The years pass but from the small, apparently quiet and serene, South Pacific island continue to grow exciting and distinctive new underground bands, all tied up by a little thread characterised, more than close musical similarities, by a genuine DIY attitude of independence, originality and unchained creativity. The genre-defying music of Auckland-based art, in its broadest sense, band Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing (GPOGP) is not suited for a superficial and distracted listening, requires commitment, dedication, also patience sometimes, but in the end the sublime and eccentric journey into their new tarot deck/double album ‘Songs Of Sodomy & The Compost Of Aethyr’, made of cachophonic avant-garde, post punk dissonance , gloomy pop , uncanny psychedelia, abrasive noise, angular no wave and quirky acid folk, will take you fully bewitched by their upsetting, insane but utterly amazing magical world. A healthy kick in the ass against today’s apathy, banalization and comformity, that timeless artistic value is surely going to increase as time goes by.
Let’s have a nice chat with the founder, guitarist and vocalist Casey Latimer.
Thanks so much for the interview. Could we start from the early days when Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing was just a Casey solo project… Which were the artistic and musical influences and inspirations that informed it? I’m sure that after your amazing and provocative ‘pornographic’ name there’s a deeper meaning…
I guess the first thing that spawned the project was the name. It just came into my head with some weight and I knew that it would be the name of the project I wished to pursue. The first incarnation was four or five of us doing noisy improv shit. Later Ι attempted, and failed miserably in an unstable headspace to pursue playing solo under the name. Until working with Alex, Aki, Catherine, Steve and Bett, when the concept and groundwork to build upon actually started to make sense and work. What we started to do and go about as a group allowed us to give meaning to the chosen logos, and find our own individual meanings and evolution around the name, that in reality is just some nonsense. There have been many meanings past and present for the name, equations, numbers, and formulas. We just use them as we please at the time. If there is a deeper meaning, its our quest to create or find it.
Your last 2015 album ‘Scrying In Infirmary Architecture’ took almost two years to complete, how did things go this time? Can you explain the ‘‘rule of halves’’, the twofold technique you used?
The starting point of ‘SOSATCOA’ was probably a year before ‘Scrying Ιn Infirmary Αrchetectue’ was released. This process was very different. With ‘Scrying In Infirmary Architecture’ we recorded in a studio with Josh Lynn who took care of all the recording and mixing etc. This time Alex took on the recording and mixing duties, apart from tracking the rhythm section, which we did on three separate occasions at wine cellar with Rohan Evans. Besides this, there were other live sessions in a garden shed and a home studio. We had the ability to work on our own terms whenever and be more patient and anal about ovedubs and editing and allowing things to evolve and move post live sessions. In this time we released some of the work that felt it belonged elsewhere on a couple of splits with Log Horn Breed and Looks Like Miaou. I guess the rule of halves thing occurred more organically than in a forced sense. It made sense to only know half of what we were doing so there was room for other things to happen on their own. The following lines of the “Book Of The Law” have always been helpful to the overall process:
“All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked.”
“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”
Your records always feed themselves on a mix of contrast and friction, melody and dissonance, harmony and friction, sublime and grotesque, disturbing and seductive, hate and love and so on… Is there a continuity, a method or is it a matter of improvisation and subconscious level? Are the lyrics all evoked on a subconscious level too?
There are methods of working, however we try hard to challenge them and to not get stuck or stagnate with them. The aim is to evolve and build upon these methods, and allow room to fail so that we can learn. It is easier for us to accept failure than mediocrity. It is important that something manifests through us of its own, not to create a product. There can be no good or bad, right or wrong etc. The only course is evolution. “The only sin is Restriction”. On my part, the majority of lyrical content is through subconscious means. There are varied methods. Sometimes none.”Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” Mark 4;9.
What’s the meaning of the title ‘Songs Of Sodomy & The Compost of Aethyr’? What prompted a double album release of such a challenging and conceptual body of work? Did you, thematically, have an all-encompassing thread or building feeling you wanted to portray in this ‘sonic journey’?
‘Songs Of Sodomy’, refers to one part of the content and working. It would not be appropriate to divulge too much. People can look at this how they wish. It is a reference to becoming submissive to the will of god or whatever you want to call it. Nothing. The destruction of the temple and the glyph of Atu XVI The Tower, which plays prominently in the ideas and structure of the album on a spiritual and political level. ‘The Compost of Aethyr’ refers to the use of Enochian invocations of the Aethyrs, dream states, and altered states to go about the woking. In these realms was a dense sediment and root of the remains of these structures aforementioned. This concept was also explored in the tarot working and related artworks to the album. It was a way of working with the root systems and insect life of these dimensions.
The album comes along with a limited-edition tarot deck designed and illustrated by GPOGP: I’m not an expert, but I’m a fan of art-film director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also wrote a book about tarots; he affirms, inspired by a meeting with Andrè Breton, that ‘all deviations from the Tarot de Marseille are nothing but inglorious bastards’, like yours I guess. Please, can you explain the way you created them and if they have any connections with the songs?
