Whitehouse

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

A 12" single preview for Whitehouse's 2003 Bird Seed album, released on the group's own Susan Lawly imprint in April 2002 (catalogue SLA004). The configuration by this point is the mature Whitehouse of the early 2000s: William Bennett producing and writing, with Peter Sotos and Philip Best performing. Two versions: the Bird Seed album mix on the A-side, and an extended instrumental version on the B-side.

The lyrics, delivered in Bennett's characteristic rapid-fire scream, are pitched to a young man in the vicinity of a swimming pool ("You boy, what's it like to wet your foot in a cold swimming pool? What does your voice sound like underwater? At night? Can you do the chickenskin swim? Can you do the chlorine gargoyle?") and have been variously interpreted as a nightmare rendering of the 2001 death of Stuart Lubbock in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool, alongside more general figurations of adolescent vulnerability and predatory adult address.

The sonic method at this point in Whitehouse's career had moved well beyond the squealing-feedback first-wave power-electronics of the Erector / Total Sex / New Britain early-Eighties period. "Wriggle" is tighter, better-recorded, rhythmically more controlled, with Bennett's vocal attack foregrounded over a dense but structured electronic bed. Widely regarded as one of the late-period Whitehouse highlights, and the specific moment at which the group's engagement with the "black magick" of polyrhythm (which would eventually lead Bennett to Cut Hands) became audible.