Erica Dawn Lyle and Vice Cooler have shared Debt Collector, the duo’s musical and video collaboration with Kim Gordon. Right on the heels of the enthusiastic response to Mirrorball – the high energy earworm the duo made with Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill / Le Tigre) on vocals – the new track in contrast features a classic Kim Gordon vocal, creepy and cool, over a sparse, dark synth and feedback drenched soundscape. The accompanying video – the first from the duo’s soon-to-be-released LP, ‘LAND TRUST: BENEFIT FOR NEFOC’ – serves up some raw LA noir verite with its gritty and unsettling look at the city’s cut throat pandemic-era gentrification. Check out the video clip for Debt Collector via YouTube below.
“You’re not welcome. To the gated community,” Gordon speaks as the song begins. “We bought the block. But you gotta have cash.”
Gordon says the song’s lyrics were inspired by what housing activists have called the “financialization” of housing – the trend in recent years of enormous private equity investors buying up a huge share of the entire world’s affordable housing stock in order to trade bulk real estate as a speculative asset in the global financial markets. Investors typically buy up large areas in up and coming neighborhoods, becoming absentee landlords who ignore tenants’ needs while driving up rents and displacing long settled communities.
“I’m a bit obsessed” says Gordon, “with what’s happening with these big financial corporations like Blackrock and Blackstone buying up houses, becoming landlords. They pay far beyond a house’s value, putting home ownership even out of the range of the middle class – much less working class.”
The video for the song, directed by Cooler, is a harsh visual tour of the Hobbesian landscape of present day Los Angeles and the interstitial zones where the worlds of the haves and have nots overlap in the form of razor wire and security camera zones. For Cooler, who is currently facing eviction from his Silverlake home where he recorded his parts for ‘Land Trust’ in his home studio, the inspiration to make the video felt deeply personal.
“Kim created a very powerful lyrical statement on real estate and land, and the companies that have been purchasing (and laundering) properties at the expense of low-income and working class housing,” says Cooler. “Her lyrics really resonated with me because I’ve been displaced from three homes as an adult and I hold a constant anxiety that I won’t be able to obtain stable housing at all – let alone be able to afford a home.”
According to Cooler, the video’s quick cuts are comprised of footage of residences that are currently in the process of being evicted and the new condo developments “that have been constructed over demolished low-income homes and historic landmarks.”
“The finished cut for the ‘Debt Collector’ video was extremely intense for me to watch because I was familiar with the history of most of the sites I filmed, and therefore I knew about the families and communities who have been and are still being forcibly displaced,” he says.
Cooler shot Lyle’s scenes in the video while she was in LA this April rehearsing for Bikini Kill’s upcoming world tour. Lyle suggested they shoot at Echo Park, the site of perhaps the most significant battle over land and displacement in the city’s recent memory.
“During the pandemic, hundreds of unhoused Echo Park residents banded together in the park to create together a beautiful community based on mutual aid practices,” says Lyle. “It was an encampment run peacefully by its own residents with a community garden and a shared kitchen. They even used donations of money that came in to pay members of the community to do work around the encampment.”
In March of 2021, the city of Los Angeles spent some $2 million to evict the encampment. Though the city claims they moved residents of the park into housing, a recent UCLA study found that only four residents had moved into permanent housing and that more people from the encampment had actually died since the eviction than had found housing.
For Lyle, who made Debt Collector with Cooler and Gordon remotely via file sharing during the pandemic from her home in New York, Gordon’s lyrics resonate perfectly with the political motivations behind the entire ‘Land Trust’ project. “The modern day gentrification that Kim describes is just a continuation of the colonizer mentality and white settler violence with which the land that makes up the United States was stolen from its Indigenous inhabitants to begin with. The record was conceived as a benefit to help Northeast Farmers of Color (NEFOC) acquire this stolen land again in order to return it to Indigenous and POC farmers.”
Cooler met Gordon when he was only fifteen years old, when Sonic Youth invited Cooler’s legendary DIY noise-core band of instigators, XBXRX, on tour as an opening act. Says Cooler, “Though we have worked together frequently over the past few decades, it was still impressive to see how Kim excels at following her own impulses so naturally and how she can capture such intense feelings so quickly. When I worked with Kim on her vocals, she came in with nothing more than a notepad of ideas. Surprisingly, we cut the vocals within half an hour.”
Gordon agrees. “Vice is so fast, it’s always fun to work with him. He gets what I like.”
For Lyle, the process was also free flowing and intuitive. “Vice sent me these blown out synth and drum tracks that were just so sick and full of dread. I wanted to leave space for the breathiness in Kim’s vocals and to make something that sounded fresh, different from the big guitars associated with Sonic Youth. So I grabbed a L’Oreal all day lipstick off my desk and jammed it under the strings of my guitar and got this. One take.”
