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Skinny Puppy

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Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy is a prominent industrial band, formed in Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1982. Initially envisioned as an experimental side project by cEvin Key (born Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images In Vogue, Nivek Ogre (born Kevin Ogilvie) soon joined as vocalist and Skinny Puppy evolved into a full time project. Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986-1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1995, no relation to Ogre), Mark Walk (2003-present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985-1987, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), and many others.

Self-releasing their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of ambient, noise, new wave, electro and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as animal testing and chemical warfare.

In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process. Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. The album was completed with Rave and released in Goettel's memory in 1996. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of side projects, went their seperate ways after The Process, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. After guesting with eachother's side projects in 2001, they reformed Skinny Puppy in 2003 with Mark Walk. They have since released two albums on the German label Synthetic Symphony and toured extensively.

Style and themes

Inspired by the music of Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots,[1] and also drawing on the work of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and Suicide,[2] Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and electronic recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape-splices, found sounds, distortion, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments. They also incorporated numerous vocal samples from radio broadcasts and a plethora of horror films into their songs, and applied liberal mounts of distortion to Ogre's vocals, which were often delivered in the stream of consciousness style. Lyrical themes include animal rights, politics, horror, drug abuse, self destruction and environmental degradation; these themes are often lyrically and conceptually intertwined.

Ogre at a live Skinny Puppy performance

Skinny Puppy were noted for their theatrical and confrontational live performances, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. While graphic video footage was projected behind the band (featuring everything from R. Budd Dwyer's suicide, to animal experimentation, to nerve gas attacks in the Iran-Iraq War), Ogre interacted with elaborate stage props and machines, covered himself with fake blood and entrails, and was suspended from racks and cables. On the Too Dark Park tour, Ogre spent part of each performance prowling the stage on large metal stilts, and the musical performance veered into extended periods of improvisation. Other on-stage theatrics have included play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George W. Bush.[3] The band were arrested for disorderly conduct at a 1988 concert in Cincinatti, Ohio, after an audience member thought that the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" on stage was a real dog.[4]

Skinny Puppy also worked with directors such as William Morrison and Jim Van Bebber on a number of music videos, the themes and style of which closely mirrored their live performances. While their often-graphic videos received little mainstream airplay, several of their releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music in general is considerable.

Early history

Skinny Puppy formed in 1982-1983 out of the partnership of cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton; instruments) and Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie; voices) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Key was dissatisfied with the pop direction of his then-current band Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more raw and experimental. Initially Key had planned Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images, however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Key made Skinny Puppy his full time project.[5]

Key had already created the name of the project and the concept of music from a "dog's eye view" when Ogre joined, and it was with this idea that they recorded their first cassette Back and Forth (self-released, 1984) with help from Dave "Rave" Ogilvie. This began a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, occasionally being listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Back and Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was at Unovis in Vancouver in February 1984.

Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as "Hell 'O' Death Day"; some of this material would appear on later Skinny Puppy releases. Bill Leeb, an early friend of the band, contributed bass synth and background vocals to some songs and shows in 1985, but by 1986 had left the band to form Front Line Assembly. His departure was attributed to his lack of involvement and loss of interest in touring, as well as a desire to create his own project. Dwayne Goettel (synthesizers and samplers) joined Skinny Puppy as a full time member in 1986. Classically trained as a pianist/keyboardist, Goettel had previously worked with the synth pop band Psyche, among others.

Remission—Cleanse Fold and Manipulate

The dark electro-pop styles of their debut EP Remission (1984) and first album Bites (1985) earned the band a fan base. Tom Ellard of Severed Heads leant a hand to the production of the track "Assimilate" from Bites, which, with its chorus exhorting the listener to "rot and assimilate" became one of the band's first underground hits. Other popular songs from this period included "Smothered Hope", "The Choke", "Dead Lines", "Last Call", and "Far Too Frail".

