Safety Propagandist #13: Legless

Baltimore bred harsh noise artist Danny Propert, better known as LEGLESS, on a life on the margins of sound and society.

I admire commitment. Picasso once said that a real artist would spend his grandmother’s last $10 if it meant avoiding getting a real job. And yes, there are artists among us who give up all the amenities of late modern life to create the art that exists within their minds and souls. I admire it, but know full well that I’m too much of a petty bourgeois coward to ever live that way. I worked as a tour guide for years to stave off poverty, I don’t have the kind of fortitude to live the life of the genuine outsider artist.

Danny Propert, on the other hand, has that fortitude. The Baltimore-bred musician is best known for his harsh noise project Legless which, despite of OR perhaps even due to its relatively smaller output, is undeniably one of the best projects in the American noise underground. In a genre that has been plagued by the virus of hipster infiltration for at least two decades now, Propert reminds us of a time when noise was as marginal an outsider arm form as one could possibly imagine. Dan started his career with the noise punk band The New Flesh, which he has complicated feelings about now in retrospect, and started Legless in the mid-’00s. He’s also collaborated with noise artists like Stewart Skinner and Erik Nystrand on projects such as K9 Cognition Lab for Skinner’s commendable The Gift of Music label. Noise has lost much of its mystique over the 2010s in particular as labels have ceased rigorously carving out singular aesthetics and seem to now release anything that presents itself as noise with little regard to quality control. Propert, however, is all about quality control. There are far less releases than other contemporary projects have and the vast majority of them are complex, layered, and harsh as all heaving fuck.

Propert also plays in the noisecore band Anal Butt and other projects outside the confines of the noise genre. Despite this, he has fallen on hard times, and sold most of his gear. Drugs. Crime. Housing insecurity. And yet, he soldiers on. Propert is a man of strength, fortitude, and unwavering commitment in a society full of cowards unwilling to even think of what life would be like absent the comforts of the middle class American lifestyle.

In the following interview, Propert discusses his journey towards extreme sound, his early music with The New Flesh, hard drugs, grindhouse films, jerking off to Madonna, and more. Without further adieu, please welcome Legless to the Counter-Agency of the Avant-Garde.

Adam Lehrer: I’m always curious: what was your journey like towards the more extreme outer limits of music? What were the early music fascinations that would reverberate out even further? 
Danny Propert: I think its about enjoying a variety of music – initially it was hearing things from some friends’ older brothers who had tape collections they left behind at their parents’ house. Everyone skated in the ‘80s so being a 90s kid there was the crate digging of two of my friends' older brothers hand me down tape collections. The more " offensive" sounding punk stuff like the Exploited’s Live at the Whitehouse, The Germs, Black Flag. They also had stuff like Carcass, Sodom, Slaughter, and Celtic Frost. Slayer was a biggie. NWA or whatever was equally of interest.  I’d annoy my friends always wanting to listen to that stuff all the time; they could care less about it. No one at school or in my neighborhood was into any of that – they were all wiggers or jocks.

My friends and I skated. My dad was into music but as a kid I had an instinctual thing where anything he liked I thought was corny – I hated the Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I thought the idea of the Sex Pistols was cool, this offensive over the top band, but they’re music bored the shit out of me. I’m still kind of the same: I don’t give a fuck about classic rock.

What really blew my mind at a young age was hearing a copy of [Earache Records comp] Grindcrusher, hearing Carcass and Godflesh.  Godflesh was the ultimate, that was the most evil and heaviest sounding thing I'd ever heard. I bought Pure and Slavestate at Glen Burnie Mall on tape with my allowance around that time and was just obsessed.  Having long hair and tight, all black clothes really looked dumb to me back then, being a metal head looked fucking retarded...What separated them from the kind of hair metal dude look on MTV was also a big deal. Also that it was just two guys, not relying on image,  not a formal band with the guitar hero wankery that most metal bands had. All you had to do was watch late night TV back then to hear more underground music – it’s kind of hilarious that a fifth grader could see Napalm Death, Helmet, Jesus Lizard or whatever else. Pantera was one of my first concerts. My dad took me to see Helmet, who I loved, and Faith no More, who I wasn’t that into. I wasn't into sports or anything and was obsessed with music early so my I owe it all to my friends’ junkie brothers’ tapes he left at his moms and MTV And my dad taking me to a Pantera show: I’m “Fucking Hostile” (LOL!). 

