Daiana Feuer on December 5th, 2016

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At she embarked on her first L.A. show in nobody-quite-remembers-when on Friday night, Scottish musician Lesley Rankine — the longtime sonic explorer in the noise rock, trip-hop and industrial genres — kindly asked the audience to keep track of how many times she said the word “fuck” throughout her performance.

With a table full of electronic devices, FX boxes, circuit benders, samplers and other noise-making machines, the 51-year-old started her performance with Ruby‘s best known single, “Tiny Meat,” from her debut album “Salt Petal,” which saw regular rotation on MTV in 1996. The intimate crowd at downtown’s La Cita welcomed the artist who emerged from a self-imposed 12-year hibernation in 2013, releasing an EP and the following year a full-length album, “Waiting For Light,” which she co-created with her brother, Scott Firth (bassist for Public Image Limited).

Rankine got her start as the screaming lead singer of U.K. noise group Silverfish, whose most memorable tune would have to be “Hips, Tits, Lips, Power.” Active from 1988 to 1993, the raucous band was friends and toured with another pioneering noise group, Pigface, the collaboration between Trent Reznor (pre-Nine Inch Nails) and Martin Atkins of PIL. Her voice appears on several Pigface songs, in fact. In 1993, she moved to the U.S. and started Ruby with Mark Walk, fusing trip hop, rock, industrial, electronica and jazz. “Salt Petal” was created almost completely on the computer, which not many people were doing at the time. After releasing another album, “Short Staffed At The Gene Pool,” Ruby went on hiatus. Rankine and Walk parted on sour terms, she broke up with her label and left music behind.

She said at La Cita, “After 12 years not doing music, I figured the only way I could communicate with the world was through music and writing lyrics. It’s like stepping back into your own skin after living life as somebody else.”

So there we have a good historical cushion for approaching Rankine’s charming solo performance on Friday night. She played songs from her whole discography, including tunes from a new EP, “Type-Cast.” Dark, emotional and melancholic moments balanced with hypnotic, dancier tracks, flourishes of noise, delicate vocals and cool gadget manipulation. The sounds harked back to the days when industrial and alternative music coalesced, as much as it did to our present moment, with Rankine taking full enjoyment in the new toys available to her trade. The whole experience was heartwarming. Rankine was funny, sweet, and completely in her element.

At times it seemed she was tearing up from joy, unless it was just her conjunctivitis acting up. And she wound up saying “fuck” 72 times, according to one audience member.

R.R. Barbadas opened the the show. It’s the latest project from Rob Barber (The Urxed/High Places) with his partner Rona Rapadas on vocals. Manipulating unique sound sources, such as field recordings from the yard, water, animals, transportation, rocks and instruments, which are reconstructed to the point of being unrecognizable from their original form and converted into beats and rhythms, the duo created a very cool atmosphere that Bjork would like.