WIFE: Ecstatic Rituals
James Kelly is best known as the frontman and sole permanent member of Altar of Plagues, an Irish black metal outfit with a loyal cult following. But last year it was announced that label du jour Tri Angle Records had snapped him up on the strength of his debut EP as WIFE. “When I was a child, my mother brought me to get my first Walkman,” he says. “She let me get two tapes, so I picked up Metallica's black album and The Prodigy's Music for the Jilted Generation.”
This goes some way toward explaining the new direction of Kelly’s new project. When he drops his Tri Angle debut, he’ll be labelmates with Clams Casino, AlunaGeorge and How to Dress Well. So it’s not surprising to learn that Stoic, the aforementioned EP, offers up experimentalism with a decidedly electronic edge. Released in November 2012 on Left_Blank, it’s a melancholy and cinematic experience, teaming luscious soundscapes with what his label calls “gothic 2-step.” He’s traded in red-raw guitars and anguished vocals for a laptop and whispered melodies. The first track, “Bodies,” is a hypnotic creeper, leaving you feeling both pensive and strangely elated. “Trials,” meanwhile, has a menacing mantra supplemented with heavy bass and bursts of static warmth.
Whether Kelly’s making extreme black metal or atmospheric electronica, there is a pervasive darkness that can be found in both. “I don't necessarily want it to always sound somber,” explains Kelly. “But I suppose that as people, when we open up, we reveal that side of our nature. People don't tend to hide their happiness.”
Kelly’s tracks are imbued with a depth of feeling not often associated with electronic music. As he says himself, “One of the issues I have always had with electronic music is that it can be quite disposable or forgettable.” It was important that there was a little bit of himself included in every aspect of the sound. “I began to use my own voice. I also began to create a lot of my own samples from my own instruments,” he explains. The results are something that he hopes will be accessible but not superficial. “Right now, I feel like I want it to almost be a pop record,” he says of his upcoming WIFE material. “What ‘pop’ means to me is a marriage of captivating music and lyricism, or even storytelling.” He cites Kate Bush as a major influence – a pop artist who “was limitless with regards to instrumentation, sound and lyrical themes.”
Kelly has one thing in common with Bush already: A dedication to making the visual component of the project just as arresting as the music itself. The video for his first single, “Bodies,” is a disarmingly intimate three minutes of sexually charged rituals involving raw meat, a peach, deer antlers and black ink. “I don't wish to overly explain the video for ‘Bodies,’ because what it is at a surface level is a music video made for entertainment purposes. But that does not mean that the performance was not 100% sincere,” he says.
His second video is equally mesmerizing, but entirely different. “Trials” uses his own blurry footage of sea anemones pulsating across the screen to leave you feeling faintly hypnotised. Kelly clearly relishes each track as an opportunity to explore something new. “I take the visual representation of my music very seriously, but I think that each track or work will draw different ideas and inspire different visuals,” he explains.
Tri Angle’s notoriety, Kelly admits, is “both daunting and exciting.” But it’s a perfect match. Kelly and his new label share a lack of interest in making artistic sacrifices for the sake of traditional commercial success. This might just prove to be the precise reason they both experience it when the album finally drops.
