23 QUESTIONS

TO

JORDI VALLS/VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN

(FOR LIFE WITHOUT SEX No. 3)

1: Date and place of birth:

I was born in Barcelona. Europe

2: First contact with Music (& Non-Music):

Since the age of 3 my parents took me every Sunday to see coridas, bullfighting in Barcelona. I remember very vividly the smell of fresh blood, together with happy pasodobles, the trumpets...Just like in the old roman times. It was fun.

3: Influences in Music, Literature & Paintings. (for the paintings : what about Salvador Dali?...)

I'm obsesive, I have a one track mind only. Sometimes I may get inspiration by just drinking absinthe, followed by death and glory nightmares. I may find an artist or writter exciting today, but tedious tommorrow morning. We are not into psychoanalytic reading of our work. The Dalinian universe is a paroxsymal stimulant to help us to become mercenaries of our on imagination, and to demystify art for ever.

4: VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN:

- The beginning.

We started operating at the beginnning of the eighties. VDO it means a cunt with teeth, in Latin. The voracious vagina, translates our wish to spit blood, to castrate this boring, and pedantic society. We are against accepted standards in ethics and aesthetics. All these years, our destructive impulse, is a feeling that for us have been even stronger than creative urge.

5: Can you describe, for the people who don't know your work, records of VDO before UN CHIEN CATALAN...:

We have five masterworks which have now become classics.

I: VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN PRESENTS : MUSIC FOR THE HASHISHINS, IN MEMORIAM OF HASSAN-I-SABBAH. (TRAINED TO KILL/SEXUAL). All you hear on both sides of this LP is the wild growl of a real dog trained to kill. It's violent and cruel. A passionate, and desperate appeal to murder. I call it poetry without rhetoric.

II: THE LAST SUPPER, THE REVEREND JIM JONES IN PERSON. I got the tapes through Monte Cazzaza in California, and Genesis P.Orridge in London. It's the live recordings of the last moments of life while they are drinking poison and dying at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. 912 men, women and children died. It's a picture-disc with graphic photos of dead bodies from the massacre. For sure, this is the greatest rock and roll record ever made.

III: VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN WITH THE PAGAN DRUMS OF CALANDA. (THE TRIUMPH OF THE FLESH). There is a mysterious custom in a small Spanish village called Calanda. Every year at Easter more than 2000 drums are beaten by people of all ages, day and night, non-stop during two days. It's a powerful and strangely moving experience. Luis Bunuel the Surrealist film maker was born there. We recorded the live sound and made this unique picture-disc including a few copies of it containing encapsulated human bloodstains underneath the transparent vinyl, at �100 each LP.

IV: COLD MEAT/EROS & THANATOS. (SEX STAR I/SEX STAR II). We dedicated this LP to the two biggest Sex-symbols of the 20th. Century: Marylin Monroe and Elvis Presley. It's also a picture-disc. On side :1, you see the dead body of Marylin, and on side :2, the body of Elvis. What you hear is the orgasmic sounds of different couples having sex. We have our sense of humour, you know? It's necrophilia at it's best. This record was sold out in a matter of days.

V: UN CHIEN CATALAN CD. This is our last work, which predicts the death of rock as we know it. I would like to add that VDO is endebted to it's unique fetish-iconography to the talent of my brother Marc. Without his work VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN could not exist in the same powerful way as we know it.

6: UN CHIEN CATALAN:P>- Why this reference to UN CHIEN ANDALOU, the film by Salvador Dali/ Luis Bunuel?

- You used a Harley for this CD.. Is it your Harley?

I always thought that a roaring motorbike is more beautiful than Vivaldi. It's the dervish freedom! First of all, let me tell you that UN CHIEN CATALAN is our homage to Eliseu Huertas i Cos, who is immortal now. He chose a Surrealist death. His picture is on the front cover of the CD, it's a photograph taken by Marc just before his burial. Eileseu rode his Harley-Davidson for the recording of the CD, and contrary to Edgar Varese's definition of DESERTS -one of his best works- as ORGANIZED SOUND, Eliseu coined the expresion of NON-ORGANIZED MUSIC to describe the mantric cacophony of his motorbike on the CD.

