Drawing a line between the darkwave pioneers and alternative synth musicians of those earliest digital days and the purveyors of today’s more eclectic death-pop experiments, “Welcome to the Bitchhouse” is a beguiling song.
Here, Hana Piranha and Mishkin Fitzgerald take their musical collaboration, HVIRESS, through some compelling and conflicting worlds, both sonic and, thanks to this lush accompanying video, visual. Places where opposites become so attractive, where extremes are revealed to be in unexpected harmony with each other.
Musically, it blends electronically created gothic soundscape and drifting ambient textures, liquid clubland beats and primeval vibes, the result being both futuristic and shamanic, forward thinking yet carrying something ancient, perhaps timeless, at its heart, music made of the most modern technology but which speaks to something found in the earliest strands of DNA that still reside within us.
Videos are great at filling in the gaps in our understanding, well, perhaps not in the sense of knowledge as such, but here it takes us by the hand and draws us into HVIRESS’ compelling world. The images we are presented with evoke ancient rituals, unashamed nudity, and the symbolism of masks, as well as backdrops as disparate as ancient woodland and shadow-strewn urban corners, both places where darkness and desire, temptation and tempest lurk nearby.
It is a perfect reminder that, while technology might move on, the stories we tell still connect us to the earliest of days. The settings often change, but what plays out there hasn’t altered in tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer.
This is music as archetype, the song of pre-civilization being carried forward, the sound and stories that define our very existence, and the complex feelings that lie at the heart of the human condition.
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