AL: I was pretty into the New Flesh, and at that time there was a huge resurrection of strange rock bands in America. What was it like being a part of all that, and what do you think made it ultimately such a short lived thing? It seemed like the late 2000s were filled to the gills with avant/freak rock masterpieces like The Hospitals’ Hairdryer Peace or Pink Reason’s Cleaning the Mirror. And then it was over. Where do you think all that energy came from at that point in American underground history?
DP: It was pretty organic, by 8th grade or so I'd found Reptilian Records in town and got into the AmRep and Unsane from going being into local hardcore and then digging deeper: power violence, screaming grind or whatever other variety of hardcore eventually led me to early Swans and noise rock. My childhood friend who was the only guy I knew who liked going to shows and the record store bought a bass. I had a guitar and had no idea how to play it but we then met a drummer and just started jamming as much as we could. Pink Reason was one of the better bands of that time and we always had a blast with those guys on tour. To be honest I don't think we were a great band exactly; we were OK, but other than Air Conditioning I feel that most bands we played with sucked. Bands that I found to be very generic got a lot more attention than us, like Clockcleaner – they were just a shitty Jesus Lizard rip off. Pissed Jeans was boring but very popular, etc.. 

AL: What was the first harsh noise you heard that blew your mind?
DP: It initially was Whitehouse that completely blew the walls off my concept of music. I'd heard them one day at Reptilian and it was over. Some early favorites were Sutcliffe Jügend, Con-Dom and Anenzephalia. In 2002, I went to SF and grabbed Jügend’s Victim as Beauty and a bunch of random releases by the Haters, Masonna, and Stomach Ache records 7”s from a box I found in the noise section under the CD rack. I bought all the [Whitehouse’s label] Susan Lawly CDs I could get.  I made orders to the Self-Abuse mail order and got tapes, like Just Meat by Taint, some Grey Wolves stuff on (label by the late Marco Corbelli aka Atrax Morgue) Slaughter Productions. One of my early noise favorites was the split 12” with MSBR and Black Leather Jesus. Also got a vinyl copy of JESUS CHRIST by Smell & Quim. That was a biggie.

AL: What led to you starting to make noise with your own projects, and with your project Legless in particular?
DP: It was a pretty natural thing for me to experiment, already being a guitar player and all. I bought an SP202 sampler for $50, I had an ‘80s karaoke machine with a turntable AM/FM dial and two tape decks, a handheld tape recorder from a thrift shop, a cheap mic, a few guitar pedals.  I had no idea what I was doing but would get field sounds of breaking beer bottles and banging on metal objects, screaming, guitar noise. Playing the turntable and.other sounds from the karaoke machine thru FX onto the handheld recorder then recycling the source tapes. 

As soon as I got into noise I started experimenting with it myself.

AL: You still play in (noisecore band) Anal Butt and make occasional rock music elsewhere, do you find that the emotion behind making pure noise is different than it is making rock songs, however loose those songs might be structured?
DP: Really the creative output of making music is what it's about for me more than whatever form it is. At various times I'll be more.interested in one over the other. Anal Butt is probably the ultimate. 

AL: One of your releases is titled Music for Blackouts, conversely I remember once remarking that Worth’s noise is best for drinking black coffee while enduring a brutal hangover. Both descriptions here evoke the abyss and annihilation of the psyche, is this destruction of the senses something that noise should aim to achieve?
DP: I think that noise is meditative music so that makes sense for sure. It's a way to turn off the normal thought processes and lose yourself in formless drones. It’s not necessary but a lot of mind altering substances were a part of the Legless recording process. Listening to noise over the years was usually accompanied by, at the very least, alcohol.

AL: You dedicated an album to the convicted serial killer, Joe Metheny, who claimed to have killed 13 people but was only ever proven to have killed five. What fascinates me about him was the sense of inadequacy he experienced that didn't stop at his personal life and carried him over into his criminal life – he wanted us to think he killed more than he did. What is it about Metheny that speaks to you?
DP: It’s just amazing how unapologetic such a fucked up person could be. That the guy gets caught chopping someone up with an axe and there's a lack of evidence that gets him out of prison. He then continues killing people, and not only that, but also opens a pit beef bbq stand and sells his victims’ flesh to people as food. I guess I felt a “how the fuck does this even happen?” kind of fascination with the story. It doesn't speak to me, personally, but I guess it being local to Baltimore made it of particular interest for the project. I posted a picture of him online and someone I know through graffiti was like "fuck that guy he killed my friend’s mother.” 