The musicality of UN CHIEN CATALAN is a meeting in Hell between Jimi Hendrix, Philip Glass, and Stockhausen. It's almost 70 minutes long, and all you can hear is the howling of a Harley, with telluric turbulence and feedback. We recorded it a few years ago in Cadaques, Port Lligat and Cap-de-Crus in a cold winter's day, on the same spot where L'age d'or was filmed by Bunuel & Dali. Zeus Valls taped everything with with the help of a modest walkman sitting behind Eliseu on the motorbike. Matthew Butler was our sound engineer, a true great professional in the studio. And now, we are not surprised at all to learn that the manufacturer of Harley-Davidson, is trying to protect the distinctive growling noise made by it's full-throated engine. They have filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office for exclusive rights to what the company, and indeed serious bikers, consider a peculiarly special sound. The noise made by it's V-twin single crankpin motor described as a low, gutteral growl and two long vrooms followed by four shorter vrooms, the sound is sometimes likened to the staccato rattle of a large machine gun. We are waiting with glee for the final court result. There is no rational explanation for making UN CHIEN CATALAN, or why the title and the tracks are writen in French. But, we opened all doors to the irrational without trying to explain why. I approached this work more like a literary work, than a recording for a CD. You have to throw yourself deep inside each one of the seven writen title chants to perceive the whole metaphysical compulsion of UN CHIEN CATALAN. The connection with UN CHIEN ANDALOU is very obvious. Both works have connotations of brutal eroticism. It's all about adolescence and violent death. UN CHIEN CATALAN is not a romantic record at all, but a death trip. A date marked with blood.

7: It seems thet you made no record or CD since COLD MEAT (1986)... What were your activities betweenn 1986 & 1995? Is it the second coming of VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN?

The second coming is always the best sexually speaking. At the time I had absolutely nothing to say. One day I discovered that VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN is such a wonderful name, that there was no need at all to show to the world what we are capable of doing . And now, UN CHIEN CATALAN CD it's been so succesful with sales and good reviews all over Europe, USA and Japan, that I must confess, it makes me really angry and full of indignation. Because I believe, most of the public who applaud UN CHIEN CATALAN CD, or any other of my works, are filthy snobs tainted with guilt, the kind of people who like to be trendy and buys avant-garde magazines for the coffee-table only to see what is new or weird, for the sake of it. They are so bloody stupid that they don't realise that the whole essence of my work, my driving force with all my violence and sadism, is precisely against those cretins.

8: Bands like WHITEHOUSE created Anti-Music...I think that VDO creates Non-Music. As Marcel DUCHAMP is the death of painting & sculpture, VDO is the death of Music...Is it right to say that?

Our records have ruined in a single stroke fifteen years of synthesizers and psueudo-intelectual shit. It is true to say that our records have been compared to Duchamp's READY-MADES. But only up to a point, because the moral attitude of the READY-MADE consists in avoiding contact with reality, and what VDO does is the reverse, we always perfornm out of sheer urgent compulsion for the truth. Groups like WHITEHOUSE and VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN are an allegory of the end of music as we have known it.

9: Is there another eXtreme project. (Industrial, post-Industrial or strange music) in Catylunya (in Barcelona, for example...) you'd like to talk about?

I'm preparing an exhibition and live action in Reus. I will display my blood paintings, and I might shower the place with my own fresh blood, while playing Singing in the Rain!

10: In form ( raw material recorded in real time with not much transformations or Walls of Sound) & substance ( hard things: Sex & Death; Blood & Pain...) you're eXtreme. Are you a Terrorist of sounds, an Anarchist?

No. We are Nihilists, anti-creators with an urge to destroy. We are fascinated by destruction for it's own sake. VDO is the most fanatic band in the World. We try to keep our work very simple. It's the only way to get to the core, the nucleus of things. We only package reality. Art is a fake, useless and dead. But I totally agree that art it's great for making money.

11: Is your work realistic or pessimistic? Is the purpose of VDO's work: Open your eyes!

We scorn and despise preachers, and we don't give two fucks about nobody . We are a little sarcastic that's all.

12: You're a Franc-Tireur... You work alone, on your own label (WSNS). Do you feel the difference of your work among the other projects? Does people say that VDO is a mystification?

I am very sorry to say this, but at the moment we are only a London cult band, with a strong following in Europe, USA and Japan. My real objective is to have a multimillion pound contract with one of the big record companies. It's only a matter of time. We are power mad.

13: WSNS: structure & actions. You said once, talking about WSNS: We have infiltrated all medias; can you explain this sentence?

THE WORLD SATANIC NETWORK SYSTEM, is the Organisation to produce and distribute our records. VDO has infiltrated TV, newspapers , magazines, video, cinema etc., and soon the World Wide Web. That's all.

14: J.V. JOVE? Why another name? What is the signification of JOVE?

