On my previous album for Skinwalker Recordings, “Simple Questions,” I wanted to explore the rhetorical reproduction of Whiteness that occurs within media. This involved manipulating, reworking, and generally draining the meaning out of a monologue from Tucker Carlson about how White supremacy doesn’t exist. By using language to empty out the concepts of Whiteness and White Supremacy of their value, people like Carlson create the conditions necessary for these institutional forces (and the oppression they manifest) to persist. I wanted to do the same thing Carlson’s words, using the tools and gestures of harsh noise to suck the air out of his rhetoric. But to only pin this process on the right, especially in the context of the US, is short sighted. The fact is that both liberal and conservative parties in this country (both in terms of the moderate and fringe wings of these groups) are dedicated to an ideology of White supremacy. Although less outwardly fascist, liberalism within US politics puts on the veneer provided by diversity initiatives only to back oppressive tactics that reinforce the status quo of violence behind closed doors.
“Awful Answers” represents this other side of the coin, an inversion of the previous album that ultimately reaches the same end. Rather than working with Carlson’s monologue as source material, the album deploys the text and recordings from Tina Fey’s response to the Unite the Right Rally, a coordinated White supremacist march that brought together hundreds of fascists and overt racists. But rather than calling on people to respond in a material or meaningful way, Fey used a monologue on SNL to ask everyone to buy a cake and scream into it. A joke, sure, but one that remains highly representative of how the left responds to violence: show outrage while supporting that violence through inaction. Sonically, “Awful Answers” connects to “Simple Questions” through my own reengagement with harsh noise. While almost all of my solo work fits into the genre, I wanted to use these two albums to really examine what I love about this weird musical tradition. In doing so, I draw out the techniques, sounds, philosophies, and processes that have kept me fascinated with harsh noise for all these years. Sometimes inverting the elements of harsh noise, sometimes just loving them for exactly the way they are, it’s another album for the heads out there, but used to both reveal and challenge the underlying message of Fey’s words. In a sense, the texts of “Simple Questions” and “Awful Answers” are dead ends at opposite sides of an alley, refusing to provide an exit for anyone trying to walk within this path. But also, hopefully, the music can invite people to start looking for a ladder.
credits
released May 1, 2023
Sounds and Composition by Peter J. Woods
Text and Vocal Sample by Tina Fey
Mastered by Angel Marcloid
Beautiful and stunning work here. There is something truly inviting about this album. Sonically, it is dark, but always carried along by a certain lightness—a certain draw. It really is good. JDMP