As much as I love Alejandro Jodorowsky, I do believe that to be an ignorant comment, although there are some god awful decks out there. I based my deck mostly on the Thoth deck and writings of Aleister Crowley. My deck does follow the Marseille and traditional decks, as does the Thoth deck and most others. Certain symbols and systems cannot be ignored. However the arrangements and numeration of the old decks were never aright to start with, on purpose. I believe Crowley dealt to this with much explanation and science which I would encourage anyone interested to look further into. As a system of evolution, it to must be arighted from time to time, and the appropriate sciences, symbols and language applied to them. There is room for people to be creative and inspired with this system, even with the need to adhere to the structure and dogma.
In this age of quick and superficial music consumption, your musical proposal is bucking the trend and, like it was in the pre-internet era, need commitment and dedication, an ‘act of faith’ to be fully satisfied. Is it your genre-defying, no classifiable approach a sort of ‘take or leave it’? Which is the response you’d like to cause to the listeners?
We just get on the piss, play music, and make shit together at the end of the day. It’s just polite and a bit of fun to share it with the world.
I think that real art should be magical, surprising and unsettling. Maybe if people had a different positive approach based on an insatiable curiosity, looking behind the surface, things could work out better not only musically. What’s your view about the real/free nature of art?
Art is a product, like music, like most things. That’s why our approach is ritual. It is more concerned with the doing and making than the outcome. The concern for a product, ambition, and identity will pervert anything one does. And kill any joy. There should be no dogma, dictating, or need for explanation. No need to conqor or be put in high esteem.
GPOGP is a full artistic project involving poetry, artwork, literature, occultism, mysticism, painting, cinema, visuals; it’s not just a music band, which are your main past and present non-musical inspirations and influences?
It would be impossible and maybe redundant to try, as we all collectively have such varied and wide ranging interests and obsessions that change. Maybe William Blake, Aleister Crowley, John Ballance, David Tibet, Austin Osman Spare, Marjorie Cameron, Peter Greenaway could be some. Many of the biggest influences we have our friends and family who we go about this shit amongst.
Many Europeans have been deeply intrigued and influenced by the 80’s bands centred around the Flying Nun label and the so called ‘Dunedin sound’. I don’t know if their jangle psych sound had any influence on you, more likely dissonant and terrifying bands like the Skeptics, Plagal Grind and Small World Experience.
As much as the Skeptics are a huge influence on us, we dig a ton of that jangly pop shit also. Its hard not to be influenced and a continuation of something that has always been so present in our lives and culture. We definitely do not try to go do it and be it in some nostalgic sense. Fucking everyone else has been doing that ever since and it’s fucking dull.
Which peculiarity and impact had and still has the fact of being born in a South Pacific island on your artistic creativity? Did it never cross your mind the possibility to be a London or Berlin-based musicians/band (like your label boss did ultimately)? Which are your favourite NZ bands right now?
I guess we don’t try to conform to the whole “kiwi band” thing. I grew up in Pakistan for three years, Steve is Australian, and everyone else has gone on adventures travelling and brought those influences into it. That does not negate any obvious relationship we have to this land. It makes more sense to go out into the world and have an adventure than to try and impose and sell our fucking band to the world or something. This seems to exist and belong here for a reason and season, and it makes no sense to have bullshit waste of time and money ambitions. Especially when there are more important reasons to move around. Not that we are writing the idea off. I guess it’s as Morrissey said “you just haven’t earned it yet baby”. As nice as it would sound to go abroad, some of us are just too broke and useless to work for it, and have other things to get on with here.
Surfing the web looking for articles about GPOGP, I was intrigued by this line referred to the band ‘distinctly NZ gothic take on occult and the rancid underbelly of this country’s clean green, rugby obsessed, ‘little Kiwi battler’ image of itself’, could you better explain it?
I don’t really think that’s our prerogative. Couldn’t give a fuck what everyone else outside is up to and etc. “The slaves will serve”. I don’t think we are being that judgemental with our music. No point throwing messages to a deaf and uninterested audience. Also we feel too colourful for that goth nonsense. However, we are a product of this environment somehow. The whole occult thing is just so everyday and mundane to us, not some dark disturbing external thing. It is a means of the expression of love, beauty, joy, etc as much as the polarities of those. It’s a means of science and understanding, not doom and gloom.
I read about ‘epic live caustic shows’ also in house parties, how have you developed the live GPOGP experience? Is it a visceral and ecstatic performance, as your music suggested, in such an extent that often slips out of your control?
Not too sure. We try not to be present at our shows. Mostly get drunk and try have some fun.
Many thanks for being our welcome guest, just the last question about your near and future plans.
Steve has gone to live in some obscure part of Canada, so we will in time just start from scratch again and see what comes of it. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us! Much love.
Fabrizio Lusso