Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy
Rice started creating experimental noise recordings in 1975, drawing on his interest in tape machines and bubblegum pop sung by female vocalists such as Little Peggy March and Ginny Arnel. One of his earliest efforts consisted entirely of a loop of every time Leslie Gore sang the word "cry". After initially creating recordings simply for his own listening, he later started to give performances, and eventually make records. His musical project NON grew out of these early experiments; he reportedly selected the name because "it implies everything and nothing." [edit] Techniques and implementations From his earliest recordings, Rice has experimented with both sound and the medium through which that sound is conveyed. His methods of expanding upon the listening possibilities for recorded music were simple. On his second seven-inch, he had 2-4 extra holes punched into the record for "multi axial rotation". While working exclusively with vinyl, he employed locked grooves that allowed listeners to create their own music. He was one of the first artists, after John Cage, to treat turntables as instruments and developed various techniques for scratching. It is difficult to prove that Rice's turntablism preceded its connection to rap music. He was treating sounds from vinyl recordings as early as 1975. [edit] NON Under the name NON, originally with second member Robert Turman, Rice has recorded several seminal noise music albums, and collaborated with experimental music/dark folk artists like Current 93, Death In June and Rose McDowall. Most of his music has been released on the Mute Records label. Rice has also collaborated with Foetus, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis. His later albums have often been explicitly conceptual. On Might! (1995), Rice layers portions of "Ragnar Redbeard"'s Social Darwinist harangue, Might is Right over sound beds of looped noise and manipulated frequencies. 1997's God and Beast explores the intersection in the soul of man's physical and spiritual natures over the course of an album that alternates abrasive soundscapes with passages of tranquility. In 2006 Rice returned to the studio to record raw vocal sound sources for a collaboration with Industrial percussionist/ethnomusicologist Z'ev. Homelife He began a romantic relationship (now defunct) with Lisa Crystal Carver, editor of Rollerderby fame, resulting in several recordings, performances and a son named Wolfgang. Although Rice was sometimes reported as to possess the world's largest Barbie collection, he recently confessed in an interview with Brian M. Clark to owning a mere two. Boyd currently is involved in a Tiki Lounge in Denver, Colorado, which bears his name as Tiki Boyds. Boyd has long expressed a love of Tiki culture, in somewhat sharp perspective to the other elements of his public persona.