The Many Faces of Dominick Fernow

Dominick Fernow is an American experimental, noise musician, poet and multimedia artist. He is best known for extreme music released under the popular stage name Prurient, however not much is known about Fernow’s past. In documented interviews, he recalls growing up in Wisconsin, born into a Roman Catholic household. Fernow cites his venture into death metal and tape trading as early sources of musical interest; the influence of death metal can be cited in much of earlier discography. Fernow also performs under numerous other aliases, including Vatican Shadow and Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement.

Fernow cites the death metal band Deicide’s album Once Upon the Cross as, “frightening … A huge record for me, still to this day,” he said in an interview with Consequence of Sound. Over the course of two decades, Fernow’s main project, Prurient, has had an astounding output of over 30+ releases, ranging from tape and cassette to albums and extended plays. In his early work as Prurient, Fernow worked primarily with a microphone and amplifier, and sometimes drums, to create the maelstrom of music. Noise music is a barebones genre of music, often veering on the edge of “anti-music” with the majority of noise musicians like Fernow often rebelling against the norm, even the concept of music itself.

Noise music is abstract and hard to discuss in detail, with noise being a challenging, if not daunting genre to explore in the first place. Fernow stood in the centre of it all, as a titan of the genre, alongside Merzbow as one of the most acclaimed, celebrated and often divisive acts of the time.

Prurient

Prurient remains Fernow’s longest-running project, still releasing records and cassettes this very day. To describe ‘noise’ music we must first look unto the harsh noise exorcisms and trebly, ear-piercing micro-genre of “power electronics” (a term first coined by William Bennett of Whitehouse, an influential noise collective, known for their brand of sonic terrorism).

Power electronics is a style of noise music was stated by Bennett, on the sleeve notes of Psychopathia Sexualis: it became later aligned with the noise music scene, as power electronics mostly consisted of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds, and screamed distorted, often hateful and offensive, crass or politically charged lyrics. As a genre of music, power electronics is deeply atonal, there are no conventional melodies or rhythms. Acts in the power electronics, noise and death industrial sphere include but are not limited to Author & Punisher, Genocide Organ, Ramleh, Merzbow, Black Leather Jesus, Whitehouse and Coil. All of whom released projects within the realm of noise, and power electronics, to varying degrees of success and acclaim:

Prurient has gradually become an amorphous and open-ended entity, often Fernow blends noise with dark-wave, harsh winding melodies, near-absent drumming with atonal, siren-like shout-singing of Fernow himself. From the twisting, undulating synthesizer loops of 2006’s release, Pleasure Ground to the serene noise soundscapes of Frozen Niagara Falls, Fernow is a master of utilizing noise and electronics to create a mood.

Prurient flipped the script once again, in 2011’s Bermuda Drain — inspired by his time as the keyboardist for Cold Cave, Bermuda Drain was an album that was a by-product of the European techno, Fernow had consumed while busy on tour. Bermuda Drain found Fernow expanding his sonic arsenal to incorporate elements of techno, synthpop, minimal wave and expansive industrial music, and presenting the whole with a newfound sense of confidence and clarity, especially within his voice. New Bermuda wasn’t received well from the sectarian noise communities — while critics praised for the expansive, new sound, hardcore noise fans had thought that Fernow had “sold out” with his corporation of synth-pop to his blend of noise-laden chaos.

“I actually find Daft Punk to be incredibly dark in a non-obvious way”

Fernow’s DIY ethos had evolved from the simple microphone set to using a more diverse range of electronics, drums and working on a laptop instead of analogue and tape recordings and utilizing complex synthesizers. Fernow made connections with many noise giants, John Wiese, Jeff Plummer (of Immaculate: Grotesque and Shallow Waters), Kris Lapke (of Alberich and MCMS), Wolf Eyes, Macronympha, and Philip Best (of Whitehouse and Consumer Electronics), as well as created Hospital Productions, his own independent record label — all of the names mentioned had worked with in some capacity, through his record company or within the studio. For example, Kris Lapke served as a core member in the creation of 2017’s Rainbow Mirror.

