A Lexington noise trio working since 2001: rock instrumentation pushed through electronics into a demonic wall, and a key band of the Wolf Eyes / Hanson generation of American noise.
Hair Police is the American noise band formed in Lexington, Kentucky, in January 2001, and the Bureau files it at Tier III as a key act of the 2000s American noise scene. After some early line-up changes the group settled as the trio of Mike Connelly on guitar, vocals, tapes and noise, Robert Beatty on electronics and Trevor Tremaine on drums, vocals and tapes, and that core has carried the band since.
The sound takes the traditional rock trinity of guitar, bass and drums and runs it through power electronics, tape manipulation and oscillators until it becomes a demonic wall, a result that listeners have set beside Throbbing Gristle, early Black Dice and Wolf Eyes. Connelly's unhinged vocal performance is the band's signature, screams and rasps that move between the cries of victim and villain, and on the later records the last vestiges of rock fall away toward an industrial, horror-soundtrack atmosphere built on Beatty's textured electronics.
The band sits squarely on the Wolf Eyes and Hanson Records axis that defined American noise in the decade. Connelly joined Wolf Eyes in 2005 before stepping back to focus on Hair Police and his solo Failing Lights, and the members have moved through Burning Star Core and other Midwest projects, tying the group into the network around Aaron Dilloway and that scene. The records have appeared on Gods of Tundra, Hanson, Troubleman Unlimited, Load and Hospital Productions.
The catalogue runs from the opening History of Ghost Dad cassette and the early, gloriously cacophonous years documented on the C. Spencer Yeh-edited Hair Police '01-'02 through to the restraint and horror-atmosphere of Mercurial Rites. The Bureau files Hair Police at Artists · Tier III as one of the defining bands of the Wolf Eyes generation and a clear case of rock form dismantled into noise.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene