The earliest incarnation of Homosexual Death Drive, a band playing the circuit, using queer theory to underscore songs and direct the showbiz. Never quite fitting in but unforgettable and antisocial. The boyfriends in the audience don’t get it but their girlfriends are rapt. Deadpan, blank affect, saying unbelievable things, not playing nice, using fat and old bodies to great effect, full of energy, being as queer as we can be, the unexpected.
We are hyper-conscious of living in surveilled and censored cultures, where people are anxious and afraid to speak and where thoughts and feelings are dangerous.
Homosexual Death Drive is a place for us to have feelings, to tell stories that don’t have other outlets, to speak the unspeakable, anti-social and unallowed things that we feel we have to suppress in our everyday lives.
It’s a playful and pleasurable respite from the world of the normals. We will stop being polite for a while.
Invoking the death drive is part of it but not all of it.
We want to connect with and encourage people, communities, histories and cultures of transgression.
This is an emotional project, a hopeful project, a political project.
We will do this in lots of different ways including music, performance, videos, merch, showbiz, creating a spectacle.
We are trying to see what we can get away with. We want to fuck people up joyously.
Homosexual Death Drive Manifesto 2015
The Temple of the Butthole
This track is inspired by Gayle Rubin’s ethnography of AIDS and a legendary San Francisco fisting club. It appears exclusively in the Carry On Rioting compilation, released by Tuff Enuff Records, Brighton, March 2013. The video is an evergreen staple for weirdness on the internet and frequently clocks up views.
– The fuck is wrong with you?
Moderated comments for The Temple of the Butthole video by dirtpipedan, John Connah and ray iles, April – July 2014
– t-this is a joke right
– the fuck did i just watch
Katherine Araniello
I commissioned our beloved comrade to make a video for this track.
Dates
22 February 2020
Salty, Fat Tuesday Le Grand Mardi Gras Ball, White Rock Theatre, Hastings
12 March 2016
The Diva-Liz-Cious Cabaret, Royal Festival Hall, London
9 August 2014
Divine Intervention, A Queer Takeover by Steakhouse Live at Beacons Fest, Skipton
11 August 2013
Supernormal, Braziers Park, Oxfordshire
16 March 2014
Fucking Odd Sunday, Power Lunches, 446 Kingsland Road, London
4 October 2013
Slamptumentary Screening, Power Lunches, 446 Kingsland Road, London
20 April 2013
Goodbye Party, Stockwell Studios, McCall Close, Jeffreys Road, London. Watch Jack Barraclough’s video of this event
6 April 2013
Riots Not Diets London, Power Lunches, 446 Kingsland Road, London
9 February 2013
Riots Not Diets #11, West Hill Hall, Brighton
18 May 2012
FAG Feminist Art Gallery Axe Grinding Workshop, Tate Modern, London
Axe Grinding workshop audio recordings
22 April 2012
Power Queers, Power Lunches, 446 Kingsland Road
11 February 2012
Riots Not Diets Riot Grrl Valentines Ball, West Hill Hall, Brighton
6 October 2011
Sauna, 297 Hoxton Street, London
Beautiful Girls .mp3, performed that night, recorded by Simon Murphy.
27 August 2011
National Minimum Rage #5, Power Lunches, 446 Kingsland Road, London
21 May 2011
Scumbag, The Birds Nest, 32 Deptford Church Street, London
11 December 2010
Club Mïlk, Ratstar, 298 Camberwell Road, London