"Whitehouse were an English band formed in 1980, largely credited for the founding (and naming) of the power electronics subgenre of industrial music. Their own name was chosen both in mock tribute to the British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, and in reference to a British pornographic magazine. They were known for their controversial lyrics and imagery, which portrayed sadistic sex, rape, misogyny, serial murder, eating disorders, child abuse, neo-nazi fetishism and other forms of violence and abjection. They emerged as earlier industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK were pulling back from noise and extreme sounds and embracing relatively more conventional musical genres. In opposition to this trend, Whitehouse wanted to take these earlier groups' sounds and extreme subject matter even further, wishing to 'cut pure human states' and 'creating a sound that could bludgeon an audience into submission'. In doing so, they drew inspiration from some earlier experimental musicians, artists, and writers such as Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and the Marquis de Sade.
The group's founding member and sole constant was William Bennett. He began as a guitarist for 'Essential Logic', later recording solo as 'Come' (featuring contributions from the likes of Daniel Miller and J. G. Thirlwell) before forming Whitehouse. The band began performing live in 1982, with members Andrew McKenzie (The Hafler Trio) and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound). In 2009, Bennett claimed that his pre-eminent inspiration was Yoko Ono: 'Yoko's amazing music was by far the biggest influence on me, and Whitehouse, in the formative years (despite what some would have you believe)'. Philip Best joined the project in 1982 at the age of 14 after running away from home, remaining for the band's tenure. They were inactive for the second half of the 1980s, and even temporarily split. Eventually, they re-emerged with a series of albums recorded by the American audio engineer Steve Albini, who worked with them from 1990-1998, after which Bennett took over all production duties. Through the 90s the most stable line-up was Bennett, Best, and the writer Peter Sotos. Sotos left in 2002. Bennett terminated Whitehouse in 2008 to concentrate on his 'Cut Hands' project. He also has found success as an Italo disco DJ under the name 'DJ Benetti'.
The signature sonic elements on their early recordings were simple, pulverizing electronic bass tones twinned with needling high frequencies, sometimes combined with ferocious washes of white noise, with or without vocals (usually barked orders, sinister whispers, and high-pitched screams). In the early 1990s they phased out the analog equipment responsible for this sound, instead relying more heavily on computers. From 2000 they began incorporating percussive rhythms, sometimes from African instruments such as the djembe, both sampled and performed in-studio. Whitehouse were a key influence in the development of noise music as a distinct genre in Europe, Japan, the U.S., and essentially the world."
