MDC Interview#64 " Goreshit "
Despite overwhelming evidence he should stop, goreshit has been making his poor excuse for music for nearly two decades now. It may not be nice, and it may not be fun, but his horrid beats and tawdry noise is here to stay.
Q. Please tell us about your hometown and upbringing.
i grew up in a small town just outside of Bristol in the UK. Wasn't exactly the most exciting place in the world... i spent most of my childhood doing stupid, and usually dangerous shit with my brother. doing jumps on mopeds in building sites (the Honda C50 was a favourite of ours!), stealing boats and seeing how far we could sail away from town, exploring abandoned military bases (there were a LOT of those near me), trying to make bombs...
when i wasn't being a totally irresponsible prick, i was usually doing something computer related. i got an Atari ST in the early 90s and it got me addicted. my brother and i spent a lot of time recording music under a million different aliases for a fake record label we had on Myspace - that's actually how goreshit started.
Q. When did you first become interested in music? Do you remember the first CD/LP you bought?
i think the first cd i bought myself was Cheshire Cat by Blink 182 when i was ten. soon after i discovered Anal Cunt on Napster and Blink 182 seemed fucking stupid. i got a record player around that time, and would hunt for records in the second hand shop in town. they had a room at the back with completely uncategorised vinyl, so i'd go through as many as i could after school, picking out those i thought sounded interested or had weird album art.
one of the first records i remember finding there that i actually gave a shit about was Scum by Napalm Death. i also found a whole ton of UK thrash metal shit there, stuff like Lawnmower Deth and Anihilated. then a friend's dad played me some Cardiacs and Nomeansno - that was the point when i started actually looking for specific stuff/getting shit mail order.
Q. You are also active in Black Metal. When did you first encounter Black Metal?
probably around the same time i got into Napalm Death, when i was eleven or so. i was always more into 'punky' black metal. a vinyl compilation i stumbled across had 'For All Those Who Died' by Bathroy on it - i remember really digging that. i don't remember ever finding many black metal records back then, so most of it i found on Napster. Wolf's Lair Abyss by Mayhem really stuck out to me back then - think it was a nice combination of harsh noises and weird time signatures. i was way more into grindcore and death metal than black metal, to be honest.
Q. What kind of teenager were you?
probably not much different to how i am now.... did a lot more stupid risky shit that i wouldn't do now, but lots of what i spent my time doing is still the same as today. i was always fucking around with trackers on computers, since i got the Atari ST. i got really into the concept of multitrack recording when i was 11 or 12 - i played guitar and drums (my parents were far too cool about letting me play, even though it really pissed off the neighbourrs) so i'd try and record whole songs of shit. i remember ping-ponging cassette recordings (record guitar, play it really fucking loud through a hi-fi and play drums along, using another cassette recorder to record that) cus i didn't have a 4-track or anything like that.
i got really into noise music when i was 15, so started fucking around recording that kind of thing. i spent a lot of time making 'instruments' out of fucked up electronics, messing with contact mics and tape loops, fucking up the tape recordings with acid and shit. it was that time i started my Hana Sumai project. i was also really into film photography too, using a similar method to how i was making music - take broken fucked up cameras, use out of date film, fuck up the negatives with bleach, yada yada. i still spend my time fucking around with noise and messing with shit two decades later. most things i'm interested in i want to understand beyond just being able to use it - i'm always fucking with my car, rebuilding ancient computers, rewiring my studio, making a video game, customising my OS, etc etc.
Q. What are the top 5 most influential works on Goreshit's music?
the first breakcore i remember hearing was the Venetian Snares mix of Skelechairs - think i was 17 or so. it sounded like shit, since we were playing it through the broken speakers of an 80s Peugeot. i think that made it appeal to me more at the time, all distorted and fucked up and shit. the same weekend my old bandmate showed me Boko Mo Wakaran by Bogdan Raczynski - after hearing that, i went home and pirated Ableton and made the first goreshit EP.
i think my love for math and noise rock (stuff like Don Caballero, Rapeman, Lightning Bolt) has always made it's way into goreshit tunes; harsh sounds, wonky time signatures, polyrhythms.
90s breakbeat hardcore has always tickled me the right way - early Prodigy, Foul Play, stuff on Rhythm Section; anything with a nice stab. i think that's much more obvious as an influence on releases i've made in the past 10 years or so.
another thing i heard early on that made me think "i wanna do that" was DJ Sharpnel, back in 2005 or something. i was really into this digital hardcore weirdo called No.305, and through them i found a super sped up megamix of Sharpnel stuff that someone had done.
i know i've already said five, but it feels wrong not to mention M1DY as another early influence, and bye2 as a more recent one - hearing bye2's stuff a few years back helped me out of a musical slump and made me wanna improve and make stuff again.
Q. How did Goreshit's activities begin? How did you meet the members?
the name goreshit was the idea of the other guy it started with in 2005 (he plays guitar on the song Daddy). i think we met when i was 15? he was one of the few local people that was into the same weird shit musically that i was, so we ended up hanging out a lot. we were going to make a stupid black metal joke thing to use for his college exam piece, but ended up fucking around with the first goreshit EP stuff instead. goreshit was just one of a million artists (that were all us) on our joke record label (my brother, some friends and i)
Q. When did Goreshit become your solo project? Can you tell us how it came about?
we just never recorded any other guitar parts.... wasn't an intentional conversion to solo project or anything. everything we did musically was short lived or a one time thing, just because we found it funny or interesting to do that thing at the time. somehow i just kept coming back to making stuff that sounded like it suited the goreshit thing.
Q. Goreshit has the musical influence of Breakcore, when did you first encounter this genre? What artists inspired you?
probably already covered that in the influences bit... before i heard Venetian Snares like i mentioned, there were a few other things that got me into noisy breaks and stuff. there was a local band called Ninja Dinosaur Bastards, which were a guitar/electronics/vocals digital hardcore rave kinda thing. at the same gig i saw them i also saw GTUK from Germany - chiptune grindcore kinda shit. i played a gig with DJ Scotch Egg as Hana Sumai in the mid 2000s; i remember that staying with me.
Q. I would like your definition and history of Lolicore from your point of view.
i remember people using the term when i started in the 'myspace days'. to me it was always just breakcore/speedcore/hardcore with anime samples, which i don't think is enough to make it it's own genre. i suppose a lot of it had more of a noise or experimental vibe than a lot of breakcore... and no one making it really took themselves too seriously. it's hard for me to pinpoint when the term became associated with anything sexual.... i didn't get into social media, so i didn't get to see the growth of people freaking out about it.
loli to me was lolita fashion, slice of life anime... stuff that seemed to be nice for the sake of being nice - really used to appeal to me back then, with how depressed i was and how shitty i thought the world seemed. watching Lucky Star or Azumanga Daioh and forgetting that life wasn't really that innocent and simple was really cathartic for me. but yeah, now it definitely seems to be seen as something more sordid.... maybe it always had people who saw it as a sexual thing, and i just didn't hear about it. who knows. would be interested to hear what someone who paid attention to it back in the day thinks!
Q. I feel that Goreshit's music is changing; since 2010, Goreshit has been more on the Rave music side and electronic music side. But I think listeners still categorize it as Lolicore. What do you think about that? Do you still consider your music Lolicore?
i accept that i might not see genres the same way a lot of people do - i think the amount of sub genres we have to describe what i feel to be really similar music is pretty dumb; labels like neurofunk and dariacore seem waaay to specific to me, but then i don't listen to music on the internet. there's sooo many artists available to everyone now that without these super specific labels, it'd probably be impossible for people to find specific music on the internet, so i get that my opinion of 'sub-sub genres are dumb' is itself pretty stupid.
