Curse Mackey is everywhere in the electronic-industrial underground. With his standing gig as vocalist of legendary collective Pigface, a DJ set at the Austin stop of the recent Wax Trax! documentary screening (complete with era-appropriate Ministry set) and an upcoming tour with My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult (with whom he performs as a periodic member), his immersion in rivethead culture has him primed to break out and create something true-to-form but excitingly fresh with his debut solo album Instant Exorcism. Ahead of its May 10th release, Mackey has shared "Somewhat Possessed," an instant dance-floor classic that comes with a fantastically eerie, darkly psychedelic video.
Sneering and direct, the track's stripped-down elements slither on and around each other as Mackey's voice stands steady in the middle of the storm. A driving industrial beat is the glue holding all the eclectic bits together, allowing room for interesting sampled accents and atmospheric haze to contract and expand at will.
"I wanted this song to measure up to the best industrial dance music ever made, songs I grew up on and used to spin the hell out of when I first started out as a DJ in Texas," explains Mackey. "Ministry's Twitch, Front 242's Headhunter, Skinny Puppy's ViviSectVI and the like, and basically create a song that would represent the next wave, a future forward version of that energy and aesthetic and have it sound absolutely massive on a nightclub sound system."
The video — directed by Rona Rougeheart of the band SINE — is a visual feast of acid-drenched imagery evocative of industrial dance music's grittily glamorous heyday, represents a melding of the physical and digital worlds through trippy scenes of strobe-lit darkroom terror and psychedelic tracers following Mackey every movement as he writhes about, remaining the clip's central focus.
"The video portrays me," he explains, "the protagonist if you will, in a schizophrenic, multiple personality environment which reflects how many people exist today. We have our online personas, our avatars, the person we reveal to our employer and co-workers, the person we are with family, friends and with significant others. In this digital age, sometimes we don't know who we are really talking to or who we really are," adding its appeal will be strongest for those who prefer a "dark, sexy fashionable, fetishistic somewhat supernatural aesthetic."
Instant Exorcism is out next Friday, May 10th. Pre-orders are available here, and Curse Mackey can be seen opening for My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult on the following dates.
05/05 Las Vegas, NV - Dive Bar
05/07 Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall
05/10 Portland,OR - Dante's
05/11 Seattle,WA - The Crocodile
05/14 Sacramento,CA - Harlow's
05/15 San Francisco,CA - DNA Lounge
05/16 San Jose,CA - The Ritz
05/28 Tucson,AZ - 191 Toole
05/30 San Antonio, TX - Industry
05/31 Austin,TX - Elysium
06/01 Houston,TX - Numbers
06/02 Dallas,TX - Trees
06/04 St. Louis,MO - Ready Room
06/05 Lawrence,KS - The Bottleneck
06/07 Denver,CO - Marquis Theater
06/09 Albuquerque,NM - Launchpad
06/11 Mesa,AZ - Club Red
06/13 Los Angeles,CA - 1720
06/14 Santa Ana,CA - La Santa
06/15 San Diego,CA - Brink by Brick