2013’s Through the Window was another script-flip by Fernow, with the shift to hissing, techno noir and Worship Is the Cleansing of the Imagination, a split release with JK Flesh, another unexpected release, a desolate ambient and funereal doom, more poignant than punishing. The Prurient project undergoes constant metamorphosis but the cathartic, confessional nature of the project will remain constant, as Fernow’s arguable magnum opus set his world ablaze in 2015. Fernow has stated that he wanted to capture the “spirit of homelessness” on this release, saying:

“Not acoustic instruments in particular but any acoustic sound we could generate, even at a high volume. Things being destroyed, rocks being cracked in half and hurled around and that kind of stuff … I felt I kind of needed a necessity to try and return to the idea of noise committed with the physical.”

His most romantic record, Frozen Niagara Falls was the accumulation of his past work, containing elements from Bermuda Drain, And Still Waiting and Through the Window. A cutting-edge release bringing in the flavours of incandescent, bizarre synth-pop, sharp, harsh, whistling drums. The opening track, Myth of Building Bridges, is soaked in drone chaos. Unbearably sharp and with static noise, before transforming into a noise meltdown that grinds the listener to a halt. The track, “Traditional Snowfall”, starts off as a murder-romance fantasy — “I want to rip out your lower back/ And suck the air out of your lungs/ And wrap my hands around your neck/ And collapse your throat/ And squish your thorax/ And kiss you” — before turning into a statement on modern love: “Friends are everywhere but I’m always leaving/ Dismantling us with rumours.” This album is at the bleeding edge of noise music, giving you a full experience, holding back no punches.

Fernow’s synths sound both lusher and icier than ever, thanks to the help from producer, Arthur Rizik, known for his repertoire in the realm of death metal, such as Power Trip’s Manifest Decimation, Inquisition’s Obscure Verses for the Multiverse. This collaboration brings out the best in each other, as the track, Every Relationship Earthrise, makes for excellent dark-wave. Fernow’s own mother, Jean Feraca was also given a writing credit, as the melodramatic cries of Fernow wash over you, in songs such as Dragonflies to Sew You Up — huge blasts of static and contact mic chaos come back into tracks such as Sorrow with a Braid. While Prurient was never about accessibility, with any of his projects, being considered ‘listener-friendly’, a double noise album such as Frozen Niagara Falls stands as an accomplishment as the album transcends the definition of noise and power electronics and gives an authentic, rich experience.

“My involvement and interest in noise is actually entirely anti-musical. It’s all concept.”

Later on, Fernow released Rainbow Mirror, a three-hour epic, though it did not come to the same critical success as Frozen Niagara Falls. Rainbow Mirror’s main flaw was the meandering tension, despite the grandiosity, the album lacked Fernow’s visceral vocal performances and felt like it was missing the edge from Frozen Niagara Falls, add to the fact that it an anniversary release, and the three-hour runtime, it was not as digestible as the previous record nor interesting as the last. The critical failure of Rainbow Mirror was how quiet the album is, there was barely any tension. Fernow amended this his next project, Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers, a soaring release, filled with World War 2 sampling and harsh noise wall — the album lacked direction outside its thematic theme of war, the Prurient project is now in its wilderness years, now seeking a new identity.

Fernow’s back catalogue as a noise icon is still impressive, and worth checking out. Fernow, despite his misses, in recent years, still has a lot of hits, with iconic records such as Through the Window, Pleasure Ground, Bermuda Drain and Colonialist Nature and Misanthropy — Fernow’s noise is unveiling, even now.

Vatican Shadow

When he’s not playing noise shows, in niche venues, in the underground, Fernow rocks entire worlds with his politically charged techno, “militant religious industrial” is how Fernow described the project when he issued his first tapes for his first-ever release, titled, Byzantine Private CIA, in 2011.

