Living in the ’80s

>> The Horrorist discusses the bohemian chic
and frozen fashion of the Eastern Bloc

ROCK THE BLOC: The Horrorist

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Whatever’s the most depressing and slow, really,” says Oliver Chesler, aka the Horrorist, of the new music he seeks out online. “I mean, if I’m out at a club, I don’t wanna hear that. But I only like music that I can’t do myself, and electronic music, I can do it all, just ’cause I’ve been at it forever. But love songs with really good melodies, they still have that veil of mystery for me.

“It goes back to my roots. My first real love affair with music was Depeche Mode, and their best songs were the slow, romantic, sad ones.”

Nothing could be further from the cold, pounding productions of the Horrorist, hitting the stage tonight with Nitzer Ebb at Kinetik, a three-day festival of electro, industrial, noise and hardcore techno. Since his last visit to Montreal, Chesler has been scoring hits in Europe, and playing to packed houses as far afield as the former Soviet Union, a level of success made possible by his relocation from Manhattan (and $2,000 rent for a two-room flat) to Prenzlauerberg (aka Pankow) in what used to be East Berlin.

“I’m living in an apartment with 18 windows, it overlooks a church, it’s amazing! And my music studio is in a complex where Richie Hawtin is my next-door neighbour, below me is Jazzanova, Toby Naumann’s in there somewhere. It’s cool.”

Hardly the kind of existence to inspire tales of bloody revenge, yet that’s just what the Horrorist’s latest single relates. The narrative of “13 Dobermans” is based in reality, however, just not in the present.

“When I was in high school, I looked like a big freak, and summer school was in this bad neighbourhood, so it was all black kids, and me. On the first day of summer school, I drove my white Cadillac there and got a flat tire right in front of the school. Then I turn around and, like, 10 black guys come out, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we’ll fix your tire if you take us to the mall.’ So they fixed my tire, I drove them to the mall and I became, like, best friends with these guys. So we would go to this other town and I would walk around and let people say things like ‘faggot’ or ‘queer’ or whatever, and then I’d go get those guys and they would fuck with them. We loved messing with the Irish kids in the next town.”

Chesler describes his look at the time as “experimental,” his hair either “a big white mop” or turquoise suede, or “Meat Beat Manifesto-style” baldness with braided patches.

“I don’t know if it was the times that were strange, I was just trying to be futuristic. I’d wear all one colour, but to get everything in the same colour, I’d be wearing clothes from different decades. It was really bad. It was, like, a tragedy.”

But the ’80s will always be close to Chesler’s heart, so he’s pleased with the international revival of that decade’s club-kid fashion. In “East Germany,” however, it’s less experimental than status quo.

“That is the style, and it never left. There was no ’90s here, that’s what’s so freaky. But it’s the real ’80s, the bad ’80s—they’re wearing acid-washed jeans.”

With Nitzer Ebb, Ascii_Disko,
DJ Mini and DJ Cherry Cola at
Usine C tonight, Thursday,
May 15, 6:30 p.m., $48.50