even though i never really adopted the label of lolicore myself even for my old shit, i get why people would call it that. but the later stuff? it seems pretty far removed from anything lolicore! i haven't watched anime in years, so i don't sample it any more. i sample whatever media i'm interested in at the time. but who the fuck am i to say what is or isn't x or y? 80s R&B had fuck all to do with what it was in the 60s, and some of the shit people refer to as breakcore now (ambient drum and bass usually...) has fuck all to do with what people saw as breakcore when i started 20 years so, so if people wanna call it lolicore, i ain't gonna get mad about it ^__^
Q. You have sampled Japanese animation in the past. You also used anime images on your jackets, but did you even understand their meanings (words and characters)? Or did you focus more on sound and atmosphere?
most of it was just found through random google image searches, chosen for aesthetics alone. i didn't have a fucking clue what cirno or vocaloid were when i used the pictures for covers!! i think the only stuff i used from animes i knew the context of were Ergo Proxy and Paranoia Agent (i loved both of those shows). to be honest when i think back on stuff where i used japanese writing, usually in the wrong context and with horrible translation that didn't make any sense, i'm quite embarrassed - teenage me was on a proper japanese obsession kick. i can imagine most people find things they did two decades ago pretty lame!
Q. You have also released an album as Wounder. What is the concept behind this project? How do you write the songs?
Wounder was a product of not really having anyone i felt musically compatible enough with near me to make a band with, so i thought fuck it, i'll record shit as if it's a band. i'm of mixed feelings about the lyrics and concepts of wounder now... when i started it, my mental health was pretty terrible and i wasn't dealing with my schizophrenia in very healthy ways. most of the lyrics are about self harm, suicidal thinking, that kind of shit. i can atleast say the lyrics don't say either of those things are good - it's more about how i tried to avoid those things, but always came back to them. i'm much healthier mentally now, which is probably why there hasn't been any new wounder in so long. those albums were all recorded during periods of bad mental illness.
i spend a lot of time with my guitar in my lap, when i'm watching tv or whatever, so i'd just come up with things by fucking about. if i liked a riff, i'd end up thinking about how to expand that, then eventually come up with whole songs. with wounder i always recorded the songs as just guitar, then i'd program drums around that, add second guitar parts and shit, then come up with lyrics/make sentences i'd kept in my head fit the music. a lot of goreshit stuff is written first by fucking about on guitar, too.
Q. Please tell us about Goreshit's songwriting process. What do you start with to create a song? What equipment do you use?
i spend a lot of time sampling, usually without any specific aim of what i'm going to do with it. i think it's always been that way with goreshit; i remember having the samples from the movie Scum used on Daddy way before i had any idea where that song would go. i usually sit with my mpc and just sample records/sounds while playing old video games/bits of movies. every now and then i record a sample and immediately want to fuck with it, chopping it up and rearranging it, running it through a bunch of gear then resampling it, whatever. 9 times out of 10 that'll end up being a song.
a lot of melodies i come up with fucking about with a guitar. i used to just record the guitar and add so many effects it ended up sounding like a synth - most of the pads on earlier stuff were done this way, same with the stabs. up until a few years ago, most goreshit was made on computers - Ableton and some Reason from 2005 to 2012 or something (most of that time i was using a battered Acer laptop from 2002/2003), then i switched to Bitwig because i ditched Windows and didn't want a Mac (been using Linux since then). around five years ago i got some cheap ass hardware (MC-303, Akai S2000, Novation Drum Station) and used Octamed on my Amigas to sequence them (i recorded AP1 at that time). using Octamed so much made me want to use Renoise whenever i went back to a modern computer. the past couple of years i've not used computers much to make music.
i've collected a bunch of hardware, mostly stuff i bought cheap or semi-working. the stuff i use most recently; mpc 2500, roland tr8s, waldorf blofeld, korg ms2000, dx21, old mackie 24 8-bus, alesis hd24 for multitrack recording, vestax 4-track cassette for mixdown - effects wise i get a lot of use out of my Sherman Filterbank. i use Lexicon MX200s a lot for Aux effects (they're cheap as fuck, have plenty of variation, midi controllably, so i never bothered looking for anything better). because i'm a cheap ass motherfucker, i've always used Alesis M1 MK2 for speakers; they sound good enough to me! headphones are usually Sennheiser 770s - again, cheap, but to my ears sound nice enough.
i've always started tunes by fucking around - i never really have a genre or sound in mind. one thing just leads to another; a sample makes me think of a drum sequence, that makes me think of a bassline, that kind of shit.
