Sandy’s guitar roiling with strange found tools of metal, electricity, and rubber, combined with the domineering and direct substance of Samantha’s words and meaning, was a dance of dissociation and presence that felt like someone had uncovered a rip in the world’s simulation and played its outro music as it slowly disappeared from us. It was a performance that can remind you how filtered life is by gripping you so completely with raw important spectacle, such that momentarily being is all there is, no thought intrudes and no feeling dilutes the awe.
Video from their performance at Leon’s Lounge in Houston, Texas on January 12, 2019 with KA, Milk Leg, Bleeders, and Coyotebloodbath.
SHE SAID
by Samantha Riott
Dont call me babe
dont call me baby no more!
Only a predatory creature could understand what she meant when she said
“you make me wet” because all I ever did was make her beg for more.
the secretions dripped on my fingers and made her moan with tears. tears of joy.
a trophy for my recollections..
licked my fingers & swallowed it down with pride
im not even talking about sex yet.
whispering
DONT STOP PLZ DONT STOP
MERCY MERCY MERCY
PAIN!
thick rivulets of blood, forced out from the skin
she can never bleed enough for me.
the way to a woman’s undying love
is to make her take out her knife and shove up against yr throat
thats when the real love begins..
thats when the secretions pour out
secretions of blood
thats when the real love bleeds out
a bond formed thru blood rites
what is more passionate than a threat carried out full force?
dont call me babe, no more
love grows thick with every drop of blood on the floor and onto the skin… it seeps in.
dont call me babe
slips into the psyche a love you can never forget and there is no real regret for actions carried out with passion.
what is more passionate than a threat carried out full force?
what is more passionate than blood on the floor?
a sexual high which climaxes a peak too bold to constantly satisfy so you take a moment to rejoice but the need for more is shadowed by the tick tock of the clock. and you gotta know when to stop. and start again.
DONT CALL ME BABE
WELL HERES MY FUCKING SIREN SONG!
by Samantha Riott
When do you realize when you’ve gone insane?
And is it too late to go back? And go back to what? What is sanity anyway, when you are existentially bound to the ever corrosive question of why?
Why must the ones I plead with always be the ones who shrug their shoulders? Roll their eyes? Squint so hard with their heads turned sideways?
Oh rite… it’s because they’ve seen this shit 1000 times in the theatre of my eyes.
The mind is a solitary confinement.
312 months, 9490 days, 23,000 hours, 14 million minutes.
My timeline ticking away, collecting all those memories that shelter deep within my brain, that will last in some far, far away dimension, longer than I can withstand to remember. Decoding and unraveling itself within in the dirty walls of my descending mind. In and of itself echos out screams of irreversible dimension. A dimension that is unseen and untouched by those who know me and by those who have escorted me there.
A place where communication to express any of this bends your face in half with illogical emotions manifested in manic episodes, misunderstandings, the pursuit of pleasures and an unrelenting loathing of a private hell.
The mind is a solitary confinement.
And I know you’re thinking I must be out of my mind by now but I’m just trying to get into yours.
I wanna be out of my mind and into yours.
Trying to piece together everything and figure out anything I can and still come up with nothing but the ultimate conclusion that this life is will always be a twilight zone, an unsolved mystery, an endless time warp filled with the suspense of strange realities.
And I’ve been told to just stop.
The words that come out my mouth…
“Hearing you talk infects me with your ill ease, your disease, so please just stop. I can hear you in my head. The words are seeping thru executing all the images perfecting within seconds, then minutes, then time and time again that it’s now in my memory banks with chills on my skin. The less I wanna know, the more it triggers a resistance to this psyche, so willingly open to allusions.”
The time ticking away, still far, far away in some dimension.
And here I am remembering that its easy to forget,
so easy to lose… lose yourself in moments where the images and memories of long ago resurrect themselves of all the clandestine affairs with insanity…
Late at nite, during the day, in my bed, on endless random couches, the subway bench, walking alone on crowded streets, midnights at the beach, staring out into the ocean, forgetting my name and face. The time, the place, the era, the decade, my humble confusion, my dark romances, and tumbling back to wherever I live to lie down, and instead find myself hopping off rooftops, howling naked at the moon, breaking bottles outside my window, and the midnights that shuffle in a dawn too bright and presumptuous as if I know what’s going on…
Here I am auctioning off my fears one confession at a time.
And whats going on?
What the fuck is going on?
And maybe you can understand.
Or maybe you could help me understand how a sun-kissed face turns into a shit stained disgrace, for once your smacked with the ever corrosive questions of WHY, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHO CARES? it bleeds open newly mutated sickness by the ways of a hard knock life. A lost highway, a dead end street, apocalyptic wet dreams, and the over wrought desires for an end which doesn’t come fast enough of everything that holds you hostage.
And reality undercuts pristine sanity when it’s being thrown about on the corner. Being stepped on by a shapeshifting predator, a wanton drunken fool, another lost fucking hungry soul, all together in unison like an inharmonious choir begging for a cigarette in various tongues.