Kim Gordon tour dates
5/23 London, UK – KOKO *
5/24 Manchester, UK – Gorilla *
5/25 Glasgow, UK – Classic Grand *
5/26 Bristol, UK – Trinity *
5/28 Amsterdam, NL – Het Sieraad *
5/29 Brussels, BE – AB Box *
5/30 Paris, FR – La Gaite Lyrique *
5/31 Zurich, CH – Rote Fabrik *
6/02 Barcelona, ES – Primavera Sound
6/04 Angers, FR – Levitation
6/05 St. Brieuc, FR – Art Rock
6/06 Köln, DE – Gloria Theater *
6/07 Berlin, DE – Astra Kulturhaus *
6/09 Porto, PT – NOS Primavera Sound
6/16 Hobart, AU – Dark Mofo
6/18 Hobart, AU – Dark Mofo
7/02 Oakland, CA – Mosswood Meltdown
10/17 Los Angeles, CA – Primavera Sound LA
* = Support from Pretty Happy
View all shows at https://kimaltheagordon.com/
More about NEFOC
NEFOC is an Indigenous and POC-led grassroots organization that seeks to connect POC farmers to land, to grow healthy foods and medicines for our communities. We plan to accomplish this by acquiring and returning land to Indigenous nations and respectfully connecting Black, Asian, and Latinx and other POC farmers and land stewards to land while centering and respecting Indigenous sovereignty. nefoclandtrust.org
More about LAND TRUST
In March of 2020, with Bikini Kill’s anticipated reunion tour canceled, the band’s new guitarist Erica Dawn Lyle and drum tech Vice Cooler were wondering how to be useful. A long time participant in DIY punk communities, Lyle—also an arts critic, author, filmmaker, organizer, and free improvising experimental guitarist—was quarantined at her home in upstate New York as an early-pandemic spirit of mutual aid amplified throughout the culture.
“People were trying to figure out how to help each other,” Lyle said. “I thought: All the musicians are home right now. It would probably be easy for us to do something quickly—because everybody, everywhere, is trying to find a way to help.”
Cooler, a photographer and video director who is also a producer for acts like Peaches and Ladytron and the drummer of The Raincoats, was locked down in L.A.—conveniently, at his own home-recording studio. “Like everyone, I was extremely confused about how I could use my limited skill set and resources—which mostly exist in the music and video worlds—to help others from this place of isolation,” he remembers.
Lyle reached out to Cooler with the spark of an idea for a digital album to generate funds. The duo soon devised a remote process of recording: Cooler sent Lyle the drum parts, to which Lyle improvised guitar riffs. When they had about a dozen near-complete songs as a guitar-drum duo, they began reaching out to an array of guest vocalists in their extended community to contribute original lyrics and to sing. “Working on these songs everyday with Vice—and the hope that others would work with us—was like an anchor for me during that really difficult era,” Lyle said.
What resulted is not a traditional benefit compilation at all, but rather a uniquely collaborative album of original material. ‘LAND TRUST: Benefit for NEFOC’ is a staggering survey of contemporary feminist punk spanning generations, including legends from the dawn of punk as well as newly emergent voices. A mix of industrial, art-rock, post-punk, and beyond, it finds germinal punk icons like The Raincoats, Kim Gordon, and Alice Bag alongside younger artists who they’ve inspired over several decades. All profits will benefit the Indigenous-led grassroots organization Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC), which acquires farmland in order to return it to Indigenous nations and to reconnect POC farmers to land stewardship and control.
Across sixteen blazing, high-octane tracks bolstered by Cooler’s expert pop production, the music of ‘LAND TRUST’ is guided by a spirit of improvisation and ingenuity, an energetic antidote to the era of restless ennui that spawned it. “This is the very, very rare benefit album where no one just sent in some crappy B-side,” said Kathleen Hanna, who features on the record’s first single, Mirrorball. “All the songs are fucking great and the performers really put their hearts into it. It’s a testament to Erica and Vice doing a phenomenal job bringing people together.”
That includes the garage-pop daydreaming of acclaimed author and artist Brontez Purnell, the signature spiky poise of D.C.’s Christina Billotte (Slant 6, Casual Dots), and new wave anthems from the likes of Glasgow’s Rachel Aggs (Trash Kit, Shopping), former Priests vocalist-turned-avant pop firebrand Katie Alice Greer, and Control Top’s Ali Carter. Sometimes the record’s cross-generational conversation happens within a single track—like on Lost in Thought, the ripper featuring vocals from ascendant teen quartet The Linda Lindas plus bass by Bikini Kill’s Kathi Wilcox, or on Hearing Myself Again, where Lyle and Cooler are joined by New York experimental punk trio Palberta in collaboration with Raincoats violinist Anne Wood. Other contributors include Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki, the Breeders’ Kelley Deal, and Cooler’s neighbor in L.A., Phoebe Bridgers bassist Emily Retsas, who served as a third core member of the recording process. Lyle said, “It became this all-ages show for feminist rockers.”
