GAS MASK HORSE listed amongst noise concrete crushers, PANICSVILLE and prog/afro/synth/percussion maestro PSYCHIC STEEL! Just some of the attractions at 2012 BITCHPORK FESTIVAL!!! Follow the link to featured article in Chicago Reader!
Gas Mask Horse “COAT OF HARMS” 2 color stencil
Full Moon Hysteria
“Start Your Own Haunted House” Zine Review from Maximum Rock N Roll Issue #348 May 2012
zine reviews by Billy!! G.M.H. “Start your own Haunted House” is reviewed on video!
Prepare yourself for Ghoulcore! I mean, I invent genres all the time, so who am I to argue with Gas Mask Horse about this? According to The Whistler this is a one time only deal so don’t just sit there. What is it? Well, it promises fake blood and real sweat, so there’s that.
Josh Piotrowski approaches his noise project, Gas Mask Horse, with a great sense of humor. For his first set, at the Whistler in November 2010, he took inspiration from a south-side haunted house he and some friends had been running for five years—he incorporated props from the house, including a homemade corpse with a skull carved from a Styrofoam wig head, which was wired with optical theremins and contact mikes. He even gave his music a ridiculous name—ghoulcore. “It seems like everybody’s making up genres,” he says. “I had to make up something.”
Piotrowski has since put out three cassettes as Gas Mask Horse. In January he posted the most recent, Full Moon Hysteria, for free download on Bandcamp, but he waited till this month—after he’d gotten the tape’s artwork from Spanyurd bassist Joe Conserti, aka Kelly Sylvester Robertson—to announce an official release. Piotrowski has assembled a doozy of a package: a handmade wooden box that contains not just the tape but also a coupon for a copy of his zine Start Your Own Haunted House, a logo pin and sticker, a poster, and a “satchel of famed dream inducer, mugwort.”
The packaging and artwork for Full Moon Hysteria reflect the nightmarishness of Piotrowski’s music, which combines creepy distorted synths, pummeling punk drumming, curtains of noise and feedback, field recordings of someone walking through a forest, and readings from the Haunted House zine. (Loop pedals help him do everything at once.) Since 2002 Piotrowski has fronted hardcore band Disrobe, whose guitarist Rick Ponce died of colon cancer in 2010. His death is part of what drove Piotrowski to run with his haunted-house concepts. “Rick was a total horror nut, and I wish he would just be around for this shit,” he says.
Piotrowski is selling the Full Moon Hysteria package only at shows (he’s got one at a DIY space on Wed 4/25—e-mail gasmaskhorse1@clear.net for details). And any day now he plans to start offering another Gas Mask Horse product. He’s calling it “scaryaki,” and it’s a teriyaki sauce made with the fiendishly spicy bhut jolokia—better known as ghost peppers.
SCARYAKI SAUCE BY GAS MASK HORSE! WITH BHUT JOLOKIA PEPPERS! ALSO KNOWN AS GHOST PEPPERS!!! Free at shows while interest lasts, OOPS i mean while supplies last. Sesame oil, ginger, garlic, 1 dehydrated ghost pepper, 1 re-hydrated ghost pepper, soy sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch and cold water dissolved together, then mixed in. stir til appropriate thickness is reached. BEWARE!
Chicago Zine Fest 2012 Video. At 1 minute and 45 seconds, catch a glimpse of Gas Mask Horse holding a skull prop that can be made following the project in “Start Your Own Haunted House” by Gas Mask Horse!
Have you ever wondered - “How can i turn this boring, open space into an unrelenting cavalcade of mind-bending proportions?” Well friend, with “START YOUR OWN HAUNTED HOUSE” by Gas Mask Horse the wait is over! This 24 page informative tome is xeroxed, stapled and comes with a FREE GIFT! You will read stories of legend and grandeur from Chicago’s longest running truly independent haunted house! You WILL learn methods of creation for various props! But possibly most important of all, YOU WILL BE TERRIFIED!!
“The lights came down to half burn, and a distorted sample from local favorite H.G. Lewis’ “Wizard of Gore” filled the air, a performer approached a bare bones trap kit consisting of only a snare drum, high hats, a crash cymbal and a bass drum supported by cinder blocks. The only other visible instrumentation was seeming to come from within a horrific ghoul prop on stage. Candles, various incenses and a pervading obsessive, ritualistic focus, the performance entranced senses including sight, sound and scent, I feel obliged to say that it was an unnervingly, mood altering experience that I will not soon forget.”
Harvested 15” speaker and horn from 1960’s ALLIED RADIO CORPORATION speaker cabinet. Built here in Chicago, torn apart here in Chicago, IN AN ALLEY IN BROAD DAYLIGHT - with Hammer, Flathead and Phillips screwdrivers. Stay tuned for rewiring and/or non-newtonian fluid monsters!
The development of a pattern in sand (step by step).
