Boredoms and Nurse with Wound are for the most part significantly less noisy most of the time than Mars or DNA. Boredoms and Nurse with Wound are both more psychedelic than anything.

Who the hell calls Sonic Youth noise? Aside from the Silver Sessions and a few tracks here and there (mostly collaborations) that's just ridiculous. Even Confusion is Sex is more rock than noise.

No, I frequently hear things I don't want to hear. That's an integral part of life.

What you are saying is that it all sounds the same to you. I'd probably say the same thing about people speaking Chinese, but to people who know the language, directions to the bus stop don't sound like romantic poetry.


I wouldn't be able to do that with Wolf Eyes, because I don't know their records that well. I'm certain a Wolf Eyes fan probably could do it though. I can do it with the Cocteau Twins and to somebody not familiar with them, you often hear their music all sounds the same. I've actually heard the claim leveled against Sonic Youth a fair amount too, though yes, songs with lyrics make it easier to identify them than songs without.

Repped.

except you know, classical music...

Dead-Air kicks ass once again.

Boredoms are an uninteresting noise artist?

What album(s) did you hear?

No, I think songs with lyrics are significantly easier to identify than classical music as well. The average person couldn't tell you whether a given classical piece was by one composer or another, let alone which recording it was from. Of course a classical music aficionado could probably listen to a little bit and tell you which composer, orchestra, when it was recorded and who conducted. But that's because they know the language well.

Ugh, lyrics.

I Like SLICER a lot. I also Like Mugger, Burned Mind, Black Vomit w/Braxton, Dead Hills, Human Animal, Dread, The Beast w/ Smegma, tons of live cdr's. Shit, I also love nunmerous records by Demons, Graveyards, Dilloway, Dead Machines, and damn near the rest of thier projects. I know I'm going to lose points for this, but to me, easily one of the best bands in America now, and have been for a while. And they have released perfect songs, all thier full lengths almost have them (except for nmaybe the first s/t). They just like ton release everything, they feel the bad stuff has just as much place as being heard as the good stuff. I'm not sure if I agree with it, but I'm sure it has more to do with well documenting the history of the band then anything, or the fact that thier casettes keep thier extremly small labels alive.

They are a Noise band that has just suffered from overexposure, but as far as three talented guys into tons of different styes of music, infusing a love of Dub, Hardcore, Black Metal, and early Industrial all into thier eclectic blend of Noise, how can you go wrong>

??????

I have heard well over 100 Wolf Eyes releases... I was pretty fanatical about them at some point and had a notepad file on my computer with a list of every album I'd heard and every album I still needed to hear. At some point, probably around hearing HELLOWEEN HOLOCAUSTS (which is over 2 hours of halloween "scary sounds" tapes through distortion pedals; funny stuff, but........), I lost interest big time. They're not consistent, and some of their releases are absolutely AWFUL.

The thing is, some of their releases are pretty damn decent! They often will stumble onto something really interesting. I think all their "big" releases are worth checking out (except, as batrelease noted, the self-titled album, which mostly doesn't even sound like them anyway); Dead Hills, Slicer, Burned Mind, etc. The only one I LOVE, though, is the Black Vomit collab. I agree with them wanting to document the evolution of their band and so on, and there's nothing wrong with that; plenty of bands do that... but by exercising no quality control whatsoever, they've pretty much made it impossible to separate the good from the bad. And even hardcore Wolf Eyes fans -- I knew a guy from Michigan who owned or had CD-R copies of every release ever up to 2005 -- seem to admit that half of their discography is, well... uh... inconsistent. I will say, though, that judging from the albums I've heard that they've released in the past few years (they seem to be releasing less stuff nowadays), I think they're actually kinda getting better. Can't say that about most noise groups.

.....They're definitely an important noise band, but I think their side and related projects are actually usually more interesting than Wolf Eyes themselves. I dunno. A lot of their releases usually just fall into the "oh, that's cool that they did that; they just rubbed a microphone against a cinder block and put it through 3 flanger pedals at different settings" for me. Conceptually interesting stuff but doesn't really make me ever want to break it out again.

Except Black Vomit. That's the one.

Actually, the biggest problem with Wolf Eyes is this quote by John Olson: "You know, we’re probably about fifteen percent songs, seventy-five percent bad mood, and five percent, whatever, composition or whatever."

Haha.

SLICER really is good, though. Yeah.

What makes you say so? (To throw your original question back in your face!)

Haha.

Cuz it fuckin slices, man!

Good Noise = Daniel Menche

Bad Noise = Kylie Minoise

Good noise = white noise
Bad noise = brown noise
Okay noise = pink noise

Well the stuff I like on SLICER isn't noise per se. It's tape "slices" and loops.

Well, explore more "noise" like that then!!

what's yr new avatar, sir?

number girl - school girl distortional addict album cover

Great husker du influenced Japanese melodic noise rocking kind of band.

I dunno, it was time for an avatar change. I get sick of 'em.

You remind me of this girl I was talking to in college in the '80s who said she hated all new wave. You like the Police, I said. "They aren't new wave!" she exclaimed. You like U2, I said. "They aren't new wave!" she exclaimed. "You like Elvis Costello"... you get the idea.

Yr reaching.

All I was saying was that though Wolf Eyes is often considered a "noise band," the record SLICER tends to be closer to Musique Concrete than noise.

A lot of what's considered "noise music" is along the lines of Musique Concrete in techniques though.

I'm pretty sure that if Pierre Schaeffer were to release his first album today, it would be received as a "noise" record. Not "harsh noise" but noise nonetheless.

A lot of people who make music that gets called noise make stuff that I find more to be electronic experimental music, and actually a bunch of what I've heard from Wolf Eyes fits that too. My friend Todd/Soup Purse here in Portland has flat out told me in a radio interview that he calls his music noise rather than experimental because the audience for the latter is 5 people in a small theater on a Wednesday night, while the audience for the former is 50+ people partying down in somebody's house.

So maybe your answer to what "good noise" is for you, would be stuff with interesting tape-splicing and Musique Concrete influences. Or maybe just with discernable sounds within the noise.

My comparison to my "new wave" hating friend really isn't that far off either (though I know you never said you hate noise). Nonetheless, she could very carefully explain why each of those artists she liked weren't "new wave", and in fact each of them did receive play on the AOR/Classic Rock stations. My point was merely that a lot of the best music in any genre can easily be perceived as actually outside the genre because of it's uniqueness that moves it away from the cliches we define the form by.

thanks no noise you know how to start a "war"!!! this is for you: this is a portugese project called ( like your signature ) no noise reduction with Toral and other "multi-artist" Paulo Feliciano , they made this album called - on air - improvised music or "noise" ( as you want ) with modified electronic toys further altered by electronic devices and guitars with feedbacks circuits. bad or good noise? just searching new sound.

I'm not sure musique concrete is the same thing as noise. It's almost always composed, or certainly meticolously thought-out in the way it's 'played', rather than going for shouty, improvised aural war-mongering, which is what the core of noisereductions' question might be.

Daniel Menche, and all the talented ones, compose their 'noise music', others just 'make some noise'.

Menche in particular uses a lot of the same techniques as the Musique Concrete composers, though not every time. Wolf Eyes, from what I've seen of them, appear more in the tradition of improvised noise rock like Last Exit (who are incredibly talented, but don't seem to compose).

Noise means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some, they use the label for anything they like, for others for anything they don't like. There was a great quote on Anakrid's My Space for a while that said, "If I had a nickel for every so-called "noise artist", I'd buy myself a cheap microphone and a distortion pedal, and then I'd be a "noise artist" myself!" Nonetheless, I still think most people describe Anakrid as "noise" and he's really damn good at it.

Ok, I always end up confused by these threads about noise. I gather, this being the SY messageboard, that the 'noise' in question is the one that uses tonal hysterics and high doses of volume to make itself heard. You know, like Non, Masonna. Incapacitants, Merzbow etc etc. Musique Concrete, tape manipulations etc are a different thing, people can argue all they like about that. There is plenty of proof that tells they are not the same thing, and this costant trying to contextualise all noise from the point of view of past aural history all the time I think misses the point and prevents people from simply enjoying what they hear.

