cool, every newt

I will check some of that stuff out.

The installations by Francisco Lopez have to be experienced to be believed.

Well, Pita certainly works mainly with electronics, but I dunno, perhaps the perception of electronica is different in Europe than it is in America. His music is not exactly what I would call electronica as such, but it's too thought-out to be classified as noise too. Merzbow works mainly with digital equipment these days and he too sometimes gets thrown into that black hole where circuit-bending, electronic noise, drone etc meet because of laziness.

I get the feeling it's all crap anyways and no one will give a damn about it in ten years. kind of like skiffle

i got into noise the first time i went to japan about 7 years ago, i'd heard about merzbow in magazines and thought, "when in rome..."

it's been around since the beginning of the XX century.


yes, that's what i meant with how pita is like unclassifiable electronica, the first time i heard him, i thought, to my ears and perception that he was working in an area around breakbeat, idm and drill n' bass but defying both the sounds these genres are supposed to sound and sound itself by employing distortion and frequencies like no one in the electronic realm. at least i consider him electronic, a programmer more than a sound artist but that's me and my own prejudiscims.

his latest album makes the case by doing a bunch of different styles in every track and by associating himself with more of a noise crowd by being released through no fun productions

so you are claiming that stockhausen and shostakovic are NOISE? come on. Even John Cage or Rhys Chatham or Branca are not NOISE as you have been defining it.

The seeming exclusivity is a turnoff to many, I think. Many noise people think of themselves as "noise artists" and present their noise as some kinda "high art." If you don't like it, you just don't get it, they may say. I suppose that if this is what a new listener gets exposed to this attitude early on, it's gotta be an instant curiosity or love affair, or else the listener's relationship with noise is immediately finished.

Some noisefolk play the "high art" angle not outta some great importance or intellectual superiority which they perceive themselves to have...some play the art angle outta necessity or convenience, such as the folks here in Sacramento who are part of the annual Nor Cal Noisefest. They get a grant from the city's arts commission to help finance the event. That's awfully smart if you ask me. I'd like to get some money like that to book all these bands I get contacted by, but I wouldn't know how to justify "blues-damaged garage-scuzz" as high art. Thus, I'm relegated to blow at least 10% of my own money on booking shows anywhere I can get 'em going. For music or art that's overall so poorly supported in terms of patronage, it's great to get some public funds to help out.

But a lotta other "noise artists" do seem pretty ridiculous to me. I can appreciate the idea that a project might be akin to a "sound installation," but I see plenty of so-called noise artists every year who are doing nothing to separate themselves from noise-musicians that are spontaneous table-top combusters of low-tech junk, found objects, and pedals....these more pedestrian-level DIY noisejammers are 100% representative of the true punk rock ethos. Always visceral and cathartic like even the high-brow stuff, these no-brow/low-brow noisers are occasionally even very funny, and almost always more engaging and sometimes very audience-interactive. They have a palpable humanistic element which otherwise rare or almost devoid in noise music.

The quality of the noise between the high-brow and the no-brow/low-brow can range from awesome to totally sucky just the same, which further drives home how ridiculous it is that the high-brow noise artists take themselves and their "art" so damn seriously. Nothing is simply for the fun of it.

Now, with that said, I think it's certainly true that noise recordings sound best the higher the fidelity of the recording and record manufacturing process. Inasmuch as clarity of notes is not a chief concern or even a concern at all, noise is a genre where all the other characteristics of sound beyond tonality (timbral richness, pitch, etc.) are so important...perhaps even singularly so. If it can be a great experience live, then it must be captured on record to be a great noise record. Go back to so many noise records of 20-30 years ago...or even all the way back to Metal Machine Music. You will hear many records with a dull bleat or buzz and nothing more. How much of the front-and-center experience are you missing on a record like the Bruitistes 2xLP? The Vivenza side of that comp sounds like 100x oversampled steel wool on metal, but with the mids and highs and the lower half of the lows cut out of it. Same can be said for about a dozen different Violent Onsen Geisha LPs. What made the best Merzbow records of the same era great was the brightness and sharpness of the sound, which in the 90s was one-upped.

It had been quite a challenge for the no/low-brow noisefolks to make a great-sounding record in the past, but now it can be a matter of learning how to use some software, so we're starting to hear a lotta great noise recordings that very nearly live up to the great live performances.....stuff like Yellow Swans, Kites, Tralphaz, Kevin Shields, Moth Drakula, Deathgleaner...this stuff is amazing. And while noise will never catch on that much (has Wolf Eyes even sold 10,000 copies of anything?) that it will have any great amount of hype beyond the very edge of the edgiest mainstream media, it certainly has become more known and more popular, and that's led to a lotta crack noise artists who try and fail and mostly just clutter up MySpace, and that leads to threadstarters like the one that originated this thread.

Don't write off noise....just reset your filter, and learn where to find the good stuff so as to avoid too much crap.

