Anger Is An Energy
- Issue #215 (January '02) | Interviews
- By: Joy Press, Jake Walters | Featuring: Le Tigre
- Printable version
A decade ago, Kathleen Hanna's Bikini Kill heralded the days of rage that led to Riot Grrrl, one of the few 90s movements that felt like punk actually happened. Now, Hanna's new trio Le Tigre (and side projects ranging from plunderphonic IDM to conceptual art stunts) are spearheading a rapidly spreading network of feminist flavoured electropunk while defining new parameters for politicised noise in their search for an electronique feminine. Words: Joy Press. Photos: Jake Walters
Sitting in a minimalist cafe in downtown Manhattan, Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna - with her perky ponytail, black sweatshirt, and bandaged thumb, which she injured while playing basketball - blends in with the nearby students tapping on laptops. She and bandmate JD Samson are dissecting Le Tigre's performance on a local cable TV show. Samson moans about the terrible sound, but Hanna exudes positivity. "Think about it as a punk thing. If you watch it again as a punk performance," she insists, "it won't seem so bad."
Hanna made her name as the singer in Bikini Kill, and with Le Tigre she's bringing Riot Grrrl to electronica: feminist-flavoured electropunk that aims to blast away the pretensions and anal-retentions of the new Prog rock. Face it: much of the electronica scene right now is caught in a feedback loop of 'glitch for glitch's sake' - hermetic, formalist, depoliticised, riddled with esoteric jargon, and almost entirely male. Hanna still holds tight to the punk ethics and aesthetics that propelled her through eight years (1991-98) as lead singer with Bikini Kill: DIY rules, energy is better than expertise, ideas count for more than ability. Just as Bikini Kill inspired hundreds of girls to grab guitars and drumsticks, Le Tigre incite young women to boot up sequencers and samplers. Bikini Kill's records were raw and bratty, Hanna doling out disses like some Girl Guide fronting a 60s garage punk outfit. But the group's almost doctrinaire rejection of competence meant they never progressed much, aesthetically. When I express my skepticism about the Riot Grrrl ritual of swapping instruments between members onstage, Hanna grins sheepishly. "It's like dilettantism or something, right? And it feeds into that whole thing of women not being able to finish anything..." She laughs, then continues, "Like, oh, the process is so important, who cares about the product? But I always thought of it more as entertaining for the audience. A lot of rock music has become about being a craftsperson and I'm not that interested in exploring the craft of guitar. If a woman wants to do that, she should do it, and sometimes I wish I were that kind of personality who can practise something and keep at it."
Hanna made her name as the singer in Bikini Kill, and with Le Tigre she's bringing Riot Grrrl to electronica: feminist-flavoured electropunk that aims to blast away the pretensions and anal-retentions of the new Prog rock. Face it: much of the electronica scene right now is caught in a feedback loop of 'glitch for glitch's sake' - hermetic, formalist, depoliticised, riddled with esoteric jargon, and almost entirely male. Hanna still holds tight to the punk ethics and aesthetics that propelled her through eight years (1991-98) as lead singer with Bikini Kill: DIY rules, energy is better than expertise, ideas count for more than ability. Just as Bikini Kill inspired hundreds of girls to grab guitars and drumsticks, Le Tigre incite young women to boot up sequencers and samplers. Bikini Kill's records were raw and bratty, Hanna doling out disses like some Girl Guide fronting a 60s garage punk outfit. But the group's almost doctrinaire rejection of competence meant they never progressed much, aesthetically. When I express my skepticism about the Riot Grrrl ritual of swapping instruments between members onstage, Hanna grins sheepishly. "It's like dilettantism or something, right? And it feeds into that whole thing of women not being able to finish anything..." She laughs, then continues, "Like, oh, the process is so important, who cares about the product? But I always thought of it more as entertaining for the audience. A lot of rock music has become about being a craftsperson and I'm not that interested in exploring the craft of guitar. If a woman wants to do that, she should do it, and sometimes I wish I were that kind of personality who can practise something and keep at it."