Le Tigre
Le Tigre emerges from the aesthetics and strategies of punk/underground
music, digital technology,and the concerns of contemporary feminist art.
We piece together low-budget electronic set-ups that are a few steps behind
the state-of-the-art, and pair these situations with the elements of a
traditional rock band that remain compelling to us.
We choose experimentation and change over mastery and are interested in
unveiling the mystery of the encylopaedic knowledge and technical wizardry
of the technohero, desecrating ideas of rock purity, guitar virtuosity
and all popular masculinist myths re the artist.
We propose that what is experimental in art is inextricable from what is revolutionary politically. The Le Tigre sound touches on conceptual garage, digital anthemic, political sadness, unfinished sound tracks. Catchy or danceable moments are complicated by repetition in which flaws become apparent, piracy is obvious, or political content challenges the groove.With their new seven track EP, LE TIGRE picks up where they left off: buzzing guitars, chaotic gang vocals, low resolution samples and programmed beats reference their punk history and point the way to a feminist future without genre loyalties. While still taking full advantage of the rough edges, LE TIGRE's new songs are more structurally ambitious if not slicker. Political rage and activist disillusionment remain explicit and/or buried lyrical themes, but danceable beats and experimentation keep it weirdly unjaded. Iincludes an eerie broken-beat remix by Rachael Kovacs (Home Wrecker Foundation).
Here's what's been said about them:
- If the Shangri-Las were 90's punkettes with samples and drum machines,they'd be Le Tigre - Entertainment Weekly
- A contemporary version of punk inspired bands like The Slits & The Raincoats - Melody Maker
- Groovy like Luscious Jackson but with all the bile and screech of old skool riot bands - Time Out
- Kathleen Hanna does the unprecedented - if not, impossible - and reinvents punk again - Robert Christgau/Village Voice In response to the frequent request for a word or two about Riot Grrrl - what it was, what happened to it, where they stand in relation to it - Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman and J.D. Samson of Le Tigre will most likely shrug off a trip down memory lane and pick up where they left off in their long-standing discussion of an as-yet unmade conceptual art project entitled Riot Grrrl: the remixes. The idea, to reconstruct seminal Riot Grrrl and Queercore recordings as dance-floor hits, appeals to them as a way to traverse genre and critically reference the recent past of the influential underground scene that is inextricable from their personal histories as feminist artists. As an electronic act, the trio are interested in celebrating the radical aspirations of nineties DIY, feminist, punk art rather than romanticizing its achievements or clinging to its style. Kathleen Hanna, in regard to her image in the media as the angry lead singer of her former band Bikini Kill, remarks without a trace of nostalgia, I am interested in expanding notions of what it is to be a political artist rather than playing into 'women-in-rock' stereotypes of feminist rage.
The band's original three members (Kathleen, Johanna, and video artist Sadie Benning who has since left the band for the demands of her independent art career) are long-time friends who met in the early nineties, their paths crossing when Kathleen was touring with Bikini Kill, Sadie was screening her video work, and Johanna was writing and distributing fanzines. In 1998 Kathleen 's solo recording project 'Julie Ruin was released and, although living in different cities at the time, the three artists welcomed the opportunity to collaborate, and convened in New York City to put together a live act to tour the record. The project rapidly mutated into an entirely different entity, ultimately known as Le Tigre, and they released their self-titled debut on Mr. Lady Records and Videos (the Durham-based, multimedia label run by queer video artist/conceptual photographer Tammy Rae Carland and Kaia Wilson of the Butchies) in 1999. J.D. Samson, an integral part of Le Tigre 's live performances and accompanying slide-show from the beginning, formally joined the band for the recording of their second release 'From the Desk of Mr. Lady, ' and subsequent tours of the States, Europe and Japan.
