Boyd Rice

Boyd Blake Rice (born December 16, 1956) is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s. A pioneer of industrial music, Rice was one of the first artists to use a sampler and turntable as an instrument. He is also a writer, archivist, actor, and photographer. Rice's music and art have been influenced by fascist ideas and aesthetics, and he has often been accused of fascist sympathies as a result.

Biography

Rice was born on December 16, 1956, in Lemon Grove, California. He became widely known through his involvement in V. Vale's RE/Search Publications. He is profiled in RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook and ''Pranks!''Juno, Andrea (Editor), Ballard, J. G. (Editor), ''Re/Search #11: Pranks'' (1987)

In the mid-1980s Rice became close friends with Anton LaVey, founder and high priest of the Church of Satan, and was made a priest, then later a magister in the Council of Nine of the Church. The two admired much of the same music and shared a similar misanthropic outlook. Each had been inspired by '' Might Is Right'' in fashioning various works: LaVey in '' The Satanic Bible'', and Rice in several recordings.

In 1987 Rice and Nikolas Schreck founded the Abraxas Foundation, an "occult-fascist" think tank that also counted Adam Parfrey and Michael J. Moynihan among its members. During an interview, Rice described the basic philosophy of his foundation as being "The strong rule the weak, and the clever rule the strong".

Rice has documented the writings of Charles Manson in his role as contributing editor of ''The Manson File''.

Music

Rice creates music under his own name, as well as under the moniker of NON and with contributors under various other project names.

Early sound experiments

Rice started creating experimental noise recordings in 1975, drawing on his interest in tape machines and bubblegum pop sung by female vocalists such as Little Peggy March and Ginny Arnell. One of his earliest efforts consisted entirely of a loop of every time Lesley Gore sang the word "cry". After initially creating recordings simply for his own listening, he later started to give performances, and eventually make records. His musical project NON grew out of these early experiments; he reportedly selected the name because "it implies everything and nothing".

Techniques and implementations

From his earliest recordings, Rice has experimented with both sound and the medium through which that sound is conveyed. His methods of expanding upon the listening possibilities for recorded music were simple. On his second seven-inch, he had 2–4 extra holes punched into the record for "multi axial rotation". Another early LP was titled ''Play at Any Speed''. While working exclusively with vinyl, he employed locked grooves that allowed listeners to create their own music. He was one of the first artists, after John Cage, to treat turntables as instruments and developed various techniques for scratching. Rice has been treating sounds from vinyl recordings as early as 1975.

NON

Under the name NON, originally with second member Robert Turman, Rice has recorded several seminal noise music albums, and collaborated with experimental music/ dark folk artists like Current 93, Death in June and Rose McDowall. Most of his music has been released on the Mute Records label. Rice has also collaborated with Frank Tovey of Fad Gadget, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and Michael Jenkins Moynihan of Blood Axis. His later albums have often been explicitly conceptual.

On ''Might!'' (1995), Rice layers portions of Ragnar Redbeard's Social Darwinist harangue, '' Might Is Right'' over sound beds of looped noise and manipulated frequencies. 1997's '' God & Beast'' explores the intersection in the soul of man's physical and spiritual natures over the course of an album that alternates abrasive soundscapes with passages of tranquility.

In 2006, Rice returned to the studio to record raw vocal sound sources for a collaboration with Industrial, modern primitive percussionist/ ethnomusicologist Z'EV. In addition, he and long-time friend of twenty years Giddle Partridge planned an album titled ''LOVE/LOVE-BANG/BANG!'', under the band name of Giddle & Boyd. After the limited edition release of a bubblegum pink, heart-shaped vinyl E.P. titled, ''Going Steady With Peggy Moffitt''. In early 2010, Rice announced that he and Giddle Partridge would focus on solo projects/albums for the time being.

Crowd control

Early NON performances were designed to offer choice to audience members who might otherwise expect only a prefabricated and totally passive entertainment experience. Rice has stated that he considers his performances to be "de-indoctrination rites". Rice has performed using a shoe polisher, the "rotoguitar" (an electric guitar with an electric fan on it), and other homemade instruments. He has also used found sounds, played at a volume just below the threshold of pain, to entice his audiences to endure his high decibel sound experiments.

