| Description | Lydia Lunch started her career at age 16 as primal screamer and guitar guerrilla for the seminal "no-wave" band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (1976) which was featured on the Island Records anthology LP No New York (1978). Simultaneous to Teenage Jesus, Lunch formed Beirut Slump, which was followed by her solo debut, 1980's Queen of Siam. Lunch then went on to form her next band 8 Eyed Spy which was followed by a series of collaborations with Nick Cave and The Birthday Party, Einsturzende Neubauten, Die Haut, Sort Sol, The Swans' Michael Gira, Marc Almond, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
In 1984 Lunch founded Widowspeak Productions as an ‘organ for her own prolific work and that of sympathetic creative renegades’. Widowspeak Productions released Uncensored Lydia Lunch (1984), her first foray into spoken word as well as much of her back catalog, including a two-CD retrospective, Hysterie, in 1986.
Her next collaboration was the first of several with Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell, who remixed a shelved project with Birthday Party members from 1982-83 It was issued as Honeymoon in Red in 1987. The two also released the percussive sexual mantra, Stinkfist , under Thirlwell's Clint Ruin alias in 1989. That same year, Lunch teamed with Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon in Harry Crews, a one-off, all female noise-rock band, for the LP Naked in Garden Hills. She teamed up once again with ex-Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard for 1991's Shotgun Wedding.
In 1993 Lunch released a triple CD boxed set, Crimes Against Nature, that included her earlier recording Oral Fixation and Conspiracy of Women, as well as new material.
Her most recent foray in spoken word is the atmospheric Matrikamantra, an illustrated Word Double-CD with music by Joseph Budenholzer. 1998 saw an international retrospective of her photography which culminated in Paris at the Museum of Erotic Art, where 4 of her pieces are now on permanent display.
Lunch collaborated with a number of film-makers associated with the Cinema Of Transgression and has worked on a number of film soundtracks including a rendition of "Gloomy Sunday" on the CD soundtrack from the Blair Witch Project (1999)
This Interview took place while Lydia Lunch was on a UK tour. Lunch performed at the ICA the same evening. |