Q. Black Metal and Breakcore have a depressive atmosphere and elements. Can those elements actually have a negative effect on your body and mind?
making the shit i do, especially the more depressive stuff, has often been a reflection of my mental state/a release of negativity, so i've always seen depressive music as a positive action - someone getting their shit out. i suppose maybe if someone doesn't need that kind of outlet, it could just appear morose.... i've always appreciated darker media - music, film, books... so i guess it's hard for me to imagine the opposite. i would hate for someone to listen to my darker music and find that it encourages negative thinking or feelings in any way.
Q. Your music is basically released on Bandcamp. why do you use this format?
if something works, i tend to stick with it. maybe laziness? after myspace went to shit, someone suggested bandcamp to me. it was pretty eye opening to see that people considered what i did worth financial compensation. the thought never occurred to me before... i like that i can just chuck something up, then bugger off and let it do what it's gonna do. the fact people had the chance to pay if they wanted to ended up really helpful; i could finally fix my computers, buy hardware, buy more records, yada yada. before bandcamp and patreon i couldn't afford fucking heating, let alone anything to make music with.
Q. You regularly do physical releases and seem to be a vinyl collector. Why do you prefer physical release?
apart from if i'm driving, when i listen to music, that's what i'm doing - listening to music. i rarely have 'background music' on. i think i only really listen to vinyl records because of the nature of the way that medium works - you can't just leave it on. after 20 minutes max you have to flip it, then you gotta put that record away and grab another, so you're focused on that activity; if music is good enough, you shouldn't need to be doing something else at the same time. i'm not one of those snobs who thinks vinyl is superior or whatever. the reason my records probably sound better to people than when they hear the tracks elsewhere, is because they actually thought about the turntable, amp and speakers they chose. people just get better quality sound systems when they give a shit about the medium they're playing.
i often struggle to see 'digital' aspects of life as fully real - i can't take an argument on facebook seriously, because the internet to me is a tool for entertainment - i just feel a disconnect between the pixels on the screen and an idea there's a real person behind it, or atleast a real person being authentic. so when i release music, i like to have physical releases as much as possible, almost as a token that shows it exists.... i dunno, that sounds kinda stupid. something being solely digital doesn't feel to me fully realised. i remember when i first heard about NFTs i just though, 'what the fuck is this? why would people pay for something that doesn't exist?". i thought it was the most stupid shit ever. sorry, that answer was not very cohesive at all! i think that's a tough question for me to answer without me becoming a pretentious douchebag poser.
Q. What positive/negative impact do you think streaming services have had on independent artists/labels?
before taking off on spotify, i didn't make enough money to live purely from making music. conceptually, i think streaming services like that are fucking dogshit, but practically, it makes me a living, so it's a double edged sword for me.
i think it really depends on what kind of music you're doing; most people don't give a shit about buying a physical recording of most pop music - it's not that kind of fanbase. they listen to it, a lot of the time, because it's on the radio or tv - they didn't hunt down Taylor Swift because they're super interested in music, they found it cus it was given to them. artists like that probably don't make as much money as they did in the 90s, when physical mediums were the only way to choose when you wanted to listen to something instead of waiting for it to be played on the radio, but since downloading became a common thing i think the physical medium died out for the mainstream.
smaller fan bases of artists who aren't famous (like me) seem to WANT to buy physical shit, despite the fact it's all available to stream. so yeah, the streaming services are massively underpaying artists, but people are still buying the records anyway. in that sense, maybe not a lot has changed.... the mainstream distributors have always fucked their artists, whether that be with physical releases or digital, just using them to make as much profit as possible. and independent labels and fan bases have always treated the artists they're into with a lot more respect and generosity.
a pet peeve of mine; streaming services recommend the most popular songs of mine to people immediately, rather than giving them the chance to find something interesting out of the catalogue for themselves. i personally think my most popular song is terrible, and not representative of what i have done before or since. i also make most of my albums intending for them to be one long 'piece', and i get the impression that most people on streaming services aren't listening to an album the whole way through, or in the right order. but that's just me being a grumpy prick!
