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| the future of music is nigh. |
| * WHAT IS THE WHITE NEGRO? |
| First and foremost, the "white negro" is the benchmark of the contrarian ideal of modern American society. Norman Mailer coined the phrase to mark Caucasians who, in the 1950's as part of the Beat movement, adopted tropes of jazz and African American culture and used them in their own artistic endeavours. Similarly, the phrase also came to be used for the opposite flow of cultural claim, namely, as a somewhat derogatory handle for African Americans who had reached a certain level of stability and success in society such that they were deemed culturally "white". Such examples of this include Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the depiction of a black family on "The Cosby Show". In essence, the phrase is shorthand for the continuing and furthering of racial ambiguities in America. The White Negro, as a recording group, have taken the hot button topic of racial identity and extrapolated its many concerns, criticisms, shortcomings and advantages. Through the combination of hip-hop, jazz, big beat electronic, punk, rock, folk, worldbeat, progressive, blues, classical, and art noise elements, as well as sampling from some of the greatest audio recordings of the twentieth century, The White Negro create wildly new forms of musical structure, listening opportunities, and artistic possibilities. The results are the unconscious heartbeat of the new America, a world in which labels and limits are only measured by how far they can be stretched. |
| * WHAT CAN THE WHITE NEGRO DO FOR ME? |
| They can rock your ass like no other has ever rocked it before. The recordings (can one honestly term then 'songs'?) are, at first, deceptively simple, almost straightforward. They seem to be overwhelmingly electronica-inspired. However, with repeated listens, the disparate elements that make up the cacophony come to light. Acoustic guitars meld with gospel harmonies. Aggressive beats play side-by-side with angular piano figures and odd time signatures. Record scratches and shortwave alarm pulses blend into a whole beside ambient washes. And then, of course, there's the recording process, possibly the most important part of the White Negro oeuvre. The work is done almost entirely with the use of pre-recorded drums and rhythms, on top of which the 'music' is improvised on the spot. All of it then goes straight to regular-old 1985-era audio cassettes, which are then transferred to a digital format by mic'ing speakers off a ghetto blaster playing the rcording. The effect is the meeting of high tech and the DIY garage ethos. As of yet, only two artists work under the White Negro label - the White Negro and Laundry Hepburn. |
| Albums by the White Negro |
| Fear Of A Black Santa EP (1997) |
| album covers coming soon... |
| 1) Fear Of A Black Santa 2) What The Fuck??? 3) Introducing 4) Fuck Jars Of Clay 5) Rock The Catskills |
| In February of 1997, two college students hooked on indie music and fringe culture found a third student with a My First Sony cassette recorder and a Roland 303-D beat box, and created one of the most important records of the year. Included on the album are very (very very) loose interpretations of the Doors' "Riders On The Storm" and Beck's "High 5 (Rock The Catskills)". Also of note - though covering five tracks, the entire EP is built over a continuous underdub of Jimi Hendrix's Electricladyland, a conceit that seems random until the closing seconds of the last track. |
| The Echo Of Terrorism (2000) |
| 1) Carillon 2) The Subes 3) Theme To White Negro 4) Welcome 5)...And The Crowd Went Mad 6) Outpost Planet 7) Warm Chamber 8) The Awful Din 9) Jock Jam 10) Percolator 11) Mike Tyson 12) Katydid 13) Monoxide 14) Lifts Out With Vinegar 15) Mardi Gras |
| CD1 CD2 |
| 1) Black Rock Coalition 2) Southbay Junkyard 3) Mike Tyson (remix) 4) Grendel 5) How To Kill A Filipino Jew 6) You Must Be Wily 7) Prelude To Psycho 8) Oh Oh Is De Po Po 9) Delicious 10) Twister 11) Brainerd 12) Music = Science |
| Truly the standard bearer for all future White Negro projects, this album was conceived as a short and extemporaneous electronic opera of sorts a la Metal Machine Music, yet ballooned into a 27-track double album effort . Its primary intent was to have the listener not be able to hear it all the way through in one sitting - an effect that has been achieved on numerous occasions. Highlights on this album include the recurrence of what has become the White Negro calling card - a sample of police sirens, found here on Theme To White Negro. Also on the album are samples from Forest For The Trees, the theme to Psycho, and a reading from Beowulf, as well as dialogue from The Wizard Of Oz and Fargo. |
| Sixth Grade Samurai (2002) |
| 1) Inner Limit 2) Bang Goes The Bass 3) Quackbuster 4) Drugs 5) Krakatoa 6) While My Sitar Gently Weeps 7) Sixth Grade Samurai 8) P.S. You Rock My World 9) Rockapella 10) Fricassee 11) A Crap Odyssey |
| The most genre-hopping, high fidelity, beat-friendly album the White Negro has ever put out. The tracks exude a swagger and glow that was lacking of previous works, yet also gives up some of the immediacy and power of those recordings. With the level of technology available during the making of this record at an all-time apex, the tracks feature such bells and whistles like warped, backwards vocals and more intricately lain samples.The album is a never-ending survey of popular music, and the tracks switch effortlessly from raga to Radiohead-style murmurs to doo-wop without so much as a blink. |