Hunting Lodge - Will (1983) [Remastered 2015]

During some brief encounters in 1981 behind the counter at Full Moon Records in Port Huron, Michigan, record store clerk (and member of local “industrial” band Hate/Grey) Lon Diehl started receiving tapes of self-made amp-noise, feedback and field recordings adorned with disturbing medical images entitled “Screw Machine” from regular customer Richard Skott. Instantly, Diehl and Skott struck up a friendship over their appreciation of Throbbing Gristle, SPK and Dome. During this time, Diehl was producing the music fanzine “Smarm”, but due to the sudden change of artistic direction and collaboration, both Diehl and Skott started a new imprint which would become the legendary S/M Operations, home to their new experimental/ industrial project Hunting Lodge.

Hunting Lodge’s initial foray into musical performance during the Summer of 1982 involved both members to enlist the assistance of Karl Nordstrom, while Nordstrom’s brother Thomas aided the band in their visual art realizations. Soon after, Hunting Lodge played their first show on September 9, 1982 at the now infamous Harrington Ballroom in Port Huron which was released as a private edition cassette that same year. After this performance, Hunting Lodge recorded their much-coveted “23 Minutes of Murder” cassette, though soon thereafter Karl Nordstrom left the band, leaving the line up to consist of the original core two members.

Upon the request of Andreas Muller of the German label Datenverarbeitung to record extra material for the Exhumed cassette, Hunting Lodge started to regularly record material and in the coming months would pull together tracks that would become their first full-length album entitled “Will”. Drawing references from Crowley, Nietzsche and G. Gordon Liddy, Hunting Lodge collaged together industrial percussion patterns, live recordings, early sketches and synthesized noise into nine compositions which also included vocal appearances by Andreas Muller, Francisco Lopez and Masami Akita a.k.a. Merzbow. The final product would serve as a blueprint for later generations of industrial noise music and plant the influential seed for the years later Michigan noise output.

Dais Records is proud to release the official vinyl reissue of Hunting Lodge “”Will”. Fully remastered to its original sonic standards by Michael Rozon. Each copy comes with a MP3 download card which contains a remastered unedited version of the album.