Q. You have played at Maschinenfest, Balter Festival, Bangface and great local events. What is the most memorable thing you have ever played?
Machinenfest was pretty cool - that was a weird one! probably the biggest crowd i've ever played to. i thought i'd be playing on some tiny secondary stage to no one, but i was on this massive stage playing straight after Sutcliffe Jugend and right before Lustmord (who i'd been a fan of since i was a kid) closing the festival. i was pretty fucking humbled by that. was a bit of a fan boy moment (which i rarely have) chatting to Lustmord after and him being complimentary of what i played. was also funny seeing my stuff in the merch hall - a sea of tables full of black goth shirts, then my table with pink and white. i remember all my shirts sold before i'd even played, despite the fact no one had a fucking clue who i was - i think people maybe just appreciated it wasn't black like everything else!
i'd also put my shows in Russia up there. the one near Moscow was in an abandoned cold war silo, and near Samara we played near the water in the middle of fucking nowhere - had a convoy of knackered Ladas and buses and shit driving off road for miles and miles til we got to a forest clearing near the water. i think i played 3 or 4 sets there that weekend. was a really good time - shame i'll probably never have a chance to go back there, with how fucked things are right now. i hope all those folk are doing ok.
Q. You perform frequently in the US and Canada; what is interesting about the US/Canadian scene?
i got invited out to canada by Kitty On Fire Records a long while back to play a show, and honestly just got on with them so well that i kept coming back. a lot of the time i just go to hang out, so we throw a show cus i'm there. they really encouraged me to do the US tours - there's always been demand, but i'm not the kind of person who can handle business style shit, so they handled it. same reason i'm now on spotify - i don't use streaming services, but i get that nearly every fucker out there does, so again, KoF handled all the logistical shit for me so people can get my music the way they want to. i just wanna make tunes - if people didn't invite me for gigs or handle logistical shit on behalf, none of that would ever happen ^__^
Q. You have done a split and tour with Hitori Tori, how do you feel about his music?
i've been a fan of his music for well over a decade! we only met when we were playing the same Bangface festival stage together. when i started going to Canada regularly we started hanging out a lot. strangers email me about doing splits and collaborations a lot, but that's just not how i work. every collaboration i've done has been because we've made a personal connection first, then the idea of working together comes out of that naturally. and i love Hitori Tori to death, so there'll always be more work with him!
Q. You also toured with DJ SHARPNEL not too long ago. I see a lot of similarities between you and his music in terms of the mix of RAVE and subcultures. Do you resonate with DJ SHARPNEL and J-Core?
oh, big time. without hearing Sharpnel, i'm not sure goreshit would exist - or atleast not be what it is. hearing his tunes 20 years ago blew my mind. i was listening to a lot of cheesy hardcore back then (Dune was getting a loooot of play in my car!), and Sharpnel, to me, just took it a level or three beyond - way more energy, way more fun... loved it. i can't say i know a whole lot about the j-core scene in general, though... besides Sharpnel i used to listen to M-Project a lot, but i don't remember much else.... i remember really liking a lot of the early 2000s japanese weirdo breakcore - especially Shimau.
Q. You have previously published your own views on mental health on YouTube. Why did you share your experience?
i found putting that video up there a difficult thing to do; i'd not made a habbit of talking about myself or person life with goreshit, and felt stupid doing so. but a friend of mine had just killed themselves, and it occured to me just how many of my friends have killed themselves over the past 20 years, and how i thought if they had failed they probably would not have tried again. i tried to end my own life when i was 20, and when i woke up in the hospital and thought i was paralyzed, i was fucking terrified. i thought i'd be locked in my own body unable to move for the rest of my life. i remember thinking not that i wish i'd succeeded and died, but that i hadn't tried to kill myself. i'm glad i didn't. i put that video online because i decided me feeling stupid wasn't a good enough reason not to atleast try and help someone else see a bit of hope in things. it's been 16 years since i attempted to kill myself, and i'm still glad i failed.
