The Rita - Headless With Leopard Skin

Released in a 5x5" Reel-to-Reel Box with a sticker and button. Sealed by a label logo. Limited to 30 hand-numbered copies.

"My THE RITA material for last year’s ‘Revealing Leopard Skin’ was half a concept and circuit obsession driven piece, but also a work made up of a couple of epiphanies:
Working with the DOD Thrashmaster circuit opened up investigative avenues of massive gain control, textural manipulation amongst the coupled layers of bass gained ‘hum’, and the appreciation of a particular circuit as fetish and it’s subsequent harsh noise qualities. The Amando de Ossorio film THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS. I have been a huge fan of Ossorio films for many years based primarily on the BLIND DEAD series and LORELY’S GRASP in particular, but was never a big fan of NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS for various reasons that I expect have to do primarily with over 10 years of further ‘growing’ I had to do in Eurotrash appreciation. The semi-recent DVD uncut re-release of the film I ended up grabbing to give it a second chance against the old Something Weird and Sinister Cinema tapes I had. My last few years of obsessive Spanish vampire film collecting and overall appreciation of Ossorio’s atmosphere has finally CULMINATED with NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS for me – and it happened the exact same nights I was taking breaks from recording for ‘Revealing Leopard Skin’. Another thing that grew from NIGHT OF THE SORCERES and the coupling of the DOD Thrashmaster circuit was a deepened interest in the fog enshrouded atmosphere of old ‘voodoo’ themed horror films – all of which (including SORCERERS) include long segments of voodoo drumming. This was around the same time as my “Dirt Bike Engine as Fuzz Pedal” work that exemplified sparse crackle/crunch lines, thus eventually driving home for me the possible idea of sparse and specific voodoo drum strikes vs. cracking lines of electronics for this work HEADLESS WITH LEOPARD SKIN. Can detailed crackle create abstract and broken ‘rhythms’ that the voodoo drum hits create and vice versa; the deterioration of the voodoo drum samples creating a crunch line that emulates harsh noise electronics? Via more classic HN sources and voodoo genre film drum samples, the cracking and snapping airy lines of the electronics were versed against and alongside the ‘beat’ driven and eventually broken lines of voodoo genre film drumming. Along with the electronics and film sampling and due to the heavy manipulation of Eurotrash cinema soundtrack manipulation – one figure also stood out above all: actress Loreta Tovar. She ended up being the figurehead for the operations and the titular driving theme for HEADLESS WITH LEOPARD SKIN, this also having me revisit her in RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD, CURSE OF THE VAMPYR, and DRACULA’S GREAT LOVE to name just a few. Definitely a Spanish genre film staple actress, and also a newer obsession to push along one of the riskiest works I have ever done."

- Sam McKinlay / THE RITA