Whitehouse - Asceticists 2006 (Susan Lawly)

Whitehouse provoke extreme reactions - that's a given, and every review of them mentions that fact. Another fun fact is that every review of their music is part of the 'work' that is built up by the group - they collect the 'reactions' of fans, enemies, reviewers, the general public, and add them to the list. So this is just a few thoughts on an album that came out on Valentines Day this year and speaks about love in a few unusual ways.

No other Whitehouse record has ever been as integrated and whole as this one - and none makes me feel quite as god-damned good about myself, the world, the potential of music to change feelings, and the difference between 'wrong' and 'right'. Every song on Asceticists follows the challenge put down by the title - say what there is to be said, with as little extraneous information as possible. Minimalism can be mind blowing, but it can also be boring. It all comes down to the taste of the person making the music, and probably the taste of the person listening.

It's impossible for reviewers to miss the point of Whitehouse, even if they really are clueless - their view is not only valid - as I said before, it's a part of the work. Far be it for me to be like one of those classical 'buffs' who talks about 'fine music', meaning that anything else is just rubbish. Hey, the last song here is called 'Dumping the Fucking Rubbish', and maybe that's what we need to do.

Speaking of which, 'Dumping' is one of the most uplifting songs I've ever heard - yep, right up there with 'Oh Happy Day' and 'Spray Paint' and '1970'. This record, which starts so mean, ends on some rare acoustic sounds - a tapped cymbal, and the feeling that you've just been through the therapy session to end them all - it's like the Scientology session without the bank balance hit at the end, or sex without the regret.

Whitehouse play with ironies - is the narrator on 'Guru' really William Bennett, or is he parodying that new age need to have someone with the answers? Like the shift in perspectives between two versions of songs on their last few records - between the brutality of 'Philosophy of the Wife Beater' and the sad/ist of 'Philosophy', Whitehouse are changing with the times, even though most people aren't noticing. It's hard to hear the three Philip Best songs as anything other than someone taking total joy in mean-spiritedness, and the three William Bennett songs as being like a therapist who has gotten too attached to his patient and their problems - an inverted Stockholm Syndrome. And right in the middle, the instrumental 'Nzambi Ia Lufua', sounding like a folk tune from a long gone country who knew that there was not much time left, and that piercing shrieks can communicate a lot.

If you want to get the most out of this record listen to it all at once - seeing as it doesn't have one of those long disruptive 'collage' pieces like on the past few records, that shouldn't be a problem (overlooking the 99% of humanity who would need to turn off this or any Whitehouse record after a few seconds). I don't know if I should pick out a song as the key to the whole record, but 'Killing Hurts Give You The Secret' is one of the most extraordinary pieces of music I have ever heard in around twenty years of obsessive music listening. The sounds are extremely simple, at first, a drumbeat like a thumping heart, then silence, then a building level of pure noise which is eventually joined again by the drumbeat. The vocals go from the soothing speech song of Bennett to the cruel shouts of Best (which throughout this whole record are way better than anything else).

If I had heard this song when I was seventeen I could have saved a lot of time in self examination, writing bad poetry, making bad decisions, lying to myself. When Bennett spits out 'It's really fucking tragic' it's a vindication; that even when everything is worthless, not everything has to stay like that. It's the shock to the system that lots of us need. I'm long past being objective about these records, but music is not something to be objective about. When Philip snaps us back out of our comfort zone with 'Ruthless Babysitting', it feels completely different to their records in the past, even though the themes might be the same.

"You're about to experience getting seriously fucked up
And once you're willing to feel that out of control
Dump the fucking rubbish
Rise up, Rise up
Kill this fucking nightmare that's inside you"