One might think love is not an element in industrial music, given the brutality and dissonance associated with it. But there it was last Saturday as champions of the genre, Boy Dirt Car, returned to their hometown of Milwaukee for scintillating show at St. Francis art gallery and creative space Gold In The Fridge.
At least in the Boy Dirt Car iteration playing last weekend, the group consisted of only co-founder Darren Brown and his wife, Julie, who joined several years ago. They were promoting their recently issued career retrospective concert album, Family Live. And during one typically driving, cacophonous number, they kissed thrice.
Though the Browns may be a happy couple, their agitation toward the world continues to fuel their artistic rage. In a set that spanned much of their catalogue covering over a third of a century, Darren pointed out that one piece inspired by Ronald Reagan's presidency is no less relevant under the current administration. He was likewise forthright in relating a record company dispute that prevented their 1987 album, Heatrig, from being released until years later on an Australian label interested in Milwaukeean music. That bit of arguable misfortune is but one factor that has kept Boy Dirt Car an underground phenomenon untempted by the excesses of mainstream success.
Furthermore, Darren's banging on a piece of metal siding and Julie's stoic strumming on an electric sitar, among other factors of Saturday's performance, are likely beyond the scope of commercial radio's current tolerance. That's apparently OK with the Browns and the community of outcasts their music attracts. May they continue to agitate.
Boy Dirt Car now call Minneapolis home, but their opening acts this evening evinced that noisy music still thrives locally. Most serene among the trio of acts preceding BDC was A Crushed Rose, the alias of she who manipulated electronics to create continually shifting meditative sounds whose intimated melodies were occasionally disrupted by more discordant interludes. One More Final I Need You channeled the jazz/punk insouciance of late-’70s new wave.
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Irrelevant Mouth, a scrawny, long-haired, scraggly bearded malcontent commenced the night with bludgeoning feedback-drenched performance art as he stripped off his black “I (Heart) Abortion” T-shirt to reveal an inverted cross tattoo on his chest, ring hand bells and squirt and blue and white paint over his face, torso and hair, cut his upper arm some and rail against... himself?... God?... the universe? Whatever the nature of his intense grievance, he nearly stole the show at the onset of it.