Rice coupled his aural assaults with psychological torture on audiences in The Hague, the Netherlands, by shining in their faces exceedingly bright lights that were deliberately placed just out of reach. As their frustration mounted, Rice states that he:

Other work

After dropping out of high school at the age of 17, Rice began an in-depth study of early 20th-century art movements, producing his own abstract black and white paintings and experimental photographs. Early on, he met European art historian and gallery owner Arturo Schwarz, with whom he began a long correspondence. Schwarz, a biographer of Duchamp and Man Ray, encouraged Rice to pursue his art, no matter what. And he did. Though he would later shift his focus to sound, he has never stopped creating visual art and has given a number of one man shows over the years.

In the mid-1970s Rice devoted a great deal of time to experimental photography, developing a process by which he could produce "photographs of things which don't exist". He had a one-man show of the photos in the early 1980s at Richard Peterson's Pink & Pearl Gallery in San Diego, which was documented in the local press, the ''San Diego Union'' and ''Evening Tribune''. He has never revealed the means by which he made these photos, and has stated publicly that the secret will go to the grave with him. Some of these photos can be seen in his book ''Standing in Two Circles'' (Creation Press, 2008).

Personal life

Rice dated Lisa Crystal Carver, with whom he has a son.

Rice was arrested in 1995 for domestic violence, though never charged.Sunshine 186 Carver writes in her memoir, '' Drugs Are Nice'', that he physically abused her.

Views

Since the 1980s Rice's music and art have been influenced by fascist ideas and aesthetics. The packaging for NON's 1986 album ''Blood & Flame'', for instance, included a Wolfsangel and a quote from Alfred Rosenberg. He has often been accused of fascist sympathies as a result.Sunshine 168 He also cultivated connections with neo-Nazis such as James Mason (who he began corresponding with in 1986), Tom Metzger (whose TV show he appeared on in 1986) and American Front leader Bob Heick.

In his first letter to Mason, dated April 1986, Rice states “I am completely of the Manson-Hitler thought & do whatever I can to further it.” This was only made public in the 2020s upon being reported on by Spencer Sunshine, having been read from a collection of Mason's paper correspondence located in an archive at the University of Kansas. In a later letter to Mason, Spencer reports that Rice states that he was reading American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell’s book White Power and calls it "awesome", and that this letter was decorated with a swastika at the top of the page.

During one broadcast of Metzger's show, Rice agreed with the hosts assertions that industrial music was “a new propaganda art form for white Aryans”, and when asked about “racial separatism and tribalism,” Rice said “it seems like the only intelligent way to go.”

Rice introduced Mason to Adam Parfrey and Michael J. Moynihan, who would bring Mason's book ''Siege'' to a larger audience. In 1989, Rice and Heick were photographed for '' Sassy'' wearing American Front uniforms and brandishing knives. He has also expressed support for fascism in his writings, interviews, and public appearances.

Rice began to face a backlash for these associations in the late 1980s, when more left-wing avant-garde figures like Jello Biafra, Peter Christopherson, and V. Vale cut their ties with him. In the 1990s he began to disassociate himself from the far right and to use fascist iconography with more irony.

Rice has denied that he is a neo-Nazi. In one 2012 interview he praised Arthur de Gobineau while adding, “I don’t think that to believe in the principle of natural inequality that necessarily equates to: you hate black people or you hate Jews or something.” In another 2019 interview he described himself as "utterly apolitical." A 2018 art show was cancelled because of protests over Rice's fascist associations, as were some shows on Rice's 2013 tour with Cold Cave.

