Skinny Puppy
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Skinny Puppy is an industrial band, formed in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Inspired by the groundbreaking music of Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and others, Skinny Puppy experimented with electronic recording techniques and methods. Skinny Puppy composed multi-layered music generally using keyboards, synthesizers, found sounds, drum machines, manual percussion and tape splices. They were one of the first performers to use MIDI, but unlike most who used it, Skinny Puppy usually sequenced both analog machines and digital machines at the same time. Whereas many contemporary remixes and re-edits of songs were created in order to make a song more suitable for dancing or different radio formats, Skinny Puppy approached remixing and re-editing as an artistic process of reinterpreting compositions, often using remixes to push their sound into styles of ambient, dub and techno. With interests in filmmaking, they made a number of music videos that each furthered the theme and concept of the composition at hand, but all were banned from MTV and MuchMusic, and the video for the composition Worlock was universally banned almost everywhere (and has never been commercially available, due to its unauthorized use of dozens of copyrighted images). Their concerts have been legendary for their bizarre and bloody conceptual performance art, which for every concert was planned with the intention of challenging the notions of all who observed. Their music had some acceptance in dance clubs because of its danceable beats, but had little play on commercial radio. Skinny Puppy had little commercial success outside of Canada, but their influence on industrial music is immense.
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 out of the partnership of cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton; instruments) and Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie; voices). Key was frustrated by the direction of his then-current band Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something "raw" and "real". The band's name was derived from the concept of a "dog's eye view"; Ogre penned fragmented, observant and philosiphical lyrics "seeing through the keyhole" and voiced them in a rough growl that resembled that of a small talking beast. With engineer/producer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation), Skinny Puppy began recording with Nettwerk Records in 1984, and their productiveness would eventually help grow Nettwerk from a fledging imprint to arguably the most prominent and successful independent Canadian record company of its time. Ogre and Key brought Wilhelm Schroeder (Bill Leeb; keyboards and bass) into the band in 1985, was out of the band by 1986, due to his lack of involvement and loss of interest in the band. Afterwards, they brought in Dwayne Goettel (keyboards and synthesizers), who was a classically trained keyboardist, for his instrumental skills. Goettel's membership proved pivotal in the band's musical direction.
The Kraftwerk-esque electro-pop EP Remission (1984) and the pristine, ambient, keyboard-based minimalist recording Bites (1985) earned the band a fanbase. Listenership continued to expand, and the band's skills continued to improve, with Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986), which consisted largely of experiments in spooky music made using analog tapes. With the additional of Goettel, they performed Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate (1987) mostly with keyboards, synthesizers and, for their first time, MIDI sequences.
They eventually became outspoken advocates for animal rights, and used the "Head Trauma" Tour (1987) and VIVIsectVI tour (1988) to expose concert attendees to videos of experimentation of animals. The title of the LP VIVIsectVI (1988) was a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism. The lyrics (http://www.waste.org/~skumm/VV6.html) on the LP were explicit, outspoken critisism of pollution (Hostpital Waste), chemical warfare (VX Gas Attack), promotion of sexual abstinence to stop the spread of AIDS/HIV (State Aid), child abuse (Harsh Stone White), deforestation (Human Disease (S.K.U.M.M.)) and rape (Who's Laughing Now?). The centerpiece composition of VIVIsectVI, Testure --- which lyrically insinuated that vivisection was a Holocaust of animals and was motivated by a common greed of medical scientists --- appeared (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:o7d2vw9va9yk~T51) on Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989.
During the late 1980s, the band members began working on various side projects, including Doubting Thomas, platEAU and aDuck. For Rabies (1989), Ogre brought Ministry's Al Jourgensen to produce with Rave. Prominently featuring Jourgensen and Rave playing electric guitar, Rabies was Skinny Puppy's first venture into heavy metal. This made it their most controversial and poorly reviewed album up to that time, owing to disagreement among listeners over whether the expansion of their sound into rock music made for effective artistic statements and whether they were deliberately making their sound more accessible and more mainstream. Jourgensen's presence did more to help divide the band then it did to keep it together, as they didn't tour to support Rabies while Ogre toured as an additional guitarist for Ministry. Key and Goettel were alienated from Ogre, who they felt was more interested in other projects then on keeping the band together. Creative differences also caused them difficulty working together.
Too Dark Park (1990) is widely regarded as a landmark of the emerging "industrial dance" and "industrial rock" genres. It combined electro-industrial with a somewhat funky pop sound reminiscent of pop music of the 1980s. The record Last Rights (1992) was their instrumental, compositional and arguably artistic masterpiece, especially with production, the composition Inquisition being the pinacle. (Due to confusion and conflicts over the copyright to a talk by Dr. Timothy Leary used in the composition, "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, an exlcusion which badly effected the album's thematic concept.) However, the title would prove appropriate not only because of its apocalyptic theme, but also because it preceeded Skinny Puppy's demise.
