This is the New Shit
Interview with Hair Police

Sitting in the Southgate House's (Newport, Kentucky) tiny "Parlor" show space situated right above the rather large "Ballroom," I am reminded of the squats and basement shows I attended regularly seven or eight years ago. The sense of wonder, of discovering something new and worthwhile, of meeting new people who actually share your taste, or lack of taste, in music. There's a small tight knit group of people in attendance, most of them members of one of the six bands playing that night and a real sense of D.I.Y. attitude ever present over the large venues now taking over what used to be the underground. Some of the bands playing tonight have traveled several hundred miles to play for 20 people and they just appreciate that anyone even showed up at all. Three of the bands have set up their equipment in different areas of the room so as to virtually eliminate any downtime between sets. I still see the typical drums and guitars that typical thrash and hardcore bands normally played in those house shows many years ago, but here I also see oscillators, keyboards, processors, effects pedals, and all sorts of unidentifiable gadgetry strewn throughout the dark room.

This is the new underground, and it doesn't sound remotely like anything you're likely to find at the mall, or hear on this year's Warped Tour. Call it noise, call it no wave, call it experimental music, but whatever you label it as it just boils down to the fact that this is some of the most exciting and vital music being made today, and Hair Police are one of this new scene's most harsh and noisy groups. The band's debut album, "Blow Out Your Blood" (Freedom From) put Hair Police somewhere between Cock ESP, Whitehouse, and To Live and Shave In L.A., creating grating walls of dense noise and repetitive, pounding rhythms. Their new 7" "Mortuary Servants" sees their Whitehouse fixation going even further though with wide open spaces of silence and tricky locked grooves. Hair Police are a band with a very singular focus but are very willing to keep experimenting with many new and unique ideas that in turn keeps the band from becoming monotonous. With a whole mess of new releases coming out soon, this Lexington, Kentucky trio are one of thee bands to watch closely this year.

Before they destroyed this little room in Newport, Kentucky with a 20 minute long set, I had a chance to discuss with Hair Police about the band's history, future, and their take on this whole noise explosion that's just getting started.

Interview conducted in person by Dan Rizer. Photography by Josh Rhinehart.
Names: Mike (guitar, tapes, vocals), Robert (electronics, tapes, etc.), Trevor (drums, electronics)
Band: Hair Police

BW: Who are Hair Police and what are your roles in the band?

M: I'm Mike, I play guitar and do some tapes and vocals.
R: I'm Robert and I do the electronics, tapes and some other stuff.
T: I'm Trevor and I play drums, electronic doo dads... and I guess I'm kind of the producer.

BW: So how did Hair Police come about?

R: We all met at the University of Kentucky through the student radio station there. We all did and I still do a radio program there.
M: Yeah, we were all into music and were doing stuff on our own so we just started getting together to play.
T: We started getting together in this cold barn outside of Lexington just making a bunch of noise.

BW: Why the name Hair Police?

M: The name was really kind of arbitrary. We came up with a millions of different names and that one just sort of stuck. I like the fact that it's not really representative of the music. It's not like Death Squad or something (laughter).
T: When we came up with it it just seemed like the dumbest possible name...
M:...and a lot of people agree.
T: We hear a lot of dumb jokes about it.
M: A lot of the time the things people say about the name don't even register at first. We get people come up to us and say things like "Hey I just got my hair cut before the show" and I'm just like "Oh... cool" and they usually say "Get it? Cause you’re Hair Police". We get a lot of that.

BW: You guys used to be a four piece and now there's just three of you...

R: We actually used to be a five piece before we started playing outside of Lexington.
BW: Oh... have you guys found it more difficult maintaining your harshness without the extra set of hands?

T: Not really, every time we get an idea it just becomes kind of different to work with and around. We've been moving in kind of a different direction away from just those spazzy little bursts.
M: I actually think it's gotten harsher and it has nothing to do with how many people are in the band.
T: Yeah, we were actually kind of heading that way before any band members were lost.
M: We've gotten way harsher and we keep getting harsher.
T: It's really our natural progression away from doing those jams in a barn.