Discography

Filmography

Film

* ''Pranks! TV!'' (1986, VHS) (directed by V. Vale), RE/Search Publications
* ''Tyranny of the Beat'' (1991), Mute Records
* ''Speak of the Devil'' (1995, VHS) (about Anton LaVey, directed by Nick Bougas), Wavelength Video
* ''Boyd Rice Documentary, Part One'' (1994), Joel Haertling
* ''Boyd Rice Documentary, Part Two'' (1998), Joel Haertling
* ''Pearls Before Swine'' (1999) (directed by Richard Wolstencroft)
* ''Nixing the Twist'' (2000, DVD) (directed by Frank Kelly Rich), High Crime Films
* ''The Many Moods of Boyd Rice'' (2002, VHS), Predatory Instinct Productions
* ''Church of Satan Interview Archive'' (2003, DVD), Purging Talon
* ''Baptism by Fire'' (2004, DVD) (live performance in Bologna, Italy), NERO2
* ''Frank Tovey by Fad Gadget'' (2006) (documentary), Mute Records
* ''Iconoclast'' (2011) (directed by Larry Wessel), iconoclastmovie.com
* ''Modern Drunkard'' (directed by Frank Kelly Rich)
* ''In Satan's Name'' (BBC documentary by director Antony Thomas)
* ''In Satan's Name'' (Bob Larson's 31-episode television series), Trinity Broadcasting Network
*''Resort Beyond the Last Resort'' (music video directed by Kansas Bowling), Collapsing Scenery

Performance

* ''Live in Osaka'' (DVD) (features a concert performance from Osaka, Japan in 1989, with Michael Moynihan, Tony Wakeford, Douglas P. and Rose McDowall; also includes Rice's films ''Invocation (One)'' and ''Black Sun'')

Print

* ''Perpetual Permutation Poetry'', International Artist's Cooperative, (1976)
* ''Painted Black'', Carl Rashke
* ''Tape Delay'', SAF Publishing, (1987)
* ''Pop Void'', Pop Void Publications, (1987)
* ''RE/Search No. 6: Industrial Culture Handbook'', RE/Search Publications (1983, )
* ''RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films: A Guide to Deviant Films'', RE/Search Publications (1986, ) (joint author)
* ''RE/Search No. 11: Pranks!''. RE/Search Publications (1986, )
* ''The Manson File'' edited by Nikolas Schreck, Amok Press (1988, )
* ''Apocalypse Culture: Expanded & Revised Edition'' edited by Adam Parfrey, Feral House, (1990, )
* '' ANSWER Me!'', issue No. 3 (1993, )
* ''ANSWER Me!'', issue No. 4 (1994)
* ''Death in June: le livre Brun'', Camion Blanc, (1994)
* ''Death in June: Misery & Purity'', Jara Press, (1995)
* ''The Exit Collection'', Tacit, (1998)
* ''Taboo: The Art of Tiki'', Outre Press, (1999)
* '' Lucifer Rising'', Plexus Publishing, (1999)
* ''Cinema Contra Cinema'', Fringecore, (1999)
* ''Apocalypse Culture II'', edited by Adam Parfrey, Feral House (2000, )
* ''Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader'', issue 32, Spring 2003.
* ''The Book of Lies'', Disinformation Press, (2003)
* ''100 Artists See Satan'', Last Gasp Press, (2004)
* ''The Vessel of God'', Terra Fria, (2005)
* ''.45 Dangerous Minds'', Creation Press, (2005)
* ''Art That Kills'', Creation Press, (2006)
* ''Noise Music: A History'', Continuum International Publishing Group, (2007)
* ''The Book of Satanic Quotations'', Purging Talon Press, (2008)
* ''Bubblegum & Sunshine Pop'', Les Cahiers du Rock, (2008)
* ''Iron Youth Reader'', Underworld Amusements, (2008)
* ''Standing in Two Circles: Les Ecrits de Boyd Rice'', (French translation) edited by Brian M. Clark Camion Noir, (2009, )
* ''Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice'', edited by Brian M. Clark, CTBKS, (2008, )
* ''No'', Heartworm Press, (2009)
* ''Death in June: Hidden Behind the Runes'', Aldo Clementi, (2010)
* ''Mondo Movies'', Baazar & Co., (2010)
* ''Charles Manson: Le Guru du Rock'', Camion Noir, (2010)
* '' Twilight Man'', Heartworm Press, (2011)
* ''Vlad the Impaler'', Ian Allan, (2011)
* ''No'', Expanded and revised edition Heartworm Press
* ''Death in June Songbook''

References

Further reading

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* Sunshine, Spencer. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Routledge. 2024.

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, Boyd
1956 births
Living people
American noise musicians
American industrial musicians
American sound artists
American LaVeyan Satanists
Mute Records artists
American male writers
People from Lemon Grove, California
Death in June members
Dark ambient musicians
American experimental musicians
Musicians from San Diego
American Satanists
American atheists