Ogre, Key and Goettel decided to continue the band without Rave or Nettwerk, and signed a contract with American Records. They travelled to Malibu, CA, in 1993 to begin recording The Process, a concept album about a psychotherapy cult active in the 1960s, with Roli Mossiman producing. Deciding that Mossiman's style was too inactive, they eventually fired him in favor of Martin Atkins. Atkins's presence only heightened their frustrations, but for different reasons: Key and Goettel felt that Atkins was trying to pry Ogre away from Skinny Puppy so that Ogre could devote himself fully to Atkins's projects. They switched from Atkins to Mark Walk by 1995. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the record process take so long, and thus cost so much money, that American Records reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. Key would later tell the press that their creativity of the time was also badly effected by the company's pressure on them to create music that was similar to and as commercially acceptable as that of contempararies like Nine Inch Nails. In 1995, Ogre quit Skinny Puppy to persue other musical projects, which effectively ended Skinny Puppy. Goettel then fled back to Vancouver with the master tapes of the recordings. Days later, he was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home. Ogre, Key and Rave completed The Process in his memory; it was finally published in 1996.
In 2000, Ogre and Key performed as Skinny Puppy at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, and then toured together in 2001 to support Ogre's solo project, Ohgr. In 2003 they started working with collaborators such as Danny Carey of Tool to produce the new full-length Skinny Puppy album, entitled The Greater Wrong of the Right, which was released on May 25, 2004. Skinny Puppy toured in support of "The Greater Wrong of the Right" twice in 2004, during which several shows were filmed for a possible forthcoming DVD release. Some news revealed that a new album was in the works in 2004 as well as another European tour for the Summer of 2005.
Key continued his musical efforts in the bands Download and Tear Garden, as well as performing solo. Ogre collaborated with major industrial acts KMFDM and Pigface, and since 1996 has been mainly involved with ohGr, a duo of he and Mark Walk.
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Discography
Original Albums
- Back and Forth (independently sold cassette, 35 copies, 1983):
- Sleeping Beast/K-9/Quiet Solitude/The Pit/Dead of Winter/A.M./Meat Flavour/Edge of Insanity
- Remission (1984):
- EP: Smothered Hope/Glass Houses/Far Too Frail/Solvent/Sleeping Beast (full length)/Brap...
- CD/CS: Smothered Hope/Glass Houses/Incision/Far Too Frail/Film/Manwhole/Ice Breaker/Solvent/Sleeping Beast (full length)/Glass Out/Brap...
- Bites (1985):
- Contents of all pressings: Assimilate/Dead Lines/Blood on the Wall/Icebreaker (edit)/The Choke/Social Deception/Basement/Last Call/Film (edit)
- Additional music on various pressings: Church/Tomorrow/Dead Doll/Love/Christianity/Falling/The Centre Bullet/One Day/Cage
- Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986):
- LP/Cassette: One Time One Place/Gods Gift (Maggot)/Three Blind Mice/Love (version)/Stairs and Flowers/Antagonism/200 Years/Dig It/Burnt with Water
- CD: One Time One Place/Gods Gift (Maggot)/Three Blind Mice/Love (version)/Stairs and Flowers/Antagonism/200 Years/Dig It (12" version)/Burnt with Water/Chainsaw/Addiction (2nd Dose)/Stares and Flowers (Too Far Gone)/Deep Down Trauma Hounds (remix)
- Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate (1987):
- First Aid/Addiction/Shadow Cast/Draining Faces/The Mourn/Second Tooth/Tear or Beat/Deep Down Trauma Hounds/Anger/Epilogue
- VIVIsectVI (1988):
- Dogshit/VX Gas Attack/Harsh Stone White/Human Disease (S.K.U.M.M.)/Who's Laughing Now?/Testure/State Aid/Hospital Waste/Fritter (Stella's Home), plus on CD: Yes He Ran/Punk in Park Zoo's/The Second Opinion/Funguss