BW: How important is improvisation to your sound?

R: Well, definitely everything we do has a set structure but usually everything comes from some sort of improvisation where one of us will have an idea and we improvise and create structure around it.
M: A lot of those structures and the rules of a song will come from the improvisation and then we'll improvise around that set structure.
T: Improvisation has definitely helped us learn how to play with each other. At first we just went on dates and now we're fucking three times a day. (laughter)

BW: Would you consider what Hair Police plays to be music?

T: Yeah!
M: ... in a weird way...
T: ... a weird new kind of music.

BW: How much interest do you guys have in more traditional songwriting?

M: Trevor's favorite band is Steely Dan.
T: Yeah, actually I've been playing pop music for a long time now and I play in a pop band and do a lot of solo stuff like that. Me and Mike have written songs together for a while now with more straight song structures. A lot of the ideas for the "Blow Out Your Blood" album came from writing songs that way and then we'd all get together and mess them up.
M: We all have pretty diverse tastes in music.
R: I think we all like stuff like the Beach Boys.
M: Throbbing Gristle were some great songwriters. (laughter). Yeah and...
Everyone: ...Whitehouse. (laughter)

BW: So how did Blow Out Your Blood come about? Were there any specific challenges you guys set for yourselves in recording that album?

T: (still laughing at their three way jinx) Uh... just recording it and editing it (laughter).
R: We were doing this tour in December with No Doctors and Freedom From Records told us that...
M: ... there's no Records... (laughter)
R: Oh, right it's just Freedom From... anyway, they told us that if we had an album recorded before the tour that they would put it out for us for the tour. So we recorded it in about two days.
M: Trevor recorded it and somehow spent about a month mixing and editing it with his busy schedule.
T: It definitely became an intense process, especially the post-production part of it. I had gotten some sort of stomach flu from eating Rally's and I was still going to school and working full time. So it was like come home and puke for an hour, mix some songs, go to school... the album was just done in a total state of insanity.
M: A lot of the way it sounds is just because of the way that we recorded the album. Me and Trevor went in and recorded the guitars and bass and drums live together and then we brought those tapes back...
T: ... yeah and we recorded it a bunch of different ways...
M: ...yeah and then Robert and Matt went and recorded all their stuff a different way.
T: We used a 4-track and a digital 8-track and then we had to go and mix all the stuff together and each track has a varying delay and there's three or four different mediums all flashing. We did all this stuff live but none of it sounds the same and I think it kind of contributes to the overall sound. We wanted it to be all fucked up.

BW: Your new 7" Mortuary Servants seems to be incorporating more silence and subdued sounds. Is this a newer direction for you guys?

R: We've always done stuff that's like that. It just so happened that "Blow Out Your Blood" was so continually intense because it was all done at the same time so that's why the whole album has a similar sound.
T: As we've grown up and played together longer it's just developed more. When we first got together we were barely listening to each other. The more we play together the more ways we find that we can play with the structures.

BW: Could you ever see your music going into a more structured route with more discernible beats?

M: No, if anything I think we're moving more away from that type of sound. I definitely don't think we're going to use...
T: We're trying out so many different things right now trying to get things done for the new LP and so far it's really destructured.

BW: I'm sure you guys have noticed an increase in the interest of noise and experimental music in the punk and hardcore scene...

T: ...Yeah, it's 2003...

BW: Where do you guys see Hair Police fitting in to this whole new scene that's coming up?

