Standing In Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice - Softcover

Boyd Rice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840681187 ISBN 13: 9781840681185

Publisher: Creation, 2008

Synopsis

STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES is the first defintive and comprehensive compendium of the works of BOYD RICE, one of the most provocative and controversial underground figures of the post-punk era. A pioneering noise musician and countercultural maven, from the late 1970s to the present Rice has worked in an array of capacities, playing the roles of: musician, performer, artist, photographer, essayist, interviewer, editor, occult researcher, filmmaker, actor, orator, deejay, gallery curator and tiki bar designer, among others. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through collaborations with Re/Search Publications, Rice further established his position in underground with recountings of his uproarious pranks and the promotion of "incredibly strange" cult films and "industrial" culture. Rice's influence on subculture was further exerted through his vanguard exhibition of found photographs and readymade thrift store art, as well as his adamant endorsements of outsider music, tiki culture and bygone pop culture in general. Rice is also notorious for his public associations with nefarious figures both infamous and obscure, including friendships and ideological collusions with the likes of cult leader Charles Manson and Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, among others. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground at large, inspiring and enraging in equal measure. STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES contains:

Essays 1986-2007 / Lyrics 1988-2007 / Art & Photography (38 plates)

STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES also includes an extensive biography of Boyd Rice from the 1970s to the present, by the book's editor, Brian M Clark.

About this title

About the Author

A pioneering noise musician and countercultural icon, from the late 1970s to the present Rice has worked in an array of capacities, playing the roles of: musician, performer, artist, photographer, essayist, interviewer, editor, occult researcher, filmmaker, actor, orator, deejay, gallery curator and tiki bar designer, among others. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground.

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INTRODUCTION

Boyd Rice first piqued the underground's interest in the late 1970s, as one of the first recording artists to devote his creative energies exclusively to the realm of "noise music." Although others had tentatively dabbled in the use of semi-structured noise as a musical form prior to his own forays, Rice was the first full-time "noise musician." From his suburban home in the sleepy town of Lemon Grove, in Southern California, Rice self-released his first album at age nineteen: an LP housed in a completely black record-sleeve with no title or identifying markings whatsoever, aside from the text "Boyd Rice" printed on the vinyl's label. Sonically innovative and conceptually unique, the album typically produced extreme reactions of either vigorous approval or intense derision from those whose paths it crossed, and quickly grabbed the attention of California's avant-garde art world.

A lifelong troublemaker, avid prankster and student of the early 20th Century mutinous anti-art movement known as Dada, Rice undertook the creation of his noise music with the abstract conceptualist sensibilities of a postmodern artist rather than the linear song arrangements of a musician or composer; his album saw reviews in local art journals rather than music magazines and most of his early performances (both musical and otherwise) took place in art galleries as opposed to music venues. Soon, however, the young noisemaker tired of what he perceived as the ineffectual "ivory tower" sterility of the art world, and transitioned into the underground music scene. The recent arrival of punk rock had sparked an explosion of counterculture in Southern California, and by way of its all-inclusiveness opened an avenue through which Rice's noise recordings could reach a substantial audience. Rice regularly performed alongside early punk bands at local music venues, garnering a significant reputation for his work, and was summarily offered a recording contract with the newborn British label Mute Records. (Although the label was founded by Daniel Miller of The Normal, Rice was technically the first artist to sign with Mute.) As a result of his contract with Mute, the theretofore obscure noise musician was soon releasing internationally distributed albums and touring the United States and Europe as the one-man noise band NON - a moniker adopted in part because it implied "everything and nothing at once," ....

Edition details

• Publisher: Creation
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1840681187
• ISBN 13: 9781840681185
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Brian M. Clark