Sex Vid Interview

Interview with the best hardcore band I have heard in the last year.

Sex Vid

The internet has made everything too easy. Remember when you used to have to send a cheque away to some PO Box just get hold of a ‘zine and in the back of the ‘zine you’d see a list of records by bunch of bands you knew nothing about? You’d have to sort of guess whether or not you were going to be into them pretty much just by their names or (if you were really lucky and the ‘zine was posh) the sleeve? It was great! Like a little adventure.

Ok, ok, I’m totally lying out of my ass. It’s pretty nice being able to type a name into that little search bar invitingly perched up there on the right hand side of your screen. It’s just hanging out there at all times offering you one click knowledge on any given subject. However, the sheer over-reliance on Google and it’s lack of total omnipotence were totally rumbled while trying to put this interview together.

I first heard Sex Vid’s urgent and awfully recorded punk on a 7” from the very kind of distro that relies on word of mouth and mail order. The band’s utter disregard for any sense of production values or standard hardcore precepts was totally refreshing. But I could find no more information on the band beyond the track names printed on the sleeve. Have you ever tried Googling ‘Sex Vid’? That’s bad enough, try ‘Sex Vid Hardcore’… After a steady hunt that finally led to the bands singer Judd via a doom metal message board I managed to carry out an interview via email with RJ who plays guitars and, like the rest of the band, he couldn’t give less of a shit about ‘internet presence’.

VICE: How would you describe what Sex Vid are playing underneath all that fuzz?
R.J. (guitar): We dig 80's American hardcore, but we want to take influence from other sources. All the retro 80's stuff is really fucking dumb. We just want to play heavy, loud music without any sort of costume bullshit or nonsense like that. Just give it our own deal. All that throwback shit seems too much like a one-dimensional re-enactment or something. Weak.

You can go from pretty traditional hardcore to a Dead C cover in the space of a song. Are there any collective band influences?
Being under the influence is an influence.

Where did the name come from? Put the name in a search engine you get a bunch of porn, put ‘hardcore' in there as well and it gets even lairier.
We did not intend that at all. A totally unintentional by-product of the name was the 'impossible to search' thing. I am not even sure where the name came from. It just sort of stuck. As a band, having an online presence isn't a major concern for us. That kind of thing does not suit us, so we never messed with it. Maybe for some other band
it's cool, but not us. What does 'lairier' mean?

Sex Vid’s third 7” “Nests” is forthcoming on Dom America, P.O. Box 971, Olympia, WA 98507, USA