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Music of Cruelty / Jared Artaud

Interview with the musician and producer

Keeping alive the spirit of Minimal Wave and disseminating the legacy of Alan Vega of Suicide, Jared Artaud is a figure who, through both poetry and music, preserves the archetype of the intellectual rockstar. In this interview, between the archival material he curates and his innumerable collaborations with contemporary creatives including Hedi Slimane, we dissected the multiplicity of interests that define this multifaceted character, who inhabits the streets of our times like a decadent poète maudit.

Artaud is certainly a surname that rings a bell in relation to the Theatre of Cruelty. What kind of intellectual bond do you share with Antonin? Is there a particular connection between your work and his that you wanted to evoke by adopting this name?

At the time I was starting out I was trying to find my own identity. Changing my last name felt intentional. I was looking for reference points that were anchors. The band name The Vacant Lots came from William Burroughs, so I was already thinking in that same vein of writers when it came to choosing a name. Back then I was reading a lot of 19th and 20th century French writers, particularly the Surrealists. André Breton, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Paul Éluard. I was obsessed with Maldoror. I liked the way those writers pushed language into a darker psychological zone. When I came across Artaud, something about the intensity of the work resonated with me. I also liked the way the name looked and sounded. I wouldn’t say I was directly influenced by his writing, but the inner landscape he was exploring and the idea of beauty and violence existing together stayed with me. I was interested in how art could take something painful and turn it into something beautiful. I was writing a lot, constantly filling up notebooks with lyrics and ideas, and I began to realize how much the subconscious drives the work. A lot of it seemed to come from somewhere instinctive rather than something I was consciously thinking about. That intensity Artaud was exploring felt connected to the same territory. Over the years it’s been strange seeing how those instincts play out. When The Vacant Lots first started touring my guitar playing was more physical and violent. I’ve broken guitars and glass, and bled on stage. I remember showing Alan Vega photos from a tour where my hands were all cut up and covered in blood from playing, fueled by amphetamines and alcohol, and he just said, “that’s fucking beautiful, man.” He was one of the few people who didn’t think I was crazy. Looking back it all connects now in a way I didn’t understand then. Back then it was mostly intuition. I just wanted a name that had deep roots, something that connected to a lineage of writers and ideas, and also to the lineage of rock ’n’ roll I believed in. I remember one night in Montreal with Brian (MacFadyen), we had taken some biker speed and stayed up all night. At some point, when the sun was coming up, I realized that if you take the first three letters of Arthur and the last three letters of Rimbaud’s name you get Artaud. At that point it felt like some strange cosmic sign.

You founded The Vacant Lots as a project that has always felt immersed in minimal waves. When you started, what was the urgency? What is the driving force behind the project today?

From the beginning it was just me and Brian. As much as we wanted to have a four-piece band like The Velvet Underground or Television, it just never worked out. Instead of adding more people, we added more roles and responsibilities to the two of us. The focus shifted to working within limitations, and from the limitations we imposed on ourselves, we discovered how liberating that could be. We developed this mantra: ‘minimal means maximum effect,’ and it’s stayed with us for fifteen years. At that time I had recently dropped out of college to form a band. It’s all I wanted to do. I had a strong vision for how the band should sound and what the artwork should look like. I was obsessed with the work. The urgency was about trying to find our own sound and fill a void. That idea was part of what the name The Vacant Lots meant to me. When we were making our first album Departure I honestly thought it might be the last record we ever made. Not just because of the pills I was abusing then and my perspective on life, but because I had this strange, haunting feeling that my time was limited. I thought I was going to die. That created a certain pressure to work and create. For me art has always felt like a race against time. It’s about exchanging ideas and executing them in time and space, documenting something that hopefully lasts forever. Now, years later, the drive is still there but the pace is different. We’re more intentional about what we do and when we do it. We’re giving ourselves more time to write the next album. For now, our last record Interiors holds up.

The title of the album Interzone suggests a place between realities, while its naming hints at Joy Division. Do you recognise that lineage, or do you resist it? Decades after their production, what does the interzone represent today?