A universal sadness inside of a small dicked city, fueling your own manic lifestyle that your existence is superimposed into the landscape that you become one of them.
Picturesque. And then you realize it’s never to late to go insane.
AND HERE I AM
HERE I AM
REMEMBERING ALL THOSE CLADENSTINE AFFAIRS I HAD WITH INSANITY.
LATE AT NITE, DURING THE DAY, IN MY BED, ON ENDLESS COUCHES, ON THE SUBWAY BENCH, WALKING ALONE ON CROWDED STREETS, MORNINGS SPRAWLED OUT ON THE PARK LAWN, INSOMINIATIC MIDNIGHTS AT THE BEACH,
STARING OUT INTO THE OCEAN, FINDING MYSELF IN THE SKY, FORGETTING EVERYTHING THAT CAME BEFORE, FORGETTING THE INJUSTICES OF THE WORLD, FORGETTING I’M ALIVE, FORGETTING YOU LOVE ME, FORGETTING I LOVE YOU, THE TIME, THE PLACE, THE ERA, THE DECADE, MY INDECENT CONFUSION.
AN OBSCENE DISREGARD FOR THE MIDNIGHTS THAT ALWAYS SHUFFLES IN A DAWN TOO BRIGHT AND PRESUMPTOUS AS IF I KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.
I JUST WANT TO FORGET.
I JUST WANT TO FORGET.
I JUST WANT TO FORGET IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO GO INSANE.
The mind is a solitary confinement as I’m trying to recognize myself again and again. Time after time in-between the next indiscriminate distraction after another silence.
Silence as freedom.
Silence is my freedom. Freedom from all the ill-infested soundbites that surround me every inch of the day.
How it creeps in like unannounced guest at your door in the nite. Lingering on.
A silence so heavy with an accumulation that it sends me into a self induced hypnosis.
Delicate moments where I enjoy forgetting everything that came before that when i start to hear NOISE it hits my sore spot and
i’m back to frantic, trying to rid the sound of cars, honking, the buzzing of the TV, loud conversations, plates clattering, the sink dripping, blaring music, the sirens, that I become a GODDAMN siren myself.
WELL HERES MY FUCKING SIREN SONG!
It’s silence.
I love the sound of silence. It embraces me into a seductive absence of sound where that moment of relief is a fleeting paradise before being bashed away by the daily interruptions that trick you into thinking it’s urgent, when the only thing that’s urgent is FREEDOM, RELIEF, SILENCE.
SEE I LIKE MY SILENCE TO BE VERY LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS JUST LIKE MY VOICE. WHERE MY VOICE RESEMBLES THE EVERY DAY CHAOS BECAUSE I’M CHAOTIC WITHOUT MY SWEET, SWEET SILENCE.
WHERE SILENCE HYPNOTIZES YOU INTO A STATE OF SHOCK THAT WHEN YOU HEAR IT,
IT FEELS LIKE UNBEARABLE PAIN BECAUSE ALL THAT IS LEFT IS YOURSELF!
AND HERE I AM!
AND HERE I AM!
Samantha Riott is an American spoken word artist, musician, writer and vocalist. Her current band is Rodenticide and she is prominent in the NYC underground music scene. Confrontational and provocative in her work, she straddles the line between seductive siren & nihilistic hysteric, embarks on endeavors with intensity through personal & socio-political subjects.
https://samanthariott.bandcamp.com/releases
https://rodenticide.bandcamp.com/releases
Sandy Ewen is a sound artist, visual artist and architect who has recently relocated to NYC from Houston, TX. Ewen’s audio practice focuses on extended guitar techniques, improvisation, graphic scores and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her unique approach to guitar incorporates a wide array of implements – railroad spikes, sidewalk chalk, threaded bolts, steel wool and other items become an arsenal of abstraction. Ewen has worked extensively with film makers, dancers, poets and musicians to create films, audio recording, sound interventions and performance art. Ewen’s musical collaborations include trio Etched in the Eye, duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs, the trio Garden medium, and ongoing collaborations with percussionist Weasel Walter and bassist Damon Smith. For nearly ten years, Ewen has been the leader of an all-female large ensemble. The ensemble conceptualizes and performs sound and performance art, utilizing graphic and text based scores and improvisational constraints. The ensemble performed with an amplified bathtub at Diverse Works in 2016, and performed a suite of installation-specific compositions for Francis Alÿs’ Fabiola Project at the Menil. Sandy has spent much of 2017 touring, performing solo sets and in collaboration with Steve Jansen (tapes and electronics) and Maria Chavez (turntables) around Europe. In years past, Ewen has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Rowe, Lydia Lunch and many others, and has performed and recorded with Jaap Blonk, Henry Kaiser and more. In 2014 she performed at San Francisco’s 13th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, and she has made several appearances at Austin’s annual No Idea Festival.
Knell 