Primarily influenced by Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze), their music is awfully similar, but with a few key differences: Muslimgauze was extreme, politically and radically in tone, ardently pro-Palestinian, pro-Islam, anti-Zionist, and in some cases, even anti-West, with releases often celebrating Arab and Muslim culture; Vatican Shadow was more ambiguous, with often music, more topically focused such as the compilation record, Death Is Unity with God, following a narrative inspired by three major events that occurred in the United States in the first half of the 1990s: the Gulf War, the Waco siege, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Fernow’s debut, Remember Your Black Day, with its album art depicting Iraqi Ministry of Interior building, with cover art depicts the likes of Hillary Clinton, on the cover of Washington Buries Al Qaeda Leader At Sea, Saddam Hussein, Nidal Malik Hasan (the “Fort Hood shooter”) and an anonymous Chechen rebel. While Jones focused on the plight of the oppressed Muslim people around the world, Fernow took an alternative route in using the iconography of the War on Terror era to build his statement, often his music serves as a harsh critique of the military-industrial complex, but keeps away from valour or praise, there are no heroes or villains in the world of Vatican Shadow. Only warfare and death.

Fernow closed 2012 with the epic triple album set titled, It Stands To Conceal, compiling his extended plays into one journey. Containing and remastering previous works such as Jordanian Descent, Ghosts Of Chechnya, and Atta’s Apartment Slated for Demolition.

Vatican Shadow remains a unique project, as Fernow has a distinctive aesthetic compared to the harsher, more free-form aesthetic of the Prurient project, as every Vatican Shadow release has a specific art style and design attached to them:

In an interview with Resident Advisor, Fernow states how much death metal had played a key to his connection to electronic music. In the ’90s, many death metal bands started to work electronic passages into their albums, either as eerie intros or interludes, this had caught Fernow’s ear. With the album covers and art above you can see, Fernow was not above using real-life figures and people for his music, either. Kneel Before Religious Icons featured a stark portrait of Nidal Hasan, better known as the Fort Hood Shooter, a US military psychiatrist who shot up an army base in Texas in 2009.

The titles were borrowed from newspapers and headlines, add a menacing political tinge to Fernow’s music, despite Fernow not stating his political beliefs outright, the tracks speak for themselves, as they sound like acid-eaten techno and industrial, with harsh, repetitive beats puncturing the spooky atmospheres Fernow had been exploring in his recent music.

Fernow also released “collage collection” further building on his aesthetic, focusing on post-9/11 fears and trauma, and the increasing military presence in the Middle East:

Fernow continues to release music under this moniker, with his most recent releases being Kuwaiti Airforce, a diverse EP, with noise-laced synths in the opening tracks, Kuwaiti Airforce Rehearsal Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, the thundering drums of Conspiratorial Whispers, and the dark ambient passages and tension of Soviet Union’s Vietnam War, with the album art depicting a snide portrait of Former Vice President, Dan Quayle on the cover. On another release, aptly called, American Flesh for Violence has album art that depicts a solemn shot of The Chrysler Building, a skyscraper located in the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the East Side of Manhattan, featuring sullen, intense and dense unreleased tracks from the Fernow’s personal archives as well as a companion of remixes throughout the history of the project, featuring collaborators, Alessandro Cortini (of Nine Inch Nails), Ancient Methods, CUB, and JK Flesh. Fernow’s music continues to make a statement, even now.

The beauty of Vatican Shadow is the unforgiving relevance and harshly critical music portraying the reality of war, through the use of blasting techno ferocity and iconography of Fernow’s aesthetic. There is a deep, cruel irony in having Dan Quayle as the cover art of Kuwaiti Airforce, with tracks such as The Triumph of Religion play in the background.

Vatican Shadow is an elusive project, probably Fernow’s most secretive, Fernow stated “it’s also about the imagery”, the aesthetic is just as important as the music itself. Vatican Shadow is most simultaneously bleak, but also clubby, danceable and with a sharp political edge, even with the repetitive disco beats and his esoteric range, Vatican Shadow feels all too appropriate for our modern age — an updated take on Muslimgauze’s techno pulse.