For Interzone I wanted to go back to Burroughs. But like with a lot of our lyrics there’s usually more than one meaning. That idea of existing between two different zones always resonated with me. At the time I was thinking a lot about the balance between internal and external space. How you navigate the inner world while dealing with reality outside of you, and how you reconcile those internal and external struggles. How do you deal with loss and still find a way to give meaning to your life? The aim was through darkness, light. The Joy Division reference was intentional too. Joy Division is like an archetype now. What always spoke to me about that band is the idea of beauty that comes from darkness or loss. The music is intense and the production on those albums is so atmospheric, but for me the deeper connection is in the spirit of the music and the lyrics, and in the way the lyrics are like poetry. Interzone was an important record for us because it expanded the sound and dynamics of the band. Conceptually it became a kind of bridge that connected where we had been as a band with where we were going. That idea carried forward into Closure and eventually Interiors. In a way those records are all exploring that same territory between the internal and external zones. The challenge now is where the fuck do we go from here, but I have a number of new songs that could work well for the next album, so we’ll see.

Like many musicians before you, such as Verlaine and Hell, poetry has become part of your language through publications such as Empty Space and Tomorrow. Has writing become a ritual that feeds your music? When you assemble words, are you searching for rhythm in the same way you search for it in sound?

Writing and music have always been a way of trying to get closer to the truth for me. In some ways it’s more of a spiritual process. Poetry actually came first. I was writing from a young age, long before I ever picked up a guitar. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was eighteen. That process hasn’t really changed. For each album I fill up notebooks with ideas, lyrics, and fragments of writing. At the same time I’m working on music and mapping out eight songs. 

Eventually the two begin to connect. It’s almost like forensic work, assembling the pieces until the words and sound lock together. There’s a lot of experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. My writing style has always been fragmented. Sometimes you have to construct something, deconstruct it, and put it back together in a different way. Not everything works with music, so I end up with a lot of leftover ideas and lines that didn’t make it into the album. I’m working on a new poetry book now called Exit Strategy. I want to eventually release it with my first two books.

Now moving toward Alan Vega: what is your first memory of him? And of Suicide?

The first time I heard Suicide it almost felt like a religious experience. Up to that point my holy family of bands were The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Spacemen 3, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Jesus and Mary Chain. When I heard Suicide it felt like this bridge between everything I loved. In my mind, it was like The Velvet Underground and The Stooges had fucked and given birth to the ultimate rock ’n’ roll band. What really hit me was realizing what was possible with music. Before that I didn’t really think of music in terms of endless possibilities, but discovering Suicide and Kraftwerk around the same time completely changed my perspective. The way Suicide merged punk and disco really opened things up for me. For me Suicide are like The Beatles. The first time I met Alan was at his apartment in New York before soundcheck when we were on tour with Dean Wareham. It was a few years before he passed away. I remember being terrified to meet him. I thought he was going to open the door with chains or some shit. But we ended up forming a really close friendship over those few years. That started a cycle of me going over there as much as I could, trying to learn as much as possible and getting to know him on a more intimate level. He became a kind of mentor to me. It’s hard to explain, but when I met Alan it felt like I had already known him for years.

In the track “Suicide Note,” crystal-like keyboards encounter the echo of an old recording of Vega himself: a sermon filtered through synthesisers. How do you orchestrate archival material into a new production without freezing it in time? When you unite your music with his voice, do you feel that you share the same urgencies? What unites you so deeply with him?

This was one of my earliest experiences going into the Vega Vault and working with archival material. Originally Alan was supposed to come into the studio to record vocals for our second album Endless Night. My last memories of him were going over to his apartment to play him the mixes for the record. We also spent hours listening to Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and Coltrane together. He was already developing ideas for lyrics, but he passed away before that could happen. Liz Lamere, Alan’s longtime creative collaborator and wife, later told me that when Alan was in the hospital he kept saying, “are they waiting for me?” She said he meant us waiting for him to record. After he passed, we honored his intention of being on the record by going into the Vega Vault and finding recordings that could live inside the track. When Liz and I placed his vocals from two different unreleased songs into the music, it connected almost immediately. The timing felt surreal. We adjusted a few small things, but mostly left it as it was. That’s part of the magic of Alan’s work. His recordings often feel formless, like they exist outside of a rigid structure, so they can move between different pieces of music in unexpected ways. When I work on Alan’s material I try to treat it with the same honesty and intention that I would give my own music. I don’t try to force anything. The goal is to elevate what is already there and find the right balance. There’s a connection I feel with Alan and with his work that’s hard to explain. It’s partly artistic and partly spiritual. Intuition and instinct guide a lot of that process. Alan left behind a huge amount of work, and Liz and I are carefully going through it all to decide what should be released. Right now we’re working on a new album of previously unheard recordings called Ascension Dive. I still haven’t fully recovered from losing him, but over time you learn how to live with that kind of loss. Spiritually it becomes part of you.

