Esther Planas

Copyright 2023

Dirty Snow was an action a situation, a performance, and an ephemeral disturbance of established notions about sculpture, dance, music as a ritual before or after art. The creation of a band in 1998 was driven by the nostalgia for a way of performing-communicating on music's potentiality for the ritualistic; exploring the liminalities between experience and spectacle (distraction) inspired by the real-time living experience of a time past, as it was post-punk, in a romantic point of view. This impulse of making appear and generating actions and reactions via a music band happened et a time when digital music, electronic sounds, and Dj sets has taken over and bands were almost gone.

When Dirty Snow appeared with its traditional four-person line-up and on its first live-action at Five Years Gallery, it was a specific site Situation, it was somehow para-relational Art and para-Socially Engaged art too, because to create a space for ritual and mutual cathartic expression as punk-rock, etc its also a social activity even if it touches the politics of what capitalism has relegated as just pure Spectacle/Leisure.

Dirty Snow's last gig at Five Years in Underwood St, farewell show screening CINEMATHEQUE curated by: Lucy Reynolds:

CINEMATHEQUE hosted a series of events and film screenings on one of them Lucy Reynolds selected and projected films over the performance of Dirty Snow.
Dirty Snow, a performance project /band format specific object/ ephemeral disturbance / live sculpture.
Line Up:
Bass: Marc Hulson
Guitar: Patrick Constable
Drums: Ivor Aizenberg
Vocals: Esther Planas

During the weekend there was a special day for music and film or better said Film over Music Players and Performers, selected by Lucy Reynolds, Including Harry Smith, Mary Ellen Bute, etc. In the video, you can hear Esther Planas and Marc Hulson saying good bay and thanking everyone who had been part of the project, plus Marc Hulson mentioning the rest of the program on Cinemateque...

Dirty Snow was conceived in 1998, initially to produce a soundtrack for the video works in Planas solo show Red Rum at Pelayo 1 in Barcelona. Following her subsequent move to London, Planas has presented a string of memorable gig/performances at events and opening parties (eg. Dark Pop at Five Years 2000) and made recordings for independent labels (Evensong, Underwood Audio), while gradually developing Dirty Snows sound from naive indie-noise to minimal post-punk /gothic pop. The band also continues to produce the music for Planas video and performance work.
The obsessive repetition and disregard for narrative development or conventional song structure that characterise Dirty Snows music are mirrored in the editorial approach and (anti) design of Dark Star. Although distributed worldwide by the influential French company OFR system, Dark Star is nevertheless in many ways a wilfully obscure entity. Begun, like the band, in 1999, the publication was initially intended as a virtually private project a xeroxed notebook or diary to be handed out amongst friends. In spite of its presence now on shelves alongside the myriad style\culture glossies, it retains its elusive, secretive character any information contained within its pages concerning contents, producers and contributors tend to be both minimal and virtually illegible. Each issue (nos. 1, 2, and 3 have been published annually since 1999) presents itself without explanation or apology: 150 pages or more of meandering, playful, obsessive, and ferociously lo-tech cut and paste, xeroxed imagery, and graphic invention. The kind of no-holds-barred, anti-design attitude and aesthetic which the so-called zeitgeist in mainstream publishing (see recent issues of Dazed et al) has only recently belatedly and somewhat politely begun to assimilate.
Marc Hulson

A review of the performance of Dirty Snow in 2004 :
Review about gig in Manchester on the same tour

> Following with a much more mature sound and appearance were Dirty
> Snow. A band with an average age of about thirty, they
> bash ‘em out with the best of them. With the ‘wall of noise’-ness
> of ‘Sonic Youth,’ and the conservative gothness of ‘Siouxsie and
> the Banshees,’’ Dirty snow` show a fierceness that would make
> children cry. Most striking is undoubtedly the leading lady. She
> looks like Shelley Duvall of ‘The Shining’ fame. Wendy Torrence
> armed with an arsenal of twisted, tortured writhing, gyrating
> ‘dance’ moves to send Jack Nicholson straight to hell. No
> discernible words came from her mouth, and if they did were hidden
> under the screams and wails of that wild banshee woman. But hey,
> who needs words anyway. The ‘Dirty Snows’ are not at all precious about
> their sound, giving it up for an energy that truly shakes and stirs
> the frontwoman. ‘Dirty Snow’ are not doing anything
> particularly new, if anything they are playing on old styles, but
> their energy is fresh, sincere and exciting to watch. It’s just a
> shame they burnt out after only 15-20 mins.

James Bridge Williams
The Dry Bar, Manchester 2/12/2004

Dirty Snow collaborated with various artist bands and music projects as Viralux Viralux (an art and music project founded in London in 2001 by Gordon Dawson and Trish Lyons)

Dirty Snow Five Years 2001
band pic cemetery 2000 london
Gossips London 2004
Paris 2004 Gallery Marquad
South London Gallery Flyer
Poster for gig London/2007
Review The New Thing 2007
Dirty Snow Bistroteque 2010
Dirty Snow Bistroteque 2010
Dirty Snow Bistroteque 2010
Dirty Snow Bistroteque 2010
Solo at Matadero Madrid 2010
Solo at Matadero Madrid 2010
Solo at Matadero Madrid 2010