Noise fucking sucks, mostly because I live in the heart of E.Vil and there is so much noise constantly there - exhaust fans, motors, horns and lately there is this weird issue with a chirping alarm - like a smoke detector - that chirps once each 30 seconds. Its like Chinese water torture. I was finally able to get rid of the chirp on my block last week by posting some fliers on E. 5th St, people actually wrote thank you on my flier. Last night I was on 10th St tween 1st and A and heard the same chirp, timed it on my watch as 30 seconds, so it seems to be a problem around the Village. I thought it was a smoke detector that needed a new battery but it doesn't seem so. If you think this sounds dumb just set an alarm to go off EVERY 30 SECONDS 24/7 in proximity.

But I don't consider Double Leopards (and children) or Dead C or the like to be noise, its free music.

I say if it is in a "song" then it is not noise. Unless by accident.

ok, let's say it's not (which it was for it's time, not branca or chatham); but robert ashley? iannis xenakis? they did stuff that's harsh even today. it's been around since at the very least, the 60's.

even if you start counting with non, throbbing gristle, etc. it's been around for at least 30-odd years.

it's not a fad.

ps: i live in the city too, and i love being surrounded by city noises and i love listening to noises that are way more intense than everyday noise.

Luigi Russolo was the first noise guy, 1913 I believe.
Power Electronics and Japanoise started roughly at the same time in the late 70s, though they were completey different in approach. NON started a bit before them.

check out ubuweb.com - people have been doing killer whacked out shit for decades.


does an artist like mark rothko not have skill because he cannot paint portraits comparable to those of rembrant? do you think its ridiculous that i am even comparing these two artists? just as it is that you compare the product of a "traditional" musician to that of a noise musician. do you call christo an "artist" instead of an artist just as you call merzbow a "musician" instead of a musician? a noise musician explores totally opposite areas of sound so really it is hard to define them in the same terms as you would other musicians just because they create using the same medium. just as its hard to compare rembrant and rothko who explore very different themes and create on very different terms just because they both use paint in their final execution.

sure anyone can run their casio through some distortion pedals and make noise, and i think its that attitude of "hey anyone can do it, its just noise so its doesnt matter" is what creates the massive saturation of mediocracy that some of you speak of. since i can make a splatter painting, does that degrade the genre of splatter painting? does jackson pollock now have no credibility that my little sister comes home from her 5th grade art class with a similar looking piece?

Yes it does actually. I mean, when you say it like that, it's almost hard to NOT discredit it. You just said that your sister in 5th grade brings home stuff that looks similar to stuff by Pollock. So can you reasonably justify why his paintings are so desirable? What about his stuff sets it part from a 5th grade girl's art that makes it cost thousands?

Because he is a grown man that knows about boundaries of conventional creativity.

Not to rebuttal just like some jerk, but really, you can say that all you want. The man just threw paint at a canvas. He really did. REALLY, that's what he did.

I agree with you, art is not hard.
I was just saying an opinion of an other person.

jackson pollock was just on the CIA payroll anyway.

quiet, pretty noise = loveliescrushing. it's straight up distorted walls, sometimes lumped into the shoegaze genre because it's so overwhelmingly beautiful. but at its heart, its just guitar noise (as is dude's other band, astrobrite).

Also, it's funny how noise always gets associated with "art", as if only people who understand the artfulness employed in the creation of noise can truely appreciate the static tones and feedback skronk. Arguing about art is almost as pointless as arguing about religion; everything can be considered "artful" or "not artful" to the right person, but the "art" attached to the creation of noise doesn't make me like it more or less.

Not really replying to anyone in particular, I guess, just hoping the discussion wouldn't go down that road: "YOU GOTTA LOOK AT NOISE LIKE IT'S ART!!!!!!" Come on, it's just sound, who cares, if it sounds pleasing to your ears, then cool; if not, then cool. Geez.

I sort of picked up a little sarcasm, but I wasn't sure :) Seriously though, if you like Pollack, that's great. And if you like noise, that is great too. But I just feel like sometimes these things get out of hand, and people start liking them because it's the cool thing to do. I'm not saying that EVERYBODY does, but really, everyone here knows it as much as I do, a LOT of people do. So what's the big deal? Nothing really I guess, but it's just funny that these same people will trash somebody else for buying a Nickelback cd or shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch, and for the same reason, doing it because in their realm of peers it's the cool thing to do. I personally feel (and I'm making it clear that this is a personal opinion, so nobody gets all up in the air about it) "artists" like Pollock and noise "musicians" cash in on peoples gullibility to accept anything as art as long as they are told it is art. They actually did an experiment to test this buy having a bunch of kindergardeners do abstract paintings, and then hung the "art" in a gallery saying they were done by an acclaimed artist. People feel for it like monkeys reaching for a cookie in a jar. If they were told they were done by 5 year-olds during arts and craft hour they would dismiss it as just that, but since in their minds a true artist did them, they were masterpieces.