AL: Your output as Legless is refreshingly well edited in comparison with so much of the noise scene now, with endless labels all putting out every release by every artist regardless of the quality of the release and certainly no regard to what the label’s aesthetic identity is. Is this smaller output something done on purpose? Do you bemoan the lack of quality control in noise now?
DP: The quality control of my releases is something I put effort into, I was never about putting just anything out. That said, to this day I still have a shoe box of finished unreleased 4-track tapes. I spent a lot of time recording, but really was always too disorganized to release things by myself so the output really ultimately has to do with how often I was asked to do a tape. After having a streak of people asking me to do stuff I felt like I compromised being on some labels that I think are shitty just for the sake of having something available, or agreeing for other people to do art that I ended up looking back on and not liking it. There is one tape that's not even me, it's Stewart Skinner, I just sent an unedited source tape to someone and called it Legless. I like that theres personal inside jokes within my catalog; if I’m not amused by it then whats the point? I don't care what people think of it, if people like it that's cool but ultimately  I don't give a fuck

.AL: You said that The New Flesh made mistakes in terms of its recordings, what were some of those mistakes and were they informative for when you started releasing solo music?
DP: The CDs had two songs too many. Every great ‘80s hardcore album is short and there's no bullshit tracks. We fucked up by sticking to these pointless formalities over the length of the releases. A lot of it was rushed too, it's bad enough I hate hearing my own voice on recordings but even worse with the jibberish half/ unwritten lyrics. We should have taken our time on that end and gone the "less is more" route. The only label that ever got us any attention was Hospital Productions from being on the short run comp that Dom did with us and Air Conditioning. He offered to reissue the demo and the idiots in the band ended up having this same kid who changed his label’s name like four times, eventually calling it Fan Death. There was a point we were stealing our own records from his room to sell on tour when a friend of ours was his roommate.. He never sent anything for reviews or did shit he just put the stuff out and it sat there. If you didn't see us on the road you basically didn't get it.

The freedom of doing things completely on my own terms is what I gained from five years of mistakes in a dysfunctional band.

AL: When I got into noise, it was almost an evolution from my listening to post-punk, noise rock, industrial music and even psychedelia. I’ve been a metalhead my whole life but I compartmentalized it from my interest in noise. Now, granted there are certainly legendary and spectacular noise artists who also operate in the world of extreme metal — Mikko, Dom, and Harald Mentor among them — but what I think separates Legless from this other seemingly heavy metal or hardcore shaped genre codified harsh noise is that Legless’ brutality opens up to the world of the psychedelic. This reminds me of 666 Volt Battery or Incapacitants or whoever, it’s as heavy as anything but also feels expansive and not super basic. Is this deliberate?
DP: It’s deliberate as far as doing what I could with what I was working with. Other than a modified DOD ice box phaser pedal that Diagram A made me that had some interesting oscillating sounds; the rest of what I used was heavier distortion and a subharmonic bass octave pedal. The psychedelic  aspect was more from layering sounds which is something that I always liked a lot about projects like Skin Crime, Macronympha and Incapacitants. I like the trippy quality of layers of sound smashed on top of each other. I always wanted to get some cool wah/ filter sounds and delays like the Japanese acts I liked but reached a plateau with gear.  Buying gear was never something I did much of.

 AL: You’ve said that what initially intrigued you about noise was its obtuseness, perversity and nihilism, in comparison with the well-worn themes of metal or the politics of punk, do you think this is changing? Some of the noise fests these days seem to be aping a political message right out of a teenage anarcho punk show of failed sons mad at successful dads, or something.
DP: I think it's changed for the worst, absolutely.  I hate what it is. The days of genuinely fucked up people having whatever weird creative outlet you saw live are gone, and it's now tame, boring, and by the rules. There's a hipster aspect that overran the outsider freak style. I don’t understand why these assholes gravitated to noise in the first place.I'm proud of the times my belligerent antagonistic behavior got me thrown out of my own shows. I miss the days of being around truly warped people. I went to some noise fest recently before the last NYC show I did where I met you and it was so boring, I was like "Do these kids even party?” No one there even seemed like they were having fun. Some people were actually wearing masks outside. When did a noise fest start to look like a Bernie Sanders rally or some shit?  Surrounded by the same group of people wailing in agony about how important voting is? It’s beyond the pale of cringe. I guess it really is dead – we were saying it was back in ’07. It's died an ugly death.  The flip side to the limp liberal snoozefest is these morons with their swastikas and incel shit. I hate all this stupid white power cosplay. Your "great ancestors" you never met don’t account for living a boring average suburban life of no real struggle. Fucking kill yourselves! Losers!