- Ain't It Dead Yet? (live performance at the Concert Hall in Toronto, Canada, on May 31st/June 1st 1987; 1989):
- Intro/Anger/The Choke/Addiction/Assimilate/First Aid/Dig It/One Time One Place/Deep Down Trauma Hounds/Chainsaw/Brap (based on Draining Faces)/Smothered Hope
- Rabies (1989):
- Rodent/Hexonxonx/Two Time Grime/Fascist Jockitch/Worlock/Rain/Tin Omen/Rivers/Choralone/Amputate (on CD)/Spahn Dirge (on CD)
- Too Dark Park (1990):
- Convulsion/Tormentor/Spasmolytic/Rash Reflection/Nature's Revenge/Shore Lined Poison/Grave Wisdom/T.F.W.O./Morpheus Laughing/Reclamation
- Last Rights (1992):
- Love in Vein/Killing Game/Knowhere?/Mirror Saw/Inquisition/Scrapyard/Riverz End/Lust Chance/Circustance/Left Hand Shake (deleted)/Download
- The Process (1996):
- Jahya/Death/Candle/Hardset Head/Cult/Process/Curcible/Blue Serge/Morter/Amnesia/Cellar Heat
- Remix Dys Temper (remixes, dedicated to the memory of Goettel, 1998):
- Rodent (DDT) (Ken "Hi-Watt" Marshall)/Addiction (Opium) (Günter Schulz)/ Smothered Hope (remix) (Nivek Ogre/Mark Walk)/Killing Game (Bent) (Autechre)/Love in Vein (Go Girl Trio) (Neotropic)/Worlock (Eye of the Beholder) (Rhys Fulber)/Spasmolytic (Habitual) (Deftones)/Tin Omen (Main) (Adrian Sherwood)/Testure (remix) (God Lives Underwater)/Dig It (remix) (Mark Walk)/Assimilate (Tweaker mix) (Chris Vrenna)/Censor (The Gutter) (Guru)/Chainsaw (remix) (Josh Wink)
- Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden (majority of the performance at the Doomsday Festival; 2001):
- Deep Down Trauma Hounds/Love in Vein/Inquisition/Convulsion/Worlock/Grave Wisdom/Killing Game/Social Deception/First Aid/Testure/Dig It/Tin Omen/Harsh Stone White/The Choke
- Puppy Gristle (limited, available by subscription, 2002); not properly by Skinny Puppy, but a collaboration of Key, Goettel and Genesis P-Orridge
- The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004):
- I'mmortal/Pro-test/EmpTe/Neuwerld/Ghostman/dOwnsizer/Past Present/Use Less/Goneja/DaddyuWarbash
Singles/EPs
- Dig It (1986):
- Dig It (12" version)/The Choke (Re-Grip)/Film (edit, Belgian pressings only)
- Chainsaw (1987):
- Chainsaw/Assimilate (r23)/Cage/Stairs and Flowers (Def Wish)/Stares and Flowers (Too Far Gone)
- Stairs and Flowers (1987, US):
- Stairs and Flowers (Def Wish)/Stares and Flowers (Too Far Gone)/Assimilate (r23)/Chainsaw
- Addiction (1987):
- Addiction (First Dose)/Addiction (Second Dose)/Deep Down Trauma Hounds (remix)
- Dogshit (alternately titled Censor) (1988):
- Censor (extended)/Punk in Park Zoo's (edit)/Yes He Ran/Censor
- Testure (1989):
- 12"/CD5: Testure (12" mix)/Testure (S.F.)/The Second Opinion/Serpents
- CD3: Testure (S.F.)/Testure (12" mix)/Serpents/Cage
- Promo: Testure (12" mix)/Testure
- Tin Omen (1989): Tin Omen/Tin Omen (Reload)/Amputate/Spahn Dirge
- Worlock (1990): Worlock(ed)/Worlock/Tin Omen 1/Brak Talk
- Tormentor (1990): Tormentor (extended re-edit)/Bark/Nature's Revenge (dub)
- Spasmolytic (1991):
- Spasmolytic (remix)/Shore Lined Poison (remix)/Harsh Stone White (live in Denver)/Walking in Ice (live excerts - SF, Dallas, OKC)/Choralone (live in Houston) (discluded from initial American CD5)
- Inquisition (1992):
- Inquisition (single mix)/Inquisition (extended)/laHuman8/Mirror Saw (dub)
- Love in Vein (1992), cancelled
- Candle (1996):
- commercial pressing cancelled
- promo: Candle (edit)/Candle
- Track 10 (1,000 copies, sold at Doomsday Festival, 2000): Left Hand Shake
Collections
- Twelve Inch Anthology (1990):
- Dig It (12" version)/The Choke (Re-Grip)/Addiction (First Dose)/Deep Down Trauma Hounds (remix)/Serpants/Chainsaw'/Assimilate (r23)/Stairs and Flowers (Def Wish)/Stares and Flowers (Too Far Gone)/Testure (12" mix)
- Back and Forth Series 2 (expansion of Back and Forth, 1992):
- Intro (live in Winnipeg)/Sleeping Beast (full length edited)/K-9 (full length)/Monster Radio Man/Quiet Solitude (full length)/The Pit (full length)/Sore in a Masterpiece/Dead of Winter (full length)/Unovis on a Stick/To a Baser Nature/A.M. (full length)/Meat Flavour (full length)/My Voice Sounds like Shit/Smothered Hope (demo)/Explode the P.A. (live Brap)/Assimilate (original instrumental demo)/Edge of Insanity (full length)
- Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 (live and archival recordings, 1996):
- Vol. 3 -- Back: mutlimedia/Jackhammer/Splasher/Double Cross/Yo Yo Scrape/Carry/Guilty/The Soul that Creates/Brap (live)/Sparkless/Dead Doll (demo)/Deadlines (demo)/Last Call (live on CBC radio, Sep. 26th 1986)
- Vol. 4 -- Forth: multimedia/Uranus Cancelled/All Eyes/Reclamation (live in 1990)/Spasmolytic (outtake)/Grave Wisdom (alternate version)/Tin Omen (two live performances edited together)/Gods Gift (Maggot) (live at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Dec. 14th 1990)/Convulsion (live at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Dec. 14th 1990)/Nature's Revenge (alternate version)/Love in Vein (remix)/T.F.W.O. (live at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Dec. 14th 1990)/Left Handshake (version; original German pressings only)/Choralone (live at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Dec. 14th 1990)
- The Singles Collect (1999):
- Testure (S.F.)/Worlock(ed)/Dig It (short edit)/Censor/Assimilate/Stairs and Flowers/Inquisition (single mix)/Spasmolytic/Tin Omen/Tormentor/Addiction/Deep Down Trauma Hounds/Killing Game/Smothered Hope/Far Too Frail
- B-Sides Collect (1999):
- Addiction (Second Dose)/The Second Opinion/Serpents/Punk in Park's Zoo (edit)/Yes He Ran/Cage/laHuman8/Mirror Saw (dub)/Shore Lined Poison (remix)/Harsh Stone White (live)/Tin Omen 1/Brak Talk/Amputate/Bark/Nature's Revenge (dub)
- Back and Forth Series 6 (archival recordings, limited, available by subscription, 2003):
- Meat Flavoured Factor/Brak Yaletown/Ambient Fruit/The Poison Mouth/Schrimpz/Interview/Brassy Excellence/Morphous (v2)/Subskull/Hateskill (v2 extended version)/Hardset Head (live) (performance at the Doomsday Festival, 2000)/Scared
Videos
- Ain't It Dead Yet? (live performance at the Concert Hall in Toronto, Canada, on May 31st/June 1st 1987; VHS: 1989, DVD: 2001)
- Video Collection(1984-1992) (VHS: 1996, DVD: 2001):
- Dig It/Stairs and Flowers/Far Too Frail/Smothered Hope/Deep Down Trauma Hounds/Testure/Spasmolytic/Killing Game
References
- Godsend Online, "The Official Skinny Puppy/Download Discography", Part 1(a), <http://www.electronicweighing.co.uk/godsend_online/brap-sp.html>
- Corey M. Goldberg, The Skinny Puppy FAQ & Lyric Archive:
- "Skinny Puppy and related project F.A.Q.", <http://home.earthlink.net/~coreygoldberg/faqraw.txt>
- "A Chronology of Skinny Puppy", <http://home.earthlink.net/~coreygoldberg/chrono.htm>
- "A Brief History of Skinny Puppy", <http://home.earthlink.net/~coreygoldberg/hist.htm>
- "Noise", a biography from Skinny Puppy Central, <http://www.waste.org/~skumm/history.html>.
- Bhargavi Mandava, "Puppy Love" (http://www.waste.org/~skumm/puplove.html), an article published in 1986.
- Perry Stern, "CANINE CATERWAULING" (http://www.waste.org/~skumm/Canine.html), an article published in 1986.
- "wEird [sic (http://www.waste.org/~skumm/weird.html) Energy"], an interview with cEvin Key, possibly in 1996.
- IndustrialnatioN #5, 1991; Key is quoted as saying of Ogre's involvment
with Jourgenson and Pigface, "I feel sometimes like a wife that's been cheated on."
External links
- Skinny Puppy News (http://www.litany.net)
- Subconscious Studios (http://www.subconsciousstudios.com)
- ohGr (http://www.ohgr.org) (Nivek Ogre's band after Skinny Puppy)
- As of 2004 Skinny Puppy is on tour in North American summer information on tour-dates venues (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/sptravel2004/Frames.html)sv:Skinny Puppy
