Black Screen o' Death

Brutal 1980's New York City-based power electronics duo consisting of Miami-born experimental saxophonist REDACTED and an elusive musical vagabond known as Galactus on percussion and synthesizers. Like its UK-based brethren Whitehouse, Black Screen o' Death trafficked in unrelenting noise and aggression, specializing in "direct injection overload", or DIO, a practice in which a semi-functional Oberheim SEM was plugged directly into a soundboard with its faders pushed past the redline, essentially capturing the sound of melting board circuitry - at times causing smoke to emit from the house mixers during the group’s performances. As a result, the band was eventually banned from most New York City venues aside from White Columns, a semi-derelict non-profit artist loft that regularly featured the group on its monthly Night of the Living Noise shows. To accompany its ear-splitting sound, the duo often projected looped visuals from silent experimental films, including the eyeball-slicing scene in Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou and various excerpts from Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. A grainy xeroxed film still of Deren's mirror-faced personification of Death was later used as the cover for the group's untitled 1982 self-released EP.