AL: As a cinephile of underground and trash cinema, what are the movies that most fucked your head up as a youth hanging in those video stores?
DP: I worked at a local video store in Arbutus, MD, on the northwest city county line. They were open since the early ‘80s, so their VHS section was actually better than the cult section at the indie shops uptown. Their drama and action sections were loaded with cool exploitation flicks. That was a cool experience, all the free rentals. I traded free rentals to this one customer that gave me VHS boots. Island of Death and Beyond the Darkness were the best of those. Two absolute masterpieces.  The only daily customers we had were old guys from the factories that rented porn to sell boots of. There was this guy who'd get five tapes a day that had this coach’s jacket with “”Video Joe” embroidered on the back. Cool vibe.  I liked Microwave Massacre and HG Lewis' stuff a lot actually the old school gore style stuff. The Mutilator, Pieces, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Torso, and NY Ripper were all favorites. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, of course. People sleep on the sequel, it's incredible in my opinion. Such a rough and unwholesome American serial killer flick. The prequel to Henry is cool too, hard to find but interesting the homage they paid to a nasty low budget college flick for the first one and still has some gross black humor and the home video elements of the OG. I watched whatever had a cool cover and looked good. The local video shops by my house knew my parents didn’t care what I rented so they would let me get horror stuff as a youngin’. Cannibal Holocaust, I know that's huge, but seeing that at a young age was powerful.  I remember my dad , drinking a 6 pack of Red Dog,  showing me Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I was like seven or so. It's hard to say what the first biggie was because as someone that's watched so much I'd want it to be something great I could share with people that haven't seen it but was really that age when I was seeing the staples. Also Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the greatest. Ever

.That’s still one of my favorite films.  Amazing soundtrack. too. Lucio Fulci was a fave... My favorites were all the ones that were fucked up and hard to watch but I also worshipped the more fun stuff like Phantasm and Hellraiser. Nekromantik. Again it's an obvious one but seeing I Spit on Your Grave and The Last House on the Left at an impressionable age had me fucked up. The past few years some favorites have been NIGHT BEAST, The Abomination, Baltimore Don Dohler and Murderlust.

AL: Do you remember if there was an actress that you masturbated to?
DP: I guess winding the clock way back I remember Madonna’s music videos for like “Get into the Groove” and stuff on giving me a little bones and I still love her early music

AL: Living in Baltimore, a city subsumed in violence and drug addicts, does it bleed into your work? Are you of the lineage of “Baltimore artists,” from Poe to John Waters to whoever?
DP: I guess the "spirit" or feeling of the city comes out in the sound. A large portion of my recordings were done on heroin. Not that that's cool. I wish I never touched the shit. Most people I grew up around are dead or behind bars due to drugs .   The real Baltimore – not rich jewish kids with millionaire parents renting a warehouse in the ghetto to have art shows at. My mom was addicted to pills, my dad drank. My sister was in and out of jail and homeless due to her addiction. Things are great for her now but not the fun party hipster bars but rather the ugly reality of life fucked up on drugs and broke is part of the Legless sound I’d say. In a lot of ways I am what I grew up around. Take some underground music obsession most people anywhere could care less about out of the picture and my day to day life during my adult years has been that of a somewhat functional dope fiend. I can't keep a job more than a few months. The drug chasing, shoplifting, stress, and chaos of addiction is in the sound work. It’s a bigger part of my life than any real gains as far as property, a career, marriage or kids (thank god) go. I don't place myself in line with Poe or Waters, I don't think what I do is that important.  Maybe I'm in a lineage of people from that city who made music but I don't see myself as an established artist. I don't even own any equipment anymore. 

AL: Drugs are obviously engrained in music history and the history of the avant-garde, and I loved them for a long time but sadly didn’t make art profitable enough to keep taking them. Did you ever think about doing a project that might be able to earn a living and support a lifestyle? Or fuck all that?
DP: I’d like to do a label but I've never been organized enough to at this point. I started selling all the noise releases I've bought over the years and paid my rent and bought tickets to travel to new cities with that. I could care less about physical media at this point and I don't really listen to noise anymore. Might as well sell the shit if it's worth money and just sitting around. 

AL: If you could do one musical project or art work or whatever that seems out of the realm of possibility, maybe even outside noise, what would it be?
DP: I’d make a cool, rough slasher film.

AL: Any releases coming up? Any final words? Anyone shit you want to talk? Any advice for the selfish and cheap SP readership?
DP: Nope. If you’re reading this: send me money!

ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. Legless in New York
2. Legless Music for Black0uts
3. Godflesh
4. Smell & Quim
5. Joe Metheny
6. The New Flesh
7. Incapacitants
8. Microwave Massacre
9. Legless Limb from Limb