The Mystere in Aggressive Aesthetics: a discussion with Heather Gabel of Chicago's HIDE

Chicago electronic/industrial duo HIDE shatters the air like glass. In their live shows, with freeze-frame strobe lights shuttering the stage and obscuring your view, Heather Gabel stands tall and shrouded with layers of snug-fitting black clothing, with her gritty lower-tone vocals alongside Seth Sher, who dominates his synths and drum machines performing clandestinely in the stage fog. Like a dangerous liaison, we want to participate — with anticipation and a little bit of fear. This is her first personal musical manifestation as she is known for her graphic designs for bands such as Rancid and Joan Jett. She also was married to Laura Jane Grace- formerly known as Tom Gabel, of the punk rock outfit Against ME!.  So she's not exactly new to the scene, just with this project. 

1-2-3-4 Go! Records show 2015 photo courtesy Ben Sizemore

The pair has only played in the Bay Area a handful of times thus far: Two years ago at Slim's and at at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records in Oakland and earlier in 2016 with the local ethereal noir duo Silence in the Snow at the Elbo Room followed by a second appearance in the east bay. Micah Danemeyer, one of our community's beloved mutants who was lost in the Ghost Ship fire, described them to me as "hard as nails" and said that their live show was "something to aspire to" when we were discussing HIDE at one of his own curated experimental dungeon raves, Obscura Machina. I interviewed Heather Gabel over the phone early this fall of 2016 while I was house sitting in Oakland.  I sat in the living room with walls decorated with hand painted portraits of zombies and shelves full of horror films. Gabel had just returned to Chicago from tour a few days before our phone call that afternoon.  

So you got a chance to perform at the Cold Waves festival [in Chicago] this year alongside Front 242 and Meat Beat Manifesto. That seems like an incredible fest to be at, let alone perform at.  

It was great! We played first … there were no other girls on the bill, which I thought was weird.

There rarely is.

It was a good time. I felt like I was in rare form. I was glad to be representing females, but also it was kind of annoying. [Cold Waves] do a good job of mixing new bands with old bands and they're picky, in a good way, about the curation of the sounds. So I get that if something doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. I don't know why I even noticed! Chicago has a rich history of industrial and there is always cool new shit going on. It never went away. 

I can see that. In the industrial realm, it's often a boys' club. 

I feel like in the underground there's a pretty strong queer presence, but I guess it's not like that everywhere. 

It seems like in the Bay Area there is definitely a resurgence of the darkwave/industrial genre. For a few years it was on a sort of garage, lo-fi, indie kick, and then this undertow of post-punk started taking hold. Needless to say, I was pleased about that!

Yeah! I used to live in Oakland and I would go to Dark Sparkle, but that place is gone now! I don't remember what venue it was at [Ed. Note: It was at Cafe du Nord], but it was great: you would go downstairs and it was like you were going into this French living room. I grew up in Detroit mostly and moved to Chicago to finish art school and then I moved to Oakland in 2003. Then I ended back up in Chicago about three years ago, just when the band started. 

How did HIDE start?

Originally it was three people: myself, my current bandmate Seth, and Brett Naucke. Brett is an electronic musician who was doing modular synth stuff and he was rad. Seth originally was a drummer, so this is his first band not doing drums. Seth wanted to do something different. He had just moved back here from Providence. Brett wanted to do a project and I wanted to do a project. I had never been in a band before. I'm a visual artist mostly, but I wanted to sing in a band, so I started singing in a band with them! Hahaha! Didn't know what the fuck I was doing! It was hard for all of us to get together to practice, though. Brett was getting really busy and it was easier for me and Seth to make the time, even though I had a daughter on top of that. The scheduling got kind of hairy, trying to get three people together. Brett had an album coming out that he was focusing on, so we sort of parted ways with him, and then Seth and I put out three singles and just started practicing and playing way more. A year later we did our full U.S. tour. 

photo courtesy by Carm from HIDE's Facebook page

So the Elbo Room was a part of this tour?

Yep, that was the last part of the tour. We had our EP come out. That was released in April. We toured a little bit in the East Coast. Then took a little break because I have a daughter. Then we went out again for the West Coast part. That tour was to support the EP called Flesh for the Living on the label Midwich. Jim Magas put it out. 

I really loved your show at the Elbo Room. It was really interesting because when you came out and did your first set, I thought about what my friend Micah (Obscura Machina) had said about you guys: "Hard as nails!" Your vocal style is kind of androgynous and your presence had this whole mystery. You were visually and emotionally captivating.

Thank you! It's pretty common for people to not know my gender when I'm performing. It's not something that I set out to do consciously, but a lot of what I am writing about and a lot of my inspiration comes from my own relationship with equal rights and gender identity and the way that those two things define who you are in society, the ideas that people have about you based on your gender. I'm pretty tall and I do have a deeper voice. I'm pretty into it. I think it's pretty interesting that people can't gender me. Not that I am interested in people trying to, but I do think it's cool that they can't right away, because it really doesn't matter if I'm male or female. I feel some sort of success in myself that my energy is not specifically female or male, because that isn't exactly how I feel — either female or male. I think that what a lot of people are responding to is the aggressive nature of the performance is maybe not energy that would readily equate with a woman. There are tons of powerful frontwomen, but I think maybe (the performance) is the throw off. 

photo courtesy Brooklyn Vegan

People are left in this suspended state of judgement … you came out with this sort of shroud, this veil over your face, and you're very tall and I couldn't tell if you were a she or a he but then I thought, "Oh, right, who cares? Why am I even wondering?" Maybe I was thinking it because you had such a mysterious persona.