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement

The music project that may be the closest musical twin with 2017’s Rainbow Mirror, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is a unique project blending Prurient’s ambient vestiges with the pulsating wave and tremor of the jungle. It’s Fernow’s third most active project, like both Prurient and Vatican Shadow, there is a distinct aesthetic and art associated with the project, distorting the sounds of nature (inspired by the landscape of Papua New Guinea) into the dark and ritualistic realms of ambient music.

Part magic and part mysticism, RSE creates the soundscape of an imaginary world that’s both foreboding and intriguing, not much can be stated outside the general ambience of this project. Much less abrasive than Prurient and much less politically charged to Vatican Shadow — RSE represents a softer aspect of Fernow’s style. Panama Canal Left-Hand Path might be RSE’s most poignant release, rhythmically entrancing, bringing attention to the bloodshed of the Panama canal, with hypnotic drones transposed against the sound of birds, wasps, and other wildlife.

Using highly evocative, descriptive titles and reserved sound design he prompts rather than tells, with tracks like ‘Hunting Down Individual Mosquitoes’ he evokes the feeling of the listener being thrust into the world of Predator before the next track Isthmus Dark Arts (Electricity Arcs Through Rain) brings nightfall with screeching parakeets and booming, electric heartbeat. And with the standout track being, Demons Tour The Canal which finds the perfect tension between blissed synths and distant, warning. Fernow also released Ambient Black Magic with collaborator, Silent Servant.

A nauseating mix of the wild and the serene — the first two tracks ably set the scene. Jungle Is A Shapeshifter and Beyond The Yellow-Spotted Bamboo — both songs being co-produced by Silent Servant, they move slowly, thick with the sounds of rain and mist. The album’s most bewildering track, “Chile’s Crimson Tide,” shapes synthesizers into uncanny, bizarre birdsong, while rich sustained synths and rumbling bass, the squalls sound both obviously fake and eerily familiar. Ambient Black Magic taps into our inner fear about nature.

Along, the canal path of RSE, comes the beautiful, often haunting album art:

Like Vatican Shadow, portraying the War on Terror through the use of highly vivid, stylized album covers — which capture the horror and dread of the unknown jungle. RSE, unlike Vatican Shadow and Prurient, is an ambient project first and foremost and for Dominick Fernow, it’s building tension with harsh, unforgiving imagery, either through the music or the album art. Fernow is a master of building complex and compelling rhythm through chaos and fright, RSE is a culmination of his ambient talents being shown in full display — RSE could have served as a prime influence on the polarizing release of Rainbow Mirror. With the ambient passages being highly reminiscent of the music of RSE. Though we cannot be entirely certain, Fernow’s musical talents do spill over to his other projects here and now.

Key Releases To Check Out

Prurient:

• The History of Aids (Armageddon / Hospital Productions, 2002)
• Colonialist Nature And Misanthropy (Hospital Productions, 2007)
• Cocaine Death (Hospital Productions, 2008)
• Bermuda Drain (Hydra Head, 2011)
• Time’s Arrow (Hydra Head, 2011)
• Frozen Niagara Falls (Profound Lore, 2015)

Vatican Shadow:

• Kneel Before Religious Icons (Hospital Productions, 2011)
• Pakistan Military Academy (Hospital Productions, 2011)
• It Stands to Conceal (Hospital Productions, 2012)
• Death Is Unity With God (Hospital Productions, 2014)
• Washington Buries Al Qaeda Leader at Sea (Hospital Productions, 2019)
• Kuwaiti Airforce (Hospital Productions, 2019)

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement:

• Black Magic Cannot Cross Water (Hospital Productions, 2011)
• Taking Place in the Foyer (Hospital Productions, 2012)
• The Plant With Many Faces / Folklore Venom (Hospital Productions, 2012)
• Ambient Black Magic (Hospital Productions, 2017)
• Panama Canal Left-Hand Path (Hospital Productions, 2019)