Named for a chapter heading in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Backworld was one of the last bands to join the World Serpent community of musicians, and one of the few American bands to do so. They released eight CD's and CDEP's through World Serpent before the company collapsed in 2004. Future work will probably be released under the auspices of Current 93's label, Durtro.
Suffering was it, and impotence, that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer, that created all Gods and backworlds.
-- Nietzsche, "Von den Hinterweltlern" ("Of backworldsmen")
Joseph Budenholzer, the imagination behind Backworld, grew up in Nebraska and went to parochial school there, where nuns taught him to play guitar for folk mass. This unusual combination of a twangy Midwestern aesthetic and a deep Catholic consciousness made a violent chemical reaction with the music that he encountered when he moved to New York City in the mid 1980's. As a young adult, Budenholzer fell in with angsty performance artists like Foetus, Lydia Lunch, and Swans, for whom he served as an occasional producer and sessional musician.
Backworld's own music, as it happens, is not no-wave at all -- contrary to what one might suppose given the list of New York influences above -- but rather richly psychedelic, featuring a beautiful twelve-string guitar backed by dulcimer and cello, and over which Budenholzer sings with a breathy, folksy baritone. Like Current 93, he draws inspiration from medieval Christian mystics and nineteenth-century occultists, though his relationship to both (also like Current 93's) is shot through with piercing irony.
Budenholzer names Sol Invictus and Elliott Smith as two of his biggest musical influences, though a variety of World Serpent artists like Death in June and Current 93 make their mark on his work as well. Further back, I hear traces of King Crimson and Nick Drake. Backworld quickly got the attention of David Tibet himself, who pulled the necessary strings to get wider distribution for the band through WSD.
Since then, Budenholzer has played guitar for Current 93 at a number of live shows. He has also brought an impressive list of other underground luminaries into his own studio, including Annie Anxiety a.k.a. Little Annie; Isobell Campbell, formerly of Belle and Sebastian; Jarboe, formerly of Swans; Annabel Lee of Amber Asylum; Julia Kent of Rasputina; and Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis. However, none of these artists ever overpowered his work with their own sound (with the possible exception of Tibet, whose voice and lyrics are so distinctive that he could make any band sound like him).
In 2003, Budenholzer left New York and moved to Glasgow. Since many of the artists he was working with were from the U.K., it was becoming prohibitively expensive for him to fly himself (or them) back and forth across the Atlantic. I have heard rumours that he is considering changing the band's name, since his current roster of backing musicians is almost completely different from the one he started out with; furthermore, he does not consider himself much of a Nietzschean any more.
A select discography:
For more information, visit http://www.backworld.com.