It is not J., but G.V.JOVE. He's our accountant. A very important person in our organisation.

15: What are LA VAGINA & THE HELLFIRE CLUB?

It is the synonym for VDO and WSNS.

16: How did you meet Genesis P-ORRIDGE? Can you talk about your work with PSYCHIC TV (& particularly about the track CATALAN, in the DREAMS LESS SWEET 12" limited edition.

I think we met for the first time in 1978 or 79. We bumped into each other in the street. I recognised him from a picture on a magazine, and we talked for half an hour. Soon I organised one of the first gigs of THROBBING GRISTLE in London, at the Spanish Anarchist Centre, Centro Ibreico. TG brought a little intelligence into music. Genesis is a very articulated person with a good sense of humour, and we all had a great time. We saw each other a lot until he moved to Brighton near Aleister Crowley tombstone. And later to California close to Charlie Manson.

One late night when PTV was recording Dream Less Sweet LP I happened to be in the studio. They had one music track with no lyrics on. Genesis was exhausted and asked if I could write something, then I wrote CATALAN in two minutes, about my experience of a car crash. Next we recorded my voice over the track in one take only. What we didn't know at the time, is that because of this track we were all invited by the Spanish TV to film CATALAN, the oniric reconstruction of my car I had my accident directed by Derek Jarman in Cadaques, with the same car I had my accident in, two years before - we located the car in a car cemetery - still with dry blood inside it. We flew first class from London to Barcelona, later to Madrid, and stayed in the best hotels, all paid by TVE.

17: Did V.D.O. ever play live?

Only once in 1984. When Spanish TV invited Derek Jarman, PTV and VDO to perform on a live TV programme in Madrid called La Eldad de Oro. We all had live interviews. Derek showed his short films, PTV played a long set together with monumental videos on magick occultism. At the end of the two hours VDO closed the night.

I performed MUSIC FOR HASHISHINS, on an emulator, with sixteen real, very nervous Alsation dogs tied on a leash to the stage. At the same time I destroyed three large paintings by Casademont - a well-known Catalan artist - with a market value of �6,000. I slashed the paintings with with two long iron csimitars with great effect, because hidden behind each canvas we hanged small plastic blood-bags that got splattered all over the place. Pandemonium broke loose. It was the end of this arts TV programme. Next day there was an outcry on the Spanish nacional press. We were accussed of violence and obscenity. Right-wing politicians put pressure on the state run Spanish TV, and La Eldad de Oro was closed down for ever.

18: Limited editions = a Will ( as you know concerned people are not numerous) or the result of a problem of $?

The market calls the shots. It is limited editions, because at the moment VDO's market is very limited. It's the law of Relativity at work. However, to have a limited edition made by VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN is very rare, and recondite. Our records have become very special, and now it is priceless to own one, and very fetishistic too.

19: Can you live with your music or have you got a job?

I don't think this question is relevant to VDO's work.

20: You live between Spain and England ... What is the interest of both countries for you?

I like the best of both worlds. First I need the metaphysical dynamism of the Mediterranean to get some endorphins into my brains. And then to take advantage of the music-infrastructure of London to be able to accomplish all WSNS projects.

21: What do you find interesting in Music/Non-Music actually...?

As a matter of choice my favorite music instrument is the hammer. Of today's music I'm only interested in viscereal violence and provocation againsts the complete mental anaethesia that surrounds us. The greatest culprit is POP-MUSIC, it is despicable, vulgar and servile. The damage is already done; it is irreversable, full of absurd sentimentalism.

22: Do you work in other domains (photos, paintings, writings...)? (If you do , please send documents ! )

Already in 1984 I started working with my own blood for the limited edition of the CALANDA LP. And now I paint large canvasses smeared in my blood. I happen to know a nurse who takes my blood about once a month with an hypodermic needle. Then I go back home with my blood still warm inside glass-tubes, to paint. The most extraordinary thing is the terrible reek, the smell of blood. Now I know exactly what the assasin smells after a bloody murder, he will remember it forever. I always paint at night with all windows open, and then all the dogs in the neighbourhood start barking like mad. It is a live concert...

23: Projects of VAGINA DENTATA ORGAN...

MY DREAMS -, Music so ethereal that it will make you weep ... On the other hand, we are still compiling tapes of death-rattle, the agony of death in humans. Also, tapes from burns-units in American and European hospitals. All these records of VDO, represent the true unconcious collective of the masses. Enjoy !

Jordi Valls

London

18 December 1995