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"Assimilate"
from Bites (1985)
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Their audience expanded with a distribution deal with Capitol Records/EMI, while Play It Again Sam issued a number of their albums in Europe. Their production values continued to improve with the addition of Goettel on Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986) and Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987).[2] Skinny Puppy performed live in-studio on the CBC's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and M:TPI's "Dig It", the band's first single and video, received a fair amount of airplay on Toronto's CFNY. Other prominent songs from this period include "Addiction" (remixed by Adrian Sherwood and released as a single in 1987), "Chainsaw", (first released on its own EP in 1987), "Stairs and Flowers (single" (released on a 12" single in the US), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds", and "One Time One Place".

Skinny Puppy toured in 1985 (North America), 1986 (North America and Europe), and 1987 (North America); a live performance at Toronto's Concert Hall in 1987 was released on video in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?.

VIVIsectVI—Rabies

Over time, the band became outspoken advocates for animal rights, and used the Head Trauma tour (Europe, 1988) and VIVIsectVI tour (North America, 1988) to expose concert attendees to videos of experimentation of animals. The title of the album VIVIsectVI (1988) was a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (ie. the "666 sect"). The album's lyrics included criticism of pollution, chemical warfare, cocaine addiction, deforestation, rape, and the promotion of sexual abstinence to stop the spread of AIDS/HIV. The single "Testure" unambiguously denounced the vivisection of animals for research purposes and insinuated that vivisection was a akin to a "holocaust" perpetrated against animals and driven by greed. "Testure" reached #19 on Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989.[6] A music video was produced for "Testure", consisting of original footage of a man being tortured by monstrous-looking doctors in a hospital bed, augmented with clips from The Plague Dogs and Unnecessary Fuss.

Template:Sound sample box align rightTemplate:Sample box end During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members also worked on various side projects, including The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots), Doubting Thomas (an outlet for Key and Goettel's non-Skinny Puppy compositions), and the rock band Hilt. For Rabies (1989), Ogre brought in Ministry's Al Jourgensen to produce with Rave. The album, featuring Jourgensen playing electric guitar on several tracks, drew mixed reviews, although the single "Worlock" became an enduring favorite among many fans. A video was produced for Worlock, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item.[1]

Ultimately, this era marked the beginning of divisions within the band,[2] as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour as an additional vocalist. Key was later quoted as saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and Pigface during this period that he sometimes felt "like a wife of that's been cheated on".[7]

Too Dark Park—Last Rights

Too Dark Park (1990) built on the harsh electronic rock of previous albums, producing the spastic singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic". Environmental degradation was a major theme on the album, with songs titles such as "Nature's Revenge", while layers of background noise grew to a crescendo on the album's closer "Reclamation". The next album Last Rights (1992) pushed the dark noise of Too Dark Park further into experimental territory. The stage show of its accompanying tour was built around a detailed narrative that involved Ogre interacting with a "virtual reality" machine, a backing film, and a large rotating "tree" which dangled various smaller props, including severed heads and pornographic magazines. The videos for "Spasmolytic" and "Killing Game" were thematically linked to the stage shows of the Too Dark Park and Last Rights tours, glimpses of which can be seen in the videos for "Spasmolytic" and "Love In Vein" included on the Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE DVD released in 2005.

Template:Sound sample box align rightTemplate:Sample box end A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank "track 10" on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (1967) was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder.[1] The song, in which a crazed Ogre responds to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 (1996) and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in Dresden (2000). The planned single for Last Rights, "Love In Vein", was never released, although some of the remix and b-side material intended for it also appeared on Brap.

The Process—breakup

Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California, in 1993 to begin recording The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of the Final Judgement, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset from the beginning by everything from fires to the Northridge earthquake, and Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins, but Atkins's presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre on the one hand and Key and Goettel on the other. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American Recordings reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. Key would later tell the press that their creativity at the time was also badly affected by the company's pressure on them to create music that was similar to and as commercially acceptable as that of contemporaries like Nine Inch Nails. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home in August 1995.[2] Ogre, Key and Rave completed The Process in his memory; and it was released in 1996. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals and acoustic guitar on several songs. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank yous to "Electronic Music Lovers", "Puppy People", and the words "The End" in bold type.[8]

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"Morter"
from The Process (1996)
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During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective known as "The Process" was started, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Larry Thrasher of Psychic TV jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle in a limited edition in 2002. These jams partly inspired the creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western in 1994. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to minimal techno and IDM, and toured in 1996. Earlier, in 1993, Goettel had issued a breakbeat hardcore-style single with Western on their own Subconscious Records, and after Goettel's death in 1995, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key and Western used to release a number of their own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, explored ambient techno and chill out with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.

Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again in 1995 after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project "W.E.L.T." with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name ohGr. In the meantime, he released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (initially known as "Ritalin"). Rx and ohGr featured some of Ogre's most pop-oriented songwriting to date.

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"Smothered Hope (Ogre & Mark Walk remix)"
from remix dystemper (1998)
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Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, The Singles Collection and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998. Titled remix dystemper, it featured classic Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by a diverse range of artists, including IDM pioneers Autechre, alt-metal band Deftones and rapper/hip hop producer Guru. Ogre & Mark Walk also took part, contributing a breakcore remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remission's "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.

Dresden reunion—Mythmaker

In 2000, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. This unique concert was professionally filmed and recorded, and while a DVD never materialized, live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" were released on the internet and the live CD Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden was released in 2001.

Key joined ohGr for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey (Tool) and Wayne Static (Static-X) recorded the new Skinny Puppy album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, which was released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony. The new Skinny Puppy sound was in a similar vein as The Process, with a somewhat less distorted, more electro-industrial rock oriented style. The music video for "Pro-Test" was rather different than any of their previous video work, featuring a showdown between rival breakdancing/krumping crews. Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album twice in 2004, during which several shows were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, which was released in September 2005. This live show became controversial due to content critical of President George W. Bush. A pro-Bush site called PABAAH (an acronym for Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood) attempted to boycott college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy's music.[9][3]

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"Pasturn"
from Mythmaker (2007)
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After touring again in 2005, Skinny Puppy returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, released in January 2007. The band has scheduled a U.S. tour to start in Spring 2007. They are slated to start live support for Mythmaker at Convergence in Portland, Oregon on May 25 - 27.[10]

Discography

Main article: Skinny Puppy discography

Videography

  • Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
    • Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, May 31 and June 1, 1987.
  • Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
    • Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage 1987), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
  • Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
    • Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
  • Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
    • Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love In Vein" (live footage 1992).
  • Promotional videos also exist for "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).

Other projects

Main article: List of Skinny Puppy side projects

Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects. Key has released several solo albums, and major side projects include Download, platEAU, and The Tear Garden. Key has also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days (1999).

Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which released two albums, Welt (2001) and SunnyPsyOp (2003), and toured in 2001. Ogre toured with KMFDM in 1997 and contributed vocals to their albums Symbols (1997) and Adios (1999). He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991-1995) and Ministry (1987-1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface recordings and Ministry side projects like PTP and Revolting Cocks.

References

  1. ^ a b c Todd Zachritz. "Brap... The Skinny Puppy and Download Discography". Godsend Online. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  2. ^ a b c d Jason Ankeny. "Skinny Puppy biography". All Music Guide. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  3. ^ a b Angela Gorter (2004-12-12). "Conservatives Ban College Radio Stations". The BG News. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  4. ^ "Skinny Puppy Jailed for Toy Dog Operation." Toronto Star, October 26 1988.
  5. ^ "A Short History". The Official Images In Vogue Site. Retrieved 2006-04-27.
  6. ^ a b "Skinny Puppy: Charts & Awards: Billboard Singles". All Music Guide. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  7. ^ IndustrialnatioN #5, 1991.
  8. ^ The Process, CD liner notes, Skinny Puppy, 1996, American Recordings.
  9. ^ "Take Action vs College Radio". PABAAH. Retrieved 2005-02-17.
  10. ^ Convergence 13
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Skinny Puppy: Charts & Awards: Billboard Albums". All Music Guide. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  12. ^ "DAC Top 50 Alben, 2004". Deutsche Alternative Charts. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
  13. ^ "DAC Top 50 Alben, 2001". Deutsche Alternative Charts. Retrieved 2007-05-14.

Further reading

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