While Lyle describes the roster of collaborators as a kind of dream team of all-time great players, Cooler points out that the artists invited to participate were also people with whom the duo had standing relationships and affinity. “In a lot of ways this record reflects the family we have each built with each other through a lifetime of art and music making,” Cooler said, underscoring the number of artists involved who he’s known since his teen years, or has built deep artistic collaborations with (like Ah Mer Ah Su and Louisahhh). “We all help each other out and collaborate, even outside of music.” Describing her lifelong musical partnership with Ivy Jeanne, who features alongside Mike Watt on Never Was, Lyle adds, “We have been making music and doing activism together since we were kids living in squats.”
‘LAND TRUST’ feels like a fitting outgrowth of that paused 2020 Bikini Kill tour. Those shows were themselves inspired testaments to community across time, space, and a common purpose of empowerment through art. Lyle notes Bikini Kill’s origins as the instigator of a widespread movement of grassroots self-organizing among women. “That’s something I really relate to about them. Besides being in punk rock, my background is in political organizing, so I saw this from the start as an organizing project,” she said of the album.
Punk icon Alice Bag, who in 2019 opened the first Bikini Kill show in over two decades, wrote about NEFOC’s ethos on her song Soul Fire Farm. “I feel really lucky to have been invited to participate in this benefit record,” Bag said. “I was moved by [NEFOC’s] respect for the land and the ways in which they turn the process of farming into an empowering experience that nourishes both mind and body.” (It was through Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, N.Y. that Lyle and Cooler were connected with NEFOC.)
Among the surge of mutual aid projects in June 2020, Lyle was particularly inspired by G.L.I.T.S. Inc’s crowdfunded purchase of two buildings as housing for trans people of color in New York City. “I thought, this is permanent, this is really going to last,” Lyle reflected. “People of color, poor people, queers, radicals – we’ve lost so much access to living and cultural space through gentrification and displacement in the time I’ve been involved in subculture and activism. In this ongoing climate of dispossession, NEFOC is trying to return land that was stolen from Indigenous people centuries ago.”
“It’s become so difficult to organize or make change when everybody’s so far flung throughout cities and living so precariously in fear of eviction. But on a farm you have the collective work to produce healthy food, you have meeting and gathering space for visitors from the city to heal and decompress from their work in social movements and the pace of urban life, you have potential employment. And all this without fear of eviction. The ownership of land makes all of these things possible,” Lyle said. “The land that NEFOC acquires for farmers becomes collectively owned. Farms run by African Americans make up less than 2 percent of all of the nation’s farms. NEFOC is working to change that.”
This sense of imagining new horizons manifested in the creation of the music itself—a hopefulness that Lyle ironically feels was uniquely possible inside the very darkness of the beginning of lockdown. “In those early first days of covid, when everyone was responding more in unity to the crisis of pandemic and the ways capitalism was accentuating it, it felt suddenly easy to imagine that you could really just call up all your favorite musicians and ask them to make a record with you and that they would be really glad to help out,” Lyle said. “It felt like, ‘Well, the world’s cracked in half now, so anything is possible.’”
‘LAND TRUST: Benefit For North East Farmers of Color’ track list
1. Decoder Ring (Featuring Katie Alice Greer)
2. Lost In Thought (Featuring The Linda Lindas w/ Kathi Wilcox)
3. Mirrorball (Featuring Kathleen Hanna)
4. Debt Collector (Featuring Kim Gordon)
5. Soul Fire Farm (Featuring Alice Bag, Emily Retsas)
6. The Immortals (Featuring Brontez Purnell)
7. Can’t Fight Me (Featuring Ah-Mer-Ah-Su)
8. Agave (Featuring The Raincoats)
9. Break A Window (Featuring Rachel Aggs, Emily Retsas)
10. Flashes Of Knowing (Featuring Christina Billotte)
11. Cracks In The Ceiling (Featuring Ali Carter, Emily Retsas)
12. Star Fuck (Featuring Louisahhh)
13. Bodies (Featuring Kelley Deal, Emily Retsas, Sarah Register)
14. PS Forever (Featuring Satomi Matsuzaki)
15. Never Was (Featuring Ivy Jeanne, Mike Watt)
16. Hearing Myself Again (Featuring Palberta, Emily Retsas, Anne Wood)
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