Julian Wachendorf, aka Lord Torture, passed away on February 17. The consequences of a brain tumor, for which he had already undergone an operation at the end of 2021. On his Spotify profile, the rapper introduced himself as follows: “Lord Torture, Beast in the Sea of Fog, Antagonist of Hearts, Protagonist of Pain, Julius Fear, Knave on the Fog Bank or Winter Child in Leather Jerkin”. Language was obviously very close to the artist, who was born in Hennef in 1992.
free art
When his rap career began in 2015, Julian Wachendorf was still studying free art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Actually with a focus on video installations, sculptures and performance. A work from this period has accompanied the artist until the release of his last album FARCE in 2022: a video recording of him falling in a pond in the woods around his hometown. The moment just before the impact then became the cover of the record, on which he also processed the diagnosis “malignant brain tumor in the speech center”. It was created before and after the operation in December 2021.
In 2020 he left the big city, where he studied and also worked in a bookstore, to move back to the village with his family. As a reason for this step, he stated that the urban impressions overwhelmed him in the long run, he could work better in peace. Art academy, bookstore, back to the village, all of this conveys that Wachendorf operated far from the core of the local rap scene.
And then German rap?
In a series of interviews, he kept coming back to the fact that mainstream lifestyle-centric issues tend to repel him. He also disliked the transported images of masculinity, the use of drugs and the constant sexism. Still, he rapped. Participating in a linguistic art without wanting to submit to its codes.
Despite image rap skepticism, Lord Folter made a lyrically more than serious contribution to his story with his song “Peacemaker”, which was released in 2020. In which he simultaneously deals emotionally with his father.
“It’s a matter for the boss, ballerina paraphrases from the S-Class, 100 grams in the Hérmes bag, world-class flex from the tailgate, first the Rolex then flies the rights, I don’t care if he was right.” after the hook then, without batting an eyelid: “Satisfy your hunger from the tin cardboard, black piss in the champagne bottle, in the morning there is nothing and for dinner Datura, you won’t get anything without the damn flap, was my old man right? Top priority, no yardstick, don’t believe a word he says, even if he was right, the old S-Class is rotting away in the garage.” Youthful carelessness and exaggerated coolness turned into dirt, hangovers, remorse and defiance, but the S-Class stayed.
Lord Torture studied art and decided to do rap. Which is about his language again. About the fragmentary, strongly associative and partly abstract text corpus that he created in a total of six albums and two EPs. With his decision, he also gave listeners an insight into the kind of thoughts that led him to fall into this pond in 2015. And then getting up again, dismantling the camera, exporting the SD card and finally projecting the whole thing onto some wall in Düsseldorf. Head first in rap and somehow art was made in the process. He once called himself a “lyricist with a hip-hop background”.