 We're defininelty playing with (that concept) with the band name, the veil, the strobe lights; giving you "snips" of what's going on. Definitely trying to put the viewer in a place that is a little bit disorienting. 

Yes! Exactly. It's very cinematic. When did the strobe lights come into play? Have they always been there?

That's always been there! I'm kind of an insane person when it comes to the aesthetic because I am a visual artist and that's what I do. From the get-go I had this "black and white" vision, this stripped down thing that leaves more up to the viewer. Seth is a fog freak. I saw him play before and him using so much fog that I couldn't even tell that he was in the band. He over-fogs! But sometimes it works!

From the beginning — and knowing what we were and what we wanted people to get out of the live show — this is what we came up with: very minimal and something that we can easily control and it doesn't take up a lot of space and we don't need someone else to do it for us. We tour in my car and the light fits in the car and it's all good! We opened for Marilyn Manson for a couple weeks on our first tour [in 2014]. It was cool because we were playing really big places and [could] totally control the space and draw it down. In a basement or in a huge theatre, we can still sort of take people out of the space with the space that we are creating. 

Plus, you don't have to get anxiety about some guy trying to pull off this "look" for you and then you're getting distracted and all of that dumb avoidable stuff!

Our second or third show someone put a spotlight on me and I was so horrified! All the lights were up and the strobe was on, too, and I just turned around. I didn't know what to do. I had my eyes closed most of the time anyway, but I could definitely still tell the light was on me.

What were some of your musical influences for HIDE? Were you listening to something that sparked this? Have you always been into the industrial/darkwave scene?

 A lot of it has to do with it being Seth's first electronic project. First it was really about the drum programming, and I don't really like melody, so it became really stripped down. We figured out some sort of formula that works for us. Our first song we wrote and we really loved we realized, "Oh, shit, this is a CURE song already!" So we scrapped it and made something different. 

We have a lot of the same influences, Seth and I, but he's also really into high production and perfect sound and I like stuff that sounds like garbage. So we sort of have to come to our sound by accommodating and controlling (each others passions so to speak). He listens to everything! Metal, techno, all sorts of shit. He doesn't really like the stuff that I grew up with, the more traditional goth-industrial stuff. I mean, he does, but it's not what he grew up with. The common thread between what he likes and I like is aggression. There's some sample Seth wants to use and it's a Pantera riff, and then there's a Sisters of Mercy kick drum that I really like and we've sampled from. So we're coming from all different places. 

Well, it seems like coming from two opposite spectrums might make for something really interesting. Rather than just putting out another Ministry ripoff or Siouxsie ripoff. We want something new, but still in the same vein. 

Same spirit, but it's not "throw back-y" … that's just what we do and we play with all sorts of bands: punk, noise, whatever!

So I picked up your EP last time. Do you have other recordings in the mix? 

Yeah, we have a full length that was recorded in L.A. in February and we just finished the art for that LP. I'm pretty excited about it. I mean, this is my first band, so everything is pretty exciting for me!

I figured you were seasoned musicians! 

Seth has been in bands for a long, long time, and I worked for touring bands for a long time. So we both have experience in that world, but it's new for both of us in a lot of ways. We don't really have expectations. We just say, "Let's make this song, let's play this show." And plus we do other creative things on the side. 

It's like a labor of love rather than banking on it as a sort of "career move" or putting these super high expectations on what should become of this project. If something happens, great! If not, well, at least it's something you enjoy doing. 

Yes, yes, exactly. Honestly, I love touring and I would love to go to Europe and I want to keep touring in the States. If this was my full time job ... I'm just not sure if I am interested in that. 

It seems a little gnarly. 

Yeah, it can fuck everything up, I'm sure. I did it throughout my twenties, touring nine or ten months out of the year. It was rad, but it is also a fake world, a non-reality. You can't really integrate healthy relationships into it. When you are touring, (your tour mates)  become your family. I don't feel that that life is rewarding for me, also that was me working for somebody else. If it was my band then I might feel differently about it, but I know how it can fuck with your head. 

Random people everywhere, no showers, sleep deprivation. Who knows! 

I do love the part about planning a few days off in-between shows to for some crazy hike or just go and do what we want to do. It is really enjoyable. 

There's lots of symbolism in the band's logo. Tell me about it! 

It is the eye of Horus, this ancient Egyptian evil eye sort of concept. I incorporated it into the letters of our band. If it you look at it closely, it spells out "HIDE"! 

So you're looking for a label to put out your full length, when is the next time you're coming to see us in the Bay? 

We're going to be back sometime in the summer, regardless if the record is out by then or not.

Keep on top of their tour dates for 2017 via Facebook!

Here's their Bandcamp  and their label Midwich for more info, music and merch!