I know of No Noise Reduction -- he did the intro for BLASTIC SCENE, son. But I'm Noise ReductionS... plural, with no "no." Two totally different things.

Anyway, when I think of noise personally, I think of like Merzbow, or SILVER SESSIONS, etc. When tape splicing is involved, that's more like composition to me. I think of them separately.

I see what you're saying, and you are correct to explain it as your personal way of defining things, as "noise" gets used so many different ways by different people there can be no other way to do so.

However, the Silver Sessions were arguably really pretty composed in the editing process and you'll find much of what Merzbow does is often along the same lines. Yes, Sonic Youth just took everything they had to create the loudest racket imaginable when they made the wall of sound that turned into Silver Sessions, but they meticulously edited and arranged those noises into individual tracks with intended impacts at specific points. I don't know if they were working with tape or digital tools to do so, I suspect the latter since O' Rourke was kind of running Echo Canyon at the time, but really either way you're doing the same thing.

Also, the problem with thinking of bursts of electonic harsh noise and tape splicing separately is that you can't count on the artists to do the same. As saramkrop pointed out, the best and most mature noise artists are going to spend more time thinking about what they are doing and composing it, and likely expanding their bag of tricks to encompass more techniques.

Meanwhile, another type of "noise music" entirely is something like Borbetomagus who make their racket foremost through saxophones and have little to do in terms of technique with much of todays electronic oriented noise scene. Nothing "composed" about their improvisations, but they are more rooted in the free jazz tradition the way Last Exit were.

this shall not be ignored. it is the truth

One things that is clear from this thread is that at least what was already pointed out by Savage Clone we all seem to agree with.

I'm curious, and I don't mean this as a trick question in any way (nor expect one answer or another), but do you consider your own music (at least the tracks you know I've heard) to be "noise music"?

No. I do like it to be noisy often, though.

I hardly ever sample other people or sounds but my own, I play first and record what I'm playing, then edit/mix/etc after. I also practice whenever time allows me, 'cause in the event of having to play live I'd like to give people value for their money. I just don't like the idea of being caught unprepared.

edited.

That's what I probably would have guessed. Yet, I'm sure you get lumped in with noise most of the time.

Almost a definition of "good noise" arises - that the artist doesn't want to be called noise because of inevitable association with all of the shit.

I find your music too multi-dimensional to describe it that way. However, if somebody who was primarily into mainstream music asked me what it was like, I'd be sorely tempted to explain it in the easily graspable shorthand. I'd probably still say "noisy" rather than "noise" though.

I wouldn't have a problem getting lumped in with other 'noise' musicians, it's just that I don't circuit-bend almost anything, I know how to make a synth sound noisy while playing it, and turning knobs or pressing pedals alone leaves me unsatisfied and like I'm some sort of cheat, not because there aren't people who are extremely good at that, it's just that I'm not good at it myself.

Don't feel bad, I meant to ask the same thing. I wasn't sure on some of his pieces, but he's pretty much answered that above. Still that doesn't say in general.

That's the thing with this newer more modern definition of "noise" that I find confusing. People dwell on the equipment more than the sounds a lot of the time (brings us back to Savage Clone's comment, I know).

To me, Borbotomagus are just as much noise with two saxes and a guitar as anyone who's wired up their weedeater and toaster oven together as some new type of instrument. Same with Merzbow when he just uses his laptop (though I agree with anyone who says that's boring to watch).

It does seem like the current generation of noise kids have the biggest pedal fetishes know to human history and maybe that really does end up influencing the definition of the genre. Kind of the same way that Suicide were considered a punk rock band until the definition of punk was more clearly established as a traditional rock instrument band with a snotty attitude, and then Suicide were "proto-punk" or some other term outside the genre (similar story with the Screamers and hardcore).

But living in Portland makes my perspective weirder, because while the global definition might be getting narrower, around here it's broadening massively. Basically, noise is so popular that many experimental musicians want to be called that so they don't seem like dweebs who play in their bedroom to nobody that listens. There are even hot chicks at noise gigs, some of them performing, it's really pretty odd.