In their departure from the traditional apparatus of punk rock and embrace of digital sampling technology, Le Tigre took their cue from the appropriation strategies of both feminist art (Sherrie Levine) and politically-minded rap (Public Enemy). Introducing Le Tigre in 1999, Johanna writes in issue 2 of the DHR zine mutated thievery (sampling as homage and mockery simultaneously) is the kind of music I want to make, and I recently discovered I like reading electronics manuals better than teaching myself how to play guitar. Making electronic music from a punk/feminist standpoint is a refusal to be ensnared in the conservative discourse that monitors genre and and assigns specific technologies to conceptual interests (as if equipment defines community).While hallmarks of their punk past (like two-chord or single-note guitar riffs) still surface in many tracks, it 's as likely to be an imperfectly looped guitar sample as it is an imperfectly played guitar. Although their electronic production has clearly evolved from their rudimentary starting point, the band 's cut-and-paste aesthetic has always been fueled by the desire to scavenge pop pleasure from the ideological wasteland of the mainstream and infuse it with radical values. The punk tradition of anti-mastery is still present in their urgent experimentation but there is no insistence on dischordance or minimalism in Le Tigre 's dancey hedonism.
The question of 'who does what ' in the band is difficult to describe concisely as Le Tigre seems to function as an open-ended collaboration with shifting roles. Each of the members is involved in the conceptual work and execution of ideas which includes tasks such as singing, sampling, choreography, playing guitar, trumpet, or keyboards, writing, and editing video (multi-media from it 's inception, Le Tigre, with the release of their new album 'Feminist Sweepstakes ' on Mr. Lady in the States, Chicks On Speed Records in Europe and Tilt in Australia and New Zealand, now plans to introduce video projection into their show).
Aside from touring extensively and writing their new full-length album Feminist Sweepstakes, 'the members of Le Tigre pursue individual projects. Kathleen is a featured vocalist on Trevor Jackson's Playgroup LP and will be writing music for a feminist dance-musical directed by Karen Sherman this Spring. Johanna recently designed the sound for experimental videomaker Cecilia Dougherty 's new, two-channel videotape Gone (which also includes the Le Tigre song My My Metrocard) and her solo project Swim With The Dolphins is featured on the compilation Tigerbeat6 INC.on Tigerbeat6 Records. J.D. Samson is a founding member of Dykes Can Dance, an underground dance troupe in which dance doubles as social action, instigating unnannounced, choreographed intervention (with styles varying from Hip Hop to country line dancing) in lesbian/queer spaces where dancing may be an unspoken obstacle for smooth communication.
We propose that what is experimental in art is inextricable from what is revolutionary politically. The Le Tigre sound touches on conceptual garage, digital anthemic, political sadness, unfinished sound tracks. Catchy or danceable moments are complicated by repetition in which flaws become apparent, piracy is obvious, or political content challenges the groove.With their new seven track EP, LE TIGRE picks up where they left off: buzzing guitars, chaotic gang vocals, low resolution samples and programmed beats reference their punk history and point the way to a feminist future without genre loyalties. While still taking full advantage of the rough edges, LE TIGRE's new songs are more structurally ambitious if not slicker. Political rage and activist disillusionment remain explicit and/or buried lyrical themes, but danceable beats and experimentation keep it weirdly unjaded. Iincludes an eerie broken-beat remix by Rachael Kovacs (Home Wrecker Foundation).
Here's what's been said about them:
- If the Shangri-Las were 90's punkettes with samples and drum machines,they'd be Le Tigre - Entertainment Weekly
- A contemporary version of punk inspired bands like The Slits & The Raincoats - Melody Maker
- Groovy like Luscious Jackson but with all the bile and screech of old skool riot bands - Time Out
- Kathleen Hanna does the unprecedented - if not, impossible - and reinvents punk again - Robert Christgau/Village Voice In response to the frequent request for a word or two about Riot Grrrl - what it was, what happened to it, where they stand in relation to it - Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman and J.D. Samson of Le Tigre will most likely shrug off a trip down memory lane and pick up where they left off in their long-standing discussion of an as-yet unmade conceptual art project entitled Riot Grrrl: the remixes. The idea, to reconstruct seminal Riot Grrrl and Queercore recordings as dance-floor hits, appeals to them as a way to traverse genre and critically reference the recent past of the influential underground scene that is inextricable from their personal histories as feminist artists. As an electronic act, the trio are interested in celebrating the radical aspirations of nineties DIY, feminist, punk art rather than romanticizing its achievements or clinging to its style. Kathleen Hanna, in regard to her image in the media as the angry lead singer of her former band Bikini Kill, remarks without a trace of nostalgia, I am interested in expanding notions of what it is to be a political artist rather than playing into 'women-in-rock' stereotypes of feminist rage.