How did you approach the responsibility of producing the album Mutator, the lost album by Vega. How do you decide where to intervene and where to remain invisible? Did you ever feel you were negotiating with history?

Producing Mutator was the first time I really had the responsibility of making decisions about Alan’s work at a high level. From the overall sound and arrangements to the mixing and production. I take working on Vega’s music very seriously. When I was in the studio I almost felt like Alan was over my shoulder saying, “that shit is fucking great, keep going,” and, “hey, don’t fuck with that”. It felt like constantly wrestling with that duality, what would hold up if Alan were actually in the room. Would he like it or not? There’s a lot of restraint involved in that process. Most of the material he left behind was unfinished and unmixed, but I follow a strict code when working on it. The goal is to serve the song, treat and balance the sounds and vocals, and bring what he created thirty years ago into the present without losing the spirit of it. I try to keep him very close to me when I’m working, almost like he’s still guiding the process. Working with Liz Lamere is essential to that. She spent more than thirty years with Alan and worked with him constantly in the studio, so between the two of us we have a strong sense of what he would have liked and what he wouldn’t. Liz and I mix and produce the records coming out of the Vega Vault as part of The Vega Vault Project that we spearhead together. Mutator and Insurrection both came from that process. It’s encouraging when people respond to the work. Iggy Pop played “Samurai” from Mutator and “Mercy” from Insurrection on his BBC 6 Music show and said some powerful things about the music. Henry Rollins also told me he really liked how Mutator sounded mixed. That meant a lot coming from people like that. At the end of the day my goal is simple. I’m just trying to carry Alan’s legacy forward and treat the work with respect, grace and gratitude. The question I keep asking myself is: if Alan were here, would he be proud of this? I’m grateful to be part of the work he left behind decades ago.

by Godlis
by Chris Hogge
by Dari Mos

With Surrender, the only official compilation of Suicide, what was your North Star throughout the process of creative direction? What guided you in shaping the narrative of such a radical body of work? And visually, what helped you achieve a cohesive identity?

I was actually surprised that Suicide had never released a proper compilation before. Considering how influential the band is, it felt important to create something that gave people a glimpse into the full scope of their work. I worked with Martin Rev and Henry Rollins on curating the songs, and the idea was to shape a narrative that moved through the different sides of the band. One of the things I wanted to emphasize was the other side of Suicide. A lot of people associate the band with the darker material such as “Frankie Teardrop” or “Ghost Rider,” but there’s also this incredibly beautiful and almost heavenly dimension to their music. Songs like “Surrender” and “Cheree” reveal that side. I wanted the compilation to balance those extremes and show the full emotional range of what Alan and Martin created. Visually, we tried to reflect that idea as well. Working with Michael Handis on the artwork and Douglas Hart on the videos, the intention was to bring out that more celestial aspect of their music rather than focusing only on the blood and punk mythology. When you open the vinyl, you see your own reflection in the metallic portraits of Alan and Martin, which creates a kind of direct connection with the listener. I wanted to call the album Committed but that got shot down by the higher-ups pretty quickly. Creative direction has become one of my main responsibilities working with the Alan Vega and Suicide estates. The goal is not just to preserve the legacy but to keep pushing the visual and artistic identity forward. That extends beyond records into other areas as well. Recently I’ve also been involved in fashion collaborations connected to music with designers such as Rick Owens, Prada, Dries Van Noten and Celine. For me it’s all part of continuing the cultural legacy of the music while respecting what Alan and Martin created.

Among your collaborations, the one with Hedi Slimane is certainly the most notable. What were your shared priorities regarding the soundtrack, featuring the extended version of the track Girl? Did you compose differently knowing the music would exist inside a silhouette and movement?

They wanted someone close to the band on the artist’s side to work on it, so I was honored to be asked. Working with Hedi Slimane to remix Suicide was an incredible experience. The team at Celine was great to work with, and Hedi had a very clear vision of what he wanted, so a lot of it was about executing that vision and getting those ideas across. The process was intense. We were putting together the runway music for the Celine Le Palace show in Paris, and it all came together over a few weeks, working first in New York and then flying to Paris to finish it. There were a lot of layers in the mix and we focused heavily on the vocals, stretching and extending parts of the track “Girl” so it would move with the rhythm of the show. When you’re working on music for a show it’s a different mindset. The track has to carry the energy of the space while still remaining true to the spirit of the original music. Seeing and hearing it come together at Le Palace was incredible. I believe this was the final in-person show that Hedi did for Celine. Out of all the collaborations I’ve worked on, that one stands out as one of my favorites.

