NOISE

Finally, humbly submitted for your collective consideration, a topic devoted to that much derided genre of the sonic arts that makes us all go, "What Do You Mean It's (Not) Music?"

Yes, I'm talking about noise. Some of us know it, fewer of us love it, but none of us would call it "pop." Mostly. Among the madmen of experimental music, noise is The Brute, the elephant in the room, the one that gets right up in your face and demands you call it "music," never letting you know whether it will take it as a compliment or punch you in the face for the implication. Noise is hot and cold, harsh and smooth, always ruthless but rarely petty. Noise is everything we want out of music and everything that we don't.

Noise is beautiful.

Who the hell's with me?!

I recently have fallen in love with electronic compression.

I was listening to Merzbow last night and was surprised at how much I liked it. It wasn't the first time I checked his stuff out, but it was the first time I genuinely enjoyed what I was hearing. I want to delve deeper into his discography, but I'm not sure which album to start with.

Other than Merzbow (and Whitehouse, if they count), I know bugger-all about noise.

Batztoutai With Material Gadgets and Cycle are both personal favourites.

Whitehouse definitely count as noise, but it's a hard line to draw after a certain point. For example, early Throbbing Gristle is the clear forbear to most modern noise, but in-and-of-itself it is closer to old-school electronic experimentation or even early ambient music than it is to the puritanical blitz of modern Harsh Noise (Masonna, Merzbow) or the balls-out "rock" feel of the Ann Arbor scene (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police).

Lightning Bolt are probably my favourite Noise band, closely followed by HEALTH and Swans. Also, no idea if Zu count, as they're kind of Improvised-Noise-Jazz-Metal. Or something.

I love Merzbow. Also, I'm really getting into Incapacitants.

White House are Power Electronics, which is a subgenre.

I like Noise. I even made a Noise-inspired album (Junkyard Jazz), I do however, not like the scene.

Technically Noise Rock, but I'm not nit-picky. Or rather, I am, but less with others than with myself. I try. I really do.

But regardless: Swans, HEALTH and Lightning Bolt are all great. Been listening to Get Color a lot lately...

edited 18th Feb '11 8:12:44 PM by JHM

Merzbow's one of my favorites and one of the few straight-up Harsh Noise acts in my repertoire (along with The Gerogerigegege and Swift Treweeke, seriously, when I heard 1930, my jaw was on the floor for five minutes at a stretch and quite a bit after "Iron, Glass Blocks and White Lights" ended,) but when it comes to noise, I've taken an interest in power electronics (Sutcliffe Jügend, whom I wish I could find more stuff in print by, Whitehouse, who I wish I could find anything in print by, and RxAxPxE) and I've become fascinated by HNW (guys like Dead Body Collection and the like.) There's just something about it—a good HNW piece can flawlessly combine the best aspects of both Harsh Noise and ambient into something incredibly ugly—and yet absolutely beautiful.

I thought HEALTH was a chiptunes act? :|

HEALTH are... hard to describe. Think of super-distorted minimalist keyboard/guitar workouts, androgynous shoegazing vocals, really intense tribal drumming, and absurdly catchy melody lines blended into one seamless whole, but mellower, spookier and wilder all at the same time.

edited 20th Mar '11 8:52:43 PM by JHM

No offense, but that sounds more like a sales pitch than an actual description. :P

I know who they are and have heard a couple tracks by them, but I'm not sure I'd call them Noise.

Actually wait. No, shit I'm thinking of Crystal Castles. Nevermind XD

edited 20th Mar '11 8:56:47 PM by SpainSun

Yeah. It's the best description I can give, other than "hooky, morose and loud."

edited 20th Mar '11 9:05:24 PM by JHM

[derp]

edited 24th Mar '11 9:46:43 AM by goobma4001

I'm a fan of noise drone- stuff you can kind of tune out to (Yellow Swans, Belong, Tim Hecker, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, etc.), but I'm not going to listen to every random recording of someone pissing on their microphone or shoving a fork into a synthesizer just for the sake of it being called "noise".

I still struggle a lot with this genre. Noise rock I can get down with, but an understanding of pure noise as a genre eludes me. Well, I understand that part of it is in appreciating the art and the complete... not-musicness that is noise. I just don't "get" the genre right now. Merzbow is my only foray into this. On the noise rock front, I like a spot of Melt-Banana from time to time.

YES *brofist*

Which is why I have said before and I'll say it again: Sturgeon's Law is always in effect, but the best stuff is often utterly compelling, if difficult.

Also, seconding Zudak's gestures of solidarity on Tim Hecker and Yellow Swans. *fist-bump*

Thirding Tim Hecker etc. I'm listening to the new Belong album, Common Era, right now. It's pretty sweet.

I wasn't sure if Tim Hecker or Belong counted, I think of them more as drone artists than noise.

Wow, this place has a lot of Tim Hecker fans! So when do we assemble our dark empire? Other more noisy drone projects that have started to grow on me recently have been Fennesz and Pan Sonic- It kind of hurts to listen to at first (if you know what I mean by that), but they're very rewarding on long listens. Has anyone here heard of Oneohtrix Point Never? He normally does synth drone/arpeggios, but on his most recent LP the first track (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDUmFU7cuU) was a good five minutes of pretty harsh noise, but it sounds great IMO. If that guy put out an entire full-length of that kind of music, I would get it.

Hehehe. Saeg and I are big Oneohtrix fans.

Why didn't I join this place earlier?

Yeah, why didn't you?

I'm a pretty big fan of Returnal, but I haven't got round to listening to any of Oneohtrix's earlier material.

Also, although they're technically Noise-Pop rather than Noise, what do people think of Serena-Maneesh? They recorded their most recent album in a cave. Which is pretty cool.

edited 25th Mar '11 12:46:57 PM by Saeglopur