- With manic vocal manipulation and sharp lyricism, Hood By Air founder Shayne Oliver revives the classic GHE20G0TH1K sound on his provocative debut EP as LEECH.
- For the better part of two decades, the designer, DJ and producer Shayne Oliver has cultivated a following of young and restless art obsessives by channeling queer expression and assertive femininity into his most celebrated projects—the fashion label Hood By Air and the incendiary mid-'10s party GHE20G0TH1K. His vision has taken on everything as tame as boys wearing dresses to as risqué as models slathered in fake semen. Sonically, the now-defunct party (where he was resident DJ) offered an authentic depiction of the New York queer experience at the time, blending genres like ballroom, Jersey club, hip-hop and punk into weekly nights of revelry and chaos. On his debut EP as LEECH, HEADLESS, you can hear traces of the radical GHE20G0TH1K sound he helped usher into the DIY clubs of New York, but it's no longer 2012. In the tradition of trans pop artists like Arca and SOPHIE, HEADLESS topples the binary using transgressive tools like intense vocal manipulation and confrontational, sexed-up lyrics.
Anonymous Club, Oliver's post-HBA project, was officially launched in 2020 with a music video for the debut LEECH single, "In The Mood," which appears on HEADLESS. The atmosphere is intense: Oliver's vocals are pitched all the way up as he announces that he "was in the mood," a statement repeated endlessly with a teasing cadence. Sound effects fire off like gunshots as the club effectively transforms into a war zone. In the accompanying video, Oliver is depicted in a blonde wig, and his face, coated in white powder, is digitally contorted into a permanent, deranged smile. His facial features vanish at one point, dissolving into what appears like a pulsing AI-rendered image of a thumb. The visuals both sound and look deliciously genderless.
Less known about Oliver is his early involvement in the House Of Ninja, a ballroom house featured in the classic 1990 New York ballroom documentary Paris Is Burning. "The Ninja people were all offbeat and not glamor kids," he told The New Yorker in 2016. During the ballroom competitions he participated in as a teenager, Oliver would put on eclectic looks that "swayed between 'vogue femme' and 'runway.'"
His vocals are layered like flashy costumes on HEADLESS, distorted and spliced into nonsensical configurations, shot up into chipmunk land or thrust manically downward. On "Freak," when a squeaky Oliver howls "Fre-e-e-a-a-k!," the declaration is sideswiped by static and gurgles. He settles back into his natural voice, repeating the phrase finally like a knockout punch.
The record's aggressive style recalls deconstructed club, a now-controversial term for the abrasive dance music that took cues from ballroom, industrial music, grime and East Coast club in the early-to-mid-'10s, popularized at New York parties like GHE20G0TH1K. HEADLESS freshens up this sound with the noir-ish influence of '80s post-punk and industrial, which in turn amps up the record's sensuality. On "Play A Game," where minor chord synths simmer below dark electro beats, guitars screech and frisky banter is dished out through heated whispers. "You wanna claim I'm wrong?" Oliver growls, his voice suddenly subterranean and impish. Then, a clear, tortured voice slices through the chorus: "If you've ever lost someone / You can imagine the stakes."
There was once a time when GHE20G0TH1K dominated New York's queer nightlife scene. Today, there is a fresh crop of subversive queer parties like Discakes, Body Hack, Gush and Dick Appointment that have filled the void left by the party, and Oliver reaches out to new talent on HEADLESS instead of resting on his laurels. He recruits Deli Girls vocalist Danny Orlowski on "Confessions," a sinister club track with animalistic roars and clattering metal. Maintaining HEADLESS's queer ferocity, Oliver insists through whispered hisses, "I'm the queen of the —," an incomplete sentence to which Orlowski spits back, "I'm the king of the —." Elsewhere, Oliver taps Virginian SoundCloud rapper Babyxsosa for an appearance on the record's highlight, "Coochie Coo."
The song's gibberish lyrics lock in at the chorus with Oliver's satisfying and chant-like alliteration: "Oochie coochie coo / Coochie coo, coo coo coo coo / I will never / Ooh, ooh, ooh ooh ooh." Although, at times, the track sounds like it's pummeling your eardrums, grime basslines and chirping bleeps move across the soundscape in a playful prance. By the bridge, Babyxsosa chimes in with her light, girlish sound: "Buckle up, up, up I'm on a highway / He gon' drive me crazy like a loose train / I'm going sideways, I'm on a highway." It's an exceptional track on a debut EP that feels radical, chaotic and at times almost offensively sexy—descriptors that have come to define Oliver's work since he first ruffled the feathers of the fashion world with his former HBA brand.
Tracklist01. Freak
02. Confessions
03. Razor Blade
04. Play A Game
05. Coochie Coo
06. In The Mood