Whitehouse
Total Sex

THE REVIEW

Whitehouse - "Total Sex", 1980

The Cruel Sound of Extreme Noise

Put aside morality, expel the common sense of shame that remains in you, protect your girlfriends, sisters, and mothers, and continue reading, because Whitehouse exists, Whitehouse is like life itself, the cruel sound of human malice, the mirror that reflects all the decay that surrounds us. The most extreme extreme that is within everyone's reach.
William Bennett is the vital organ of Whitehouse, the heart of the beast, the lung that oxygenates the wicked brain. When he was 17, he met Daniel Miller (Mute Records), who introduced him to electronic music. Together, they visited Genesis P-Orridge's house. Drawn to more electronic and noisy sounds, he abandoned his passion for rock'n roll and the Sex Pistols, and with Miller's help, with a brain in gestation, he created the label Come Organization to give vent to his electronic urges.

In 1980, a time when noisier and more experimental sounds were the domain of groups like Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV, one of the groups mixing electronic and industrial music with distorted guitars was Come, and there was William Bennett, but in the saturated English scene, they passed with more pain than glory, a single and an LP. Bennett dissolved the group, and with the will to create music capable of subjugating the audience and transmitting the most extreme and brutal sensations to the listener, began the idea of Whitehouse.
The name chosen for his new project may provide some key insight into his idiosyncrasy. Whitehouse is the name of an English pornographic magazine, emphasizing the taste for explicit sex, the rawest and lowest pornography but of comforting passions. On the other hand, Whitehouse is also the surname of a famous British activist who fights against the television broadcast of violent topics, sex, and other perversions. This could be interpreted as a struggle against society's hypocrisy, but we should not be mistaken; from the beginning, Whitehouse has no pretensions of indoctrination or reivindication, but simply wants to free his obsessions and vices, with no other intention than to express and communicate them through music.
Since Bennett created Whitehouse as a vehicle for his flaws, until today, he has been the only stable member. Despite the many criticisms, all superficial, without judging the why, or going in-depth, Bennett has always remained faithful to his ideas. Joking with themes like sadism, rape, murder, or pornography is not appreciated: people do not accept it. Even if the song lyrics are crude and talk explicitly about sex, the music blends noises and sounds that few people manage to understand, and the covers, offensive to the majority, underline how much Bennett wants to joke and show topics that frighten everyone but are on the daily agenda.

Whitehouse shows the darkest side of the human being, the wildest and most primitive side, but also the freest. That part of the human being that does not bow to any law, either divine or mortal, is pleasure for pleasure, and even if we only look at the musical aspect, we are faced with one of the most innovative bands in the experimental electronic scene. The sick and gloomy atmospheres they have created have not been surpassed to this day, the fabricated sounds (they do not use samplers) illustrate and exceptionally recreate the topics they touch, the distorted, dominating, and squeaking voice of Bennett perfectly conveys all the malice and cynicism of his lyrics.
There has never existed such extreme music, each record is noisier and more extreme than the previous one.