You also work in art curation, as in the case of Cesspool Saints, the posthumous Alan Vega exhibition at the Laurent Godin Gallery in Paris. What did that experience reveal to you about him? Did curating his visual work change the way you hear his music?

Curating that exhibition expanded the way I understood Alan’s vision. His artistic filter ran through every medium he worked in. I had already spent countless hours with his music, listening to recordings and working through ideas in the Vega Vault, but going through his drawings, notebooks, light sculptures, and other visual work gave me a much deeper understanding of how his mind worked creatively. After years of being around Alan’s artwork, I felt like it was the right moment to curate a show. I wanted to present the work in a way that hadn’t really been done before and make something that felt comprehensive, cohesive and powerful. 

The gallery was very generous in giving me the autonomy to run with those ideas. We showed the film Gunsmoke, for which Alan created the soundtrack. The artwork was arranged in grid patterns that included drawings, works on paper, collages, and Alan’s 1978 notebook from Suicide’s tour with The Clash. What really stayed with me was remembering the first time Alan showed me his work. He grabbed this fat stack of drawings and lyrics and dropped them in my lap and said, “hey, look at this.” Seeing the work up close like that was incredibly intense and intimate. Curating the show years later felt like returning to that same feeling of discovery. I wanted the light sculptures and visual work in that environment to feel almost like a religious experience. Being able to present that work in Paris was a profound experience for me. It also opened the door to other things like the Suicide and Rick Owens collaboration that followed. There were ideas that didn’t make the final show. At one point I wanted a completely dark room with just one of Alan’s large light sculptures hanging in the space. Maximum minimalism. I’d like to do another exhibition one day and explore some of those ideas further.

It often feels as though you are keeping his spirit alive. But are you ever afraid of succumbing to a ghost, of sacrificing your own evolution to sustain a legacy? Is there a risk that it becomes nostalgia rather than continuation?

I’ve spent a lot of my life dealing with loss. That’s been a big part of my writing and the way I see the world. I think when you lose someone you deeply care about, they don’t really disappear. In some ways they become even closer to you. The last time I saw Alan I made a pact with him that I would look after his family and help carry on his legacy. I take loyalty very seriously, so for me this is really about living up to that promise. Alan also gave his blessing for me to be involved with the work, so I feel honored to have that responsibility. At the same time I don’t see it as sacrificing my own evolution as an artist. If anything, it’s pushing me further. Over the last ten years working on the Alan Vega and Suicide estates, I’ve learned an incredible amount about music, art, discipline, and vision. It’s actually helped me grow in my own work with my band and with producing other artists. I don’t see it as nostalgia either. Nostalgia looks backwards. What we’re doing is trying to keep the work alive and move it forward. It’s the same method he used never looking back. Alan created something incredibly powerful and there’s still so much of it that hasn’t been seen or heard yet. Being part of bringing that into the world feels bigger than me. So for me it’s about honoring a promise and continuing something that still has a lot of life in it.

And today, where do you stand? Still in dialogue with Vega, or entering a space that is entirely your own?

Both. I think of them like two galaxies that sometimes intersect and at other times move in separate worlds. I was making my own music before I ever started working on Alan’s, so for me it’s important that both continue to grow and exist on their own terms. I met Alan when my band was just starting out and we had released our first album. One thing he said to me that always stayed with me was, “I’m ending, you’re beginning. I’m passing the torch to you.” Being around his music and art was incredibly inspiring, and I’m grateful to be in a position where I can continue that work while also developing my own. In a way I feel Alan is always with me. I think about him every day. There’s still a lot of work to do with the Vega and Suicide archives, and there’s a lot I want to do with my own music as well. Collaboration is important to me too, producing work for other artists and expanding into different creative areas. We recently worked with Rick Owens on a Suicide SS26 capsule collection, which was one of the most inspiring projects I’ve been part of. I also mixed the audio for the Rick Owens “Temple of Love” retrospective at the Palais Galliera in Paris. Seeing Alan’s work continue to grow and reach new audiences is incredibly meaningful. There’s been a tremendous amount of sweat equity put into all of this over the years. At the same time I’m still moving forward with my own path. I just hope I have enough time to do it all. The only thing I wish is that Alan was here to see it.

Surrender by Suicide
Alan Vega & Jared Artaud

Music of Cruelty / Jared Artaud

Credits  

Musician & Producer: Jared Artaud / @jaredartaud
The Vacant Lots / @thevacantlots
Suicide / @suicidebandofficial @officialalanvega
Interview: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Editor: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko



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