The band's original three members (Kathleen, Johanna, and video artist Sadie Benning who has since left the band for the demands of her independent art career) are long-time friends who met in the early nineties, their paths crossing when Kathleen was touring with Bikini Kill, Sadie was screening her video work, and Johanna was writing and distributing fanzines. In 1998 Kathleen 's solo recording project 'Julie Ruin was released and, although living in different cities at the time, the three artists welcomed the opportunity to collaborate, and convened in New York City to put together a live act to tour the record. The project rapidly mutated into an entirely different entity, ultimately known as Le Tigre, and they released their self-titled debut on Mr. Lady Records and Videos (the Durham-based, multimedia label run by queer video artist/conceptual photographer Tammy Rae Carland and Kaia Wilson of the Butchies) in 1999. J.D. Samson, an integral part of Le Tigre 's live performances and accompanying slide-show from the beginning, formally joined the band for the recording of their second release 'From the Desk of Mr. Lady, ' and subsequent tours of the States, Europe and Japan.
In their departure from the traditional apparatus of punk rock and embrace of digital sampling technology, Le Tigre took their cue from the appropriation strategies of both feminist art (Sherrie Levine) and politically-minded rap (Public Enemy). Introducing Le Tigre in 1999, Johanna writes in issue 2 of the DHR zine mutated thievery (sampling as homage and mockery simultaneously) is the kind of music I want to make, and I recently discovered I like reading electronics manuals better than teaching myself how to play guitar. Making electronic music from a punk/feminist standpoint is a refusal to be ensnared in the conservative discourse that monitors genre and and assigns specific technologies to conceptual interests (as if equipment defines community).While hallmarks of their punk past (like two-chord or single-note guitar riffs) still surface in many tracks, it 's as likely to be an imperfectly looped guitar sample as it is an imperfectly played guitar. Although their electronic production has clearly evolved from their rudimentary starting point, the band 's cut-and-paste aesthetic has always been fueled by the desire to scavenge pop pleasure from the ideological wasteland of the mainstream and infuse it with radical values. The punk tradition of anti-mastery is still present in their urgent experimentation but there is no insistence on dischordance or minimalism in Le Tigre 's dancey hedonism.
The question of 'who does what ' in the band is difficult to describe concisely as Le Tigre seems to function as an open-ended collaboration with shifting roles. Each of the members is involved in the conceptual work and execution of ideas which includes tasks such as singing, sampling, choreography, playing guitar, trumpet, or keyboards, writing, and editing video (multi-media from it 's inception, Le Tigre, with the release of their new album 'Feminist Sweepstakes ' on Mr. Lady in the States, Chicks On Speed Records in Europe and Tilt in Australia and New Zealand, now plans to introduce video projection into their show).
Aside from touring extensively and writing their new full-length album Feminist Sweepstakes, 'the members of Le Tigre pursue individual projects. Kathleen is a featured vocalist on Trevor Jackson's Playgroup LP and will be writing music for a feminist dance-musical directed by Karen Sherman this Spring. Johanna recently designed the sound for experimental videomaker Cecilia Dougherty 's new, two-channel videotape Gone (which also includes the Le Tigre song My My Metrocard) and her solo project Swim With The Dolphins is featured on the compilation Tigerbeat6 INC.on Tigerbeat6 Records. J.D. Samson is a founding member of Dykes Can Dance, an underground dance troupe in which dance doubles as social action, instigating unnannounced, choreographed intervention (with styles varying from Hip Hop to country line dancing) in lesbian/queer spaces where dancing may be an unspoken obstacle for smooth communication.
