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.