T: I just hope we start getting our pictures in magazines.
R: We're shooting for MTV.
M: I think the time that it was starting to become most apparent was the weekend of the Bulb Records 10 Year Anniversary show. The one night that Andrew WK headlined he played with Mindflayer and Wolf Eyes and a bunch of other great bands. All these kids had come out just to see Andrew WK and just happened to get there early enough to see Wolf Eyes, they just freaked out. They just loved it. I think if you are able to bring the people out that they'll love it, but it does take some work to get those people to come out. I've been playing this kind of stuff for about five years and only just now does it seem that people are finally getting tired of the same fucking shit. So there's finally getting to be enough interest that we can get a few people to come out to a show.
T: We've always wondered who our audience could be and now all the punk and hardcore kids seem to be adopting us to their scene, and it's like a new generation of kids too. It's mostly all the young kids that aren't jaded yet, haven't heard everything yet and are happy to have us play in a basement with a bunch of thrash bands, bands that we like. We know that they're going to appreciate us just as much because... well maybe we don't play notes exactly and our lyrics aren't discernible but you can totally freak out to it. One thing that appealed to me was that we played one show and we walked in and everyone was like "Those are emo kids" or they thought we were indie rockers, cause we were wearing sweaters or whatever. We were playing at this VFW Hall in some small town in Kentucky and when we started playing we just layed down the law with them. We were throwing kids around and going crazy and you could just see everyone back up, but then they eventually warmed up to us because you can just relate to someone who's freaking out.
M: It seems like there are just so many bands around right now that are just the same fucking thing. People just want to hear something new. Everyone is talking about how this is starting to get popular with bands like Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt but no matter where this goes we'll still be doing the same shit that we were doing 2 years ago and continue releasing small edition tapes and playing with.... If this dies, and no else cares about this... it doesn't really matter to us, we'll still be doing this.
T: I don't want to slam any particular bands but so many indie rock shows now are like punishment to their fans, it's like church... (laughter). I'm not saying that every show has to be like some insane dance party but you should expect to see something that's unexpected and just be able to have a good time. We want to entertain. And the sad thing is that sometimes we play for crowds who weren't expecting to see that.

BW: Would you consider Hair Police to be a punk band?

M: No... well...
R: It's hard to say, we definitely have a sort of hardcore esthetic.
M: I mean we can relate to and admire a band like Black Flag, but I think that we're pretty removed from being a punk band.
T: We're all interested in so much stuff that that tag seems limited.
M: It's just insane music. That's it, we're insane music.
T: But we definitely appreciate what punk music has done.

BW: For someone who has never seen you guys live, like myself, what could a person expect?

T: It's been a pretty weird day so far so probably just total intensity. I just got hit by a car earlier today, so that may unleash the fury in me.
R: It kind of depends on the crowd and how they're feeling us and us them.
M: Yeah, when we played Chicago last time there were just so many kids and they were like throwing us on stage.
T: Every other word off the stage was "Springbreak," "Beer Camera Flag," all this weird stuff.
R: Other times we look at it almost like practice.
M: Yeah, it's basically just a fucking free fall and if the crowd is out of control then we're out of control. Sometimes we're just up there jamming and playing tunes, it just depends on what the environment is like.

BW: Do you guys have any future tours planned right now?

R: No, we probably won't get out too much till this Fall at least.
T: We're doing a lot of recording right now. We have a bunch of releases coming out soon.
R: We all have a lot of stuff going on right now outside of the band. We all have jobs...
T: ...Getting married...
M: I'm getting a dog, I'm getting married, getting a new job.
T: We're doing lots of weekend shows right now... just recording and recording more.
M: We've got so many new releases coming up, some CDR's, tapes, legitimate stuff...

BW: Would you care to elaborate on what releases you have coming up?

T: We're doing a split on Load Records with Viki.
R: We're pretty stoked about that.
M: We've got a tape coming out on Hospital Productions and they're one of my favorite labels right now. Probably a live tape on Gods of Tundra...
R: ... a live video...
M: Plus a full length on Freedom From.

BW: What other projects are you guys involved in?

(Death Beam, from Cincinnati, starts to play, no one can hear one another)
HP: (inaudible)

BW: So what do you guys see for the future of Hair Police?

M: Just have fun and make some insane noise....
(Death Beam still playing)
T: Wait, what was the question?

BW: Well, I guess that will be it.

T: All right. Let's go watch Death Beam.