Live with No Rules

The last time I saw Vice Cooler, mastermind behind one-man
electro-punk act Hawnay Troof, he was hugging and kissing all the young
folks (this writer included) standing in the front row of an all-ages
hardcore show. Cooler was dishing out the Xs and Os midsong, in between
shrieking and leaping around the floor with his spazzy hardcore band,
XBXRX. This sort of public display could seem contrived or cheesy (like
the jockish pep-rallying of “posi-core”), but Cooler’s unbridled
enthusiasm and affection seemed like just the genuine outpouring of
emotion from someone whose life was saved by punk rock.

Born Christiana Vincent Richards-Touchstone in Mobile, Alabama, in
1984, Cooler found salvation in punk at age 13, when he saw Unwound,
Deerhoof, and This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, and decided to start his own
band, XBXRX. Parents of the world just don’t understand, but some
parents understand less than others.

“I was raised by pretty extreme and strange Christian parents,” says
Cooler from on tour in Berlin. “We weren’t allowed to watch Fresh
Prince (’cause it was a ‘black’ TV show) or The Simpsons (because it ‘destroyed family values’), but we were allowed to play
with realistic toy rifles and machine guns. My favorite band was
Nirvana, [but] I wasn’t allowed to listen to them because Kurt Cobain
did an interview with the Advocate. My family thought he was
satanic and evil.

“But I never believed in those ideals. I was searching for
something—similar to the way Christians describe looking for and
then finding God­—to give life meaning. What I found was
acceptance, hope, and what I feel is the correct and respectable way to
live, through the punk scene.”

Indeed, Cooler took to punk prolifically and with an almost
born-again zeal. By the time he turned 15, his band had recorded two
DIY albums, Greatest and Love Songs for the Blind. By the
time he turned 17, XBXRX had recorded a “proper” album, Gop Ist
Minee, with Steve Albini, released it on defunct Kill Rock Stars
subsidiary 5RC, and toured with inspirations Deerhoof and Unwound as
well as Dischord band Q and Not U. Around this time, Cooler moved to
Oakland, California, taking up residency at a warehouse space dubbed
Club Hot!

“I moved to California from Alabama as soon as I could,” Cooler
recalls. “I identified more with the people who lived there than with
the bitter and aggressive people in the South.”

At age 19, Cooler began recording as Hawnay Troof (originally billed
as Da Hawnay Troof on debut CD Who Likes Ta?), a one-man lo-fi
electro act fueled by (computer sequencing program) Fruityloops and
dedicated to the down and dirty. The name is a cartoonish Southern
drawl of “the horny truth,” the debut’s title track asked, “Who likes
to fuck?” and follow-up full-length Get Up! Resolution: Love! featured songs like “Boyz Get Hard” and “Dry Hump 2002.” These records
are fun and sometimes funny, suitable for filing alongside fellow Bay
Area raunchers Zeigenbock Kopf or Gravy Train!!!!, but Hawnay Troof was
by no means a joke.

“I never meant for my records to be novelties,” says Cooler.
“[Those] first two releases came from a Southern teenager with a lot of
repressed sexual feelings. The idea behind the records was that through
expression I could create a fun way for other teenagers to have
something to hold on to and not feel as strange. I used to play in
underwear, ’cause I thought that it would be this liberating thing for
people to see. But then I sort of turned into this clown character for
a lot of people.”

He adds, “This was a good two years before electroclash and all of
that shit hit the fan and made what I do look less legit.”

As Cooler approached, then eclipsed, drinking age and toured the
world with both XBXRX and Hawnay Troof (travels documented in the
Dollar and Deed Tour photo book), his lyrical horizons naturally
expanded.

“I try to write about whatever is going on with me at that time,” he
says. “The first album is about sex, for what it is, [2005’s] Community is about alienated kids, [2006’s] Dollar and
Deed is about travel and growing up, [2008’s] Islands of
Ayle is about the feelings and emotions behind one-night stands,
heartbreak, moving forward, and feeling empowerment through those
things.”

So, too, have his production skills progressed from early
experiments, which leaned clumsily on easily identifiable punk-rock
samples and rudimentary beats, to the more finessed but still frenetic
style of Islands of Ayle.

“The songs on the first EP were made the first day that I
ever used Fruityloops,” Cooler admits. “Working on Ayle, I
borrowed a synth from a friend of mine [and] realized that I had never
had any bass lines. I had never used equalizers, compressors, or
effects on any of my past albums. I revisited my old albums while
mixing this one and was really embarrassed at the quality of the mixing
and recordings.”

Ayle‘s 13 tracks range easily from classic boom-bap to G-funk
synth melodies to glitchy sample-mangling to upbeat club bounce.
“Underneath the Ocean” marries a tense bass pulse to a melancholic
female vocal melody. The spare verses of “Two Week Bruise” erupt into
choruses of dizzy vocal gibberish. “The Gods Are Crazy” pins the
Pixies’ “Hey” to eerie electro R&B. “Out of Teen Revisited” updates
a Dollar and Deed track (featuring Jenny Hoyston of Erase
Errata) with eight-bit synth bleeps and white-noise beats.

Throughout, Cooler raps with cadences that fall somewhere between
the drill-
sergeant breakdowns of hardcore, the
motivational
rhymes of MC Hammer, and the breathless, too-many-syllables-per-beat
sputtering of Cooler’s anticon or Definitive Jux contemporaries.

“I never claimed to be an MC,” says Cooler. “I look at what I do
vocally [as] closer to musicians like BARR or Kate Nash than Juvenile.
But I guess since I can’t really sing and it comes across as fast
talking, it could get confusing for people.”

Not at all confusing, though, are Hawnay Troof’s live shows, which
may no longer feature near-nudity, but still showcase Cooler’s insane
live-wire energy and undeniably sincere positive vibes.

“The idea is to express real feelings and hope that it identifies
with someone,” says Cooler. “I want people to leave our shows feeling
good and happy. I feel like I was bummed out so much growing up, that
now it’s my job to try to save kids from feeling the way I did.”