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PHOTOS: Top Left: Mario Lopez Viveros / Top Right: Svet Jacqueline
Bottom Left: Virgil Miller / Bottom Right: Alexander Raborn
Los Angeles based electronic duo Spike Hellis comprises of Cortland Gibson and Lainey, who got their start on Halloween of 2019. They self-released their first full-length, self-titled album in April 2022, under their imprint Over-Pop.
The album chaotically shifts pace back and forth; the songs running into one another with no time in-between. The record opens with "Control (Rage)", a layered, firm-handshake body-music track designed to hijack the amygdala. The kick drum resembles the steady flash of a panic button. You press it, but nothing happens—no relief. The irregular placement of snare matches Chang’s cries of dysregulation, spiraling red-eyed after having lost command asking, “Will I regain control?” While presented as a song of despair, optimism and determination shine through in the final line as the question is taken back and turned into a statement, “Watch me regain control”. This is a theme that permeates throughout the album: Taking challenging times of despair and coming through the other end with hope and optimism. Spike Hellis (S/T) was made with the intention to feel jolting. Techno-tinged "Flight" is an SH-101 track wherein lyrical instructions for escaping a dream are chanted over the iconic rubber band sound, with the claps paying homage to Charlie's "Spacer Woman". "Slices" is the funky first single which leads into its supplementary counterpart, "Stitches". Footsteps grow louder until it opens into a dark waltz. Samples of William S. Burroughs cackling ring out over Emulator arpeggios until we arrive at "Teardrops (Kisses)". While it is perhaps the most light-hearted track on the album sonically, themes of social punishment and isolation push through the surface to reveal conflict at its core. Chang and Gibson trade off cries of shame and humiliation while distorted synths, swirling in polyrhythms, close out Side A.
Side B continues with the song "Help"—a straight-forward, freestyle number with a pinch of synth-pop. The disjointed "Cause of Death" may be the most challenging song on the record. Floating between major and minor scales and heavy handed sampling, this track takes Spike Hellis from the dance floor to the speedway. Lacing each verse with the line “I never rush, but I like to speed”, a nod to taking risks and enduring hardships in favor of triumph in the long run. Arguably the biggest cut from the record is the closing track "Mouth". This minimal track winds it’s way through a four-verse build. Chang’s pitch-shifted voice softly narrates a catch-and-release scenario in which baiting fish is used as an allegory for manipulation. “Baby look at you, setting your hook in my mouth - Reel me in, rip it out”.
Since completing the album, Spike Hellis has hit the road hard with zero hesitation—completing three full US tours and a handful of smaller runs within the span of two years. They've performed in good company with fellow artists and friends such as ADULT., Buzz Kull, Kontravoid, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Light Asylum, Choir Boy, Portrayal of Guilt, Twin Tribes and many more. They have also been invited to play at festivals including Grauzone, Ombra, Cold Waves, Substance, Sanctum, Sound and Fury, Verboden and Terminus.
Blasting their bleak outlook and spreading their gospel of disenchantment and sarcasm, Spike Hellis announces their arrival.
PRESS
We caught word that Spike Hellis was something special well before we heard their self-titled debut, with early reports suggesting some kind of two-headed mutant body act raised on electroshock and warped-to-shit cassette dubs. That turned out to be accurate, although it vaguely undersells the Los Angeles duo’s potency, and how their stripped to the sinew minimalism is coloured by pervasive unease and pulsing rancor. The echoes of classic EBM aren’t hard to pin down on the chopped up vocal samples and rounded basslines of songs like “Slices” and “Control (Rage)”, although there’s something far more primal and subterranean at play in the band’s funk-by-force rhythm programming. How you make the journey from the awkward stop-start of “Flight” (a song that features the year’s unlikely best singalong line “TRY HYPNOTHERAPY”) to the detuned tropicalia of “Help” is up to you: Spike Hellis don’t seem especially concerned with providing a map. Every time you think you have them pinned down (“Oh they’re like Severed Heads if you fed them nothing but dexedrine and a VHS of Repo Man“) they combo-break and you’re trying to figure out how you got lost between the beats and voices of the sedate “Teardrops (Kisses)”, or are being buffeted by drums from all sides on the turbulent “Cause of Death”. It’s a hell of a debut record, one that invites you to tune in and get tuned up.
- I DIE: YOU DIE BEST OF 2022: TOP 5
Just let me dance! 2022’s theme was all about a strong beat, a seductive groove, or a weirdo sample that kept me moving—and left me wanting for more. Spike Hellis‘ self-titled was certainly the highlight of the year as a refreshing take on industrial music with its Wax Trax!-y quirks and unusual song structures (their live show is truly one to experience... which I did, several times over).
- Andi’s Picks, Post-Punk.com’s Best of 2022
If you’re overwhelmed by the modern era with its panopticon-style control apparatuses and dopamine drip surveillance state, you’re probably a sentient, somewhat functioning human being. Congratulations —you’ve stayed in reality despite the twenty-four-hour news cycle, contradicting international relations, and emperors that no longer even care to be clothed. As always, the music world reflects every conceivable emotion and affirms your intuition and LA’s SPIKE HELLIS is no exception, honoring the EBM and industrial cannon from the onset of global neoliberalism while augmenting it with the perfect quantum of digital distress ever-present as the real world appears to decay into a dust of electronic particles and simply blow away in an atomic cloud.
- CVLT Nation’s Top 10 ELECTRONIC, TECHNO & INDUSTRIAL Albums Of 2022