Pittsburgh, PA · harsh noise · power electronics

Black Leather Jesus

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Richard Ramirez's decades-deep harsh noise institution — stacked contact mics, feedback and leather-scene iconography, with a rotating cast of collaborators.

Black Leather Jesus began in Texas in 1989, formed by Richard Ramirez, one of the earliest American harsh noise artists. Ramirez fronts the project with his husband Sean E. Matzus, a partnership that runs through the group's history, and the name and themes were shaped in part by the real-life kidnapping of Colleen Stan.

The group operates with a shifting membership, often performing as a large ensemble in which each participant handles a stack of pedals, contact microphones and feedback sources; at one point the lineup swelled to fourteen people. The results favour long, slowly changing stretches of heavily distorted noise over anything song-based.

Its output runs to a very large number of releases on cassette, CD-R and vinyl, typically dense, unrelenting walls of distortion. Black Leather Jesus has traded collaborations and split releases with other noise figures including Merzbow, Incapacitants, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, The Haters and M.S.B.R.

Its artwork and titles draw on leather and gay fetish imagery, having moved over time from the war and violence themes common in noise music toward explicit S&M and gay pornography iconography. The project has since relocated near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Ramirez also runs the noise label Deadline Recordings. In 2007 the group opened for Sonic Youth in Marfa, Texas.

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harsh noisepower electronics