned here before, Fernow’s output as Prurient made me think critically as to how someone could create something so different, so raw, so painful, so human. His work and everything around us at the time epitomized my best moments at WUSB as a program director. Further down the road during the economic crash, his associations with Cold Cave symbolized a personal revival because I needed what I was missing out. More of his works as Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, Ash Pool, and Taylor Bow, combined with his further associations with Heartworm and Ron Morelli / L.I.E.S. only elevated me to a distinct place separating me from the majority and also made me discover more favorites because of it. All of it. One can wonder how Fernow feels looking back at his entire legacy and Hospital’s 20 years of existence; the results culminating on this very night that everyone enjoyed.

I left Warsaw and Greenpoint taking the G and 7 trains back home out east. I can only think of where to go from here, asking myself why I’m not living life in Greenpoint instead of perpetually feeling displaced on Long Island.

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