Q. What music has caught your interest recently?
as far as electronic music is concerned, i really think Bye2 is doing amazing shit - i've been saying that since i first heard it, and she doesn't believe me because she's my friend, but i really think she's the doing some of the best modern electronic music.
i've been a fan of a band called 90 Day Men for 20 years now, but only just discovered they recently did vinyl box set of their whole discography, some of which was never released on vinyl and the rest was fucking hard to get hold of. they're one of the late 90s/early 2000s math/post/emo bands that people don't talk about as much, but they're something fucking special - especially the albums '1975-1977-1998' and '(It (Is) It) Critical Band'. so yeah, been listening to the fuck out of that.
something i only discovered recently when Terry for Dead In Latvia played it for me was an 80s band called Stump - the song Buffalo is fucking glorious. i couldn't believe i'd never heard of it before. it's like if Primus had started 7 years ealier and been Irish.
Q. You are also the drummer for DEAD IN LATVIA. How did this unit get started?
soon after i moved to Yorkshire from Bristol, i played a show in Sheffield that was half grindcore, half breakcore - was a good first local show after having moved! i got chatting to various people there, and found out there were actually people there who were interested in the kind of thing i'd want to do for a band. i ended up joining in on renting a studio space with them, so i could play drums again (i spent a long time not playing). Terry (the DIL guitarist) and i went to some weird punk/grindcore/rave gig and got talking about how we wanted to make a band without a specific aim - we were talking about how people always make too rigid goals for starting a band, saying shit like 'we should make a down-tempo post-grunge death-math shitecore band'. so then we started just jamming together in the studio space, and pretty soon had the first Dead in Latvia record written. we still do things like that today - it's a really easy writing process. we just play until shit comes together.
Q. What is the most memorable item in the Goreshit catalog?
my opinion on that is probably different from most fans. the stuff that is most popular is rarely the stuff i'm still pleased with. i think 'i hardly knew you.' is an album i consistently think is one of the better and more interesting ones. i can imagine either 'my love feels all wrong.' or 'semantic compositions' are more likely to be the ones most listeners find more memorable.
Q. Do you have any advice for creators who are trying to make music?
one thing i always say when people have asked for advice is not to use tutorials. i started by opening ableton, and just trying shit with no idea how it worked or what i really wanted out of it. i think that helped the early goreshit albums be a little different; i didn't have a fucking clue what i was doing. on a technical level, i still don't with most things i do. i'll read the manuals for my hardware and things, but i'd prefer not to know how other people use it until i've tried myself - i've always worried i'd end up just sounding like them.
another thing is don't be rigid or set crazy defined guidelines for what you want to do; don't think about genre. the idea of someone thinking 'i'm gonna make a skullstep hardcore track' or whatever seems restrictive to me, and could stop you making something truly new and original.
oh yeah, and making music doesn't need to be expensive. the computer i used for making goreshit tunes for the first decade was the cheapest new laptop i could buy in 2004, a terrible Acer piece of shit. after that broke, i just bought whatever Thinkpad i could get hold of for under 100 bucks. with hardware, i've always bought things that are cheap because either they aren't in great condition, or no one gives a shit about that piece of hardware. you probably don't need a brand new Macbook or stupidly expensive sequencer to make the music you want to make.
Q. What is your upcoming schedule?
i'm doing an east coast USA tour with DJ Sharpnel, femtanyl, Deli Girls, blksmiith and some other folk at the end of september, then flying back to the UK to play the Bangface weekender, followed by a show in Amsterdam for Amen Zoo. November i'll be doing a UK tour with Lustsickpuppy. as far as new music goes, i've gone tons of shit in the works, but i don't put pressure on myself to rush shit out - it'll be ready when it's ready. there's a good number of splits and collaborations with wonderful folk, aswell as a few albums of my own.
Q. Please give a message to our readers.
get off the fucking internet and make some noise!
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