The Best in Modern Noise
 

This is something I've been pondering. In Pop, Rock n Roll, Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop, and other popular genres, people are constantly trying to determine who is the best. I mean, like, many would consider Hendrix to be the best Rock n Roll guitarist, despite the fact if they actually dig his shit or not. But this is different for Noise. Obviously Noise is one of the few styles of music that still has an amazing amount of creativity and uniqueness, and admittedly is one of the few genres I still pay a lot of attention to. Noise is a music of feeling. It is easily the most physical music in the world, and the only way to really enjoy it is to shut your mind the fuck off and just let the music hit you. Because of this, does it actually leave you time to analyze where the music stands in the lineage of musical history? Even Noise music criticism often consists of nothing more than surrealistic, stream of conciousness, adjective heavy "nothing writing" ("nothing writing" is the term i've used to descrive my style of music writing, totally personal, makes no sense to anyone but me, etc..). The only way to really determine how good Noise is, is through repeated listening. It's only when you can desensitize yourself to the intensity of the volume and dissonance that you can judge the sound from an objective perspective.

So, if you could say that the best noise band/artist is _, what would you say?

For me, I think I would go with the Skaters. Why? Simple, out of the thousands of Noise bands out there the Skaters are the only one that sound like NOTHING else.

John cage is the best modern noise artist. Period.

popularity polls are for fucking idiots

Merzbow i guess, no?

merzbow is THE noise.
aidan baker is quite good too. more drone+ambient though.

Are there any modern noise artists have recorded a totally silent piece ? They'd get my vote for best ever.

Listen to all the noise bands first, then make up your mind.

I think LIghtning Bolt are the best thing in noise music nowadays. Their records are so insane and creative and keep getting better with each one. I dont have to tell you guys how amazing it is to see them live, they blow my mind away.

I enjoy the way noise, both analog and electronic, have found their way as fills for a lot of good music. I think that noise by itself has a limited range, however, blended well with more 'conventional' music is the prefect use for its musical capabilities.

This is true. One of the strangest things I've heard recently (not that weird, nevermind) is this track by The Gambler ft. Elaine Conrad called 'Death To Horses', which has come out on a white label in the NY club underground. It features Tony Conrad's niece playing, and it has been called 'disco-drone'. The thread-starter can indulge in the endless possibilities that music offers.

Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1eywgzmythi

Pity Lightning Bolt aren't a noise band, though.

the second half of MOTE

ha!

mersbow and wolves eyes :D

"Listen" to 4'33" by John Cage. Although he would techinically not define it as silence (Cage was firm on the idea that there is never complete silence, that even in the most noiseless of settings, you will still hear your heart beat), it's probably the only, or at least the most famous, silent piece.

As far as the debate over the King Of Noise, I would have to vote for Merzbow. I'm not always crazy about him, but to me, he defines the genre. So I choose that, not based on popularity or favoritism, but more on where my mind heads first when I think of noise, much as many people's mind may head toward Hendrix when they think of rock, even if he isn't their favorite.

EDIT:
To back up my statement about Cage:
In 1951, Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than reflecting them as echoes. They are also externally sound-proofed. Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but he wrote later, "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."[9]

sarramkrop, what woudl you say Lightniong Bolt are? as a genre?

I ahve never heard a definitive answer.

Rock music that's weird, fast and enjoyable.

And yeah, noisy too.

that's what I likes!!! No wonder I dig the Lightning bolt albums.

Bernhard Gunter

Hooray For That!!

Noiseless noise.
Sic.

Total win.

In other news - noise music is an area of music that focuses less on melody/ harmony/ rhythm and more on timbre and volume dynamics. It doesn't really focus on dissonance - you'd need to ask Wagner and Xenakis about that (and Radelescu if you're in the mood to be bored silly). It's not really radical, and hasn't been since about 1942 or so. It's a sometimes interesting genre.

And also - what T&B said.

Geektime - which recording are they using? It's better than the one I have. You ever seen a score for that peice? Ridiculousness on sticks.

Keith Fullerton Whitman?

im not sure about the recording. the care beards choir? i usually hear that peice in music class when a proffesor wants to demonstrate atonal music and weird notation. then the class laughs as the noise and i think to myself how great it is.
yeah the score is nuts. i looks like someone took a felt pen to a staff and just blacked it out. and theere are all these crazy tasks that the musicians have to play that can be deicphered by a key on the side (if im not mistaken)

man,this piece really caused a stir when it was first released. it was used as an example for everthing that was wrong in the new music of their age-
music mistress to words? ha!
them fools didnt know shit for avante garde. and this period might have been more experimental than all of the 20th century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBl4kazdK4A

I would imagine there's a few people collect a lot of those peices for the score alone - you look at some of Penderecki, Xenakis, Tenney, Cage, (early) Feldman, Tudor or Scelsi's scores... beautfiul in their own right, regardless of what it represents.

I'm not entirely with you on the Monteverdi, but that is pretty special music. Bruckner's Motets! Messiaen! It's these sorts of places that these young snotty twats with distortion pedals need to look.

Oh, and you, Mr Fan, should check out Xenakis' Formalised music if you can get your hands on a copy - some of the diagrams in there are mind-boggling.

what arent you on with me? that the 17th century was more experimental than the 20th? its not more. but its equally innovative for its time. and the whole spirit of that century was a spirit of really out there thinking and trying to push the boundries.
yeah messian is great. i dont think i know his mototes or brukners, but ill check them out now.
have you heard beethovens late quartets? i just heard them a few weeks ago at my grandparents. now thats some extreme shit. really different from his regular repotoire.
and ill check the library for some scores.
im taking an anallyzing music through a historica perspective course. so we will eventually get to dedacophonic .
sorry
back to noise

one more off topic. im listening to bruckner's ave maria op 6. its really good. kinda of like a lasso motet mixed with some palestrina. very pretty.

I'll say it's primal and noise-textured largely instrumental post-punk math rock.

Kevin Drumm's Sheer hellish miasma is pretty great.
Axolotl is good too.

that is some genius categorization there atari!!!

Best noize deez daze?
I'll go with The Original Silence, of course. Paal Nilssen-Love's Town House Orchestra is right on as well.

Reed/Anderson/Zorn's improv goes into some new areas due to the presence of Laurie (especially the second part). It sounds a bit different than most because Lou is playing too.

I can understand why many say Merzbow is the advance guard, but I'll (also) go with Wolf Eyes as deserving of strong consideration.

Lightning Bolt are like a spastic Progressive Hardcore with Noise leanings, certainly not noise though. I havnt seen one interesting response so far.

I love Wolf Eyes, but again, I don't see it. I just said the Skaters because that music seriously shoots you into outer space, takes you out of your body, and that's what good noise should do.

I read a review of the Skaters in Blastitude that said they were the honest heirs to Sun Ra because they're creating music to blast us into the outer galazxy to escape the horrors of the Earth, and they're better at it than Sun Ra because they didn't decide to go into a "Big Band" phase to gloss over thier music to bring lame people along for the ride. Hell no, if you are going to listen to the Skaters, you can't be thinking it's going to be a serene experience, but no, as with other things that connect you to the cosmos (like acid) it can sometime be a very difficuilt experience, but ultimately highly rewarding.

And whoever said John Cage is the nest in modern noise, I highly disagree. I can't stand his music, the guy has some balls to record and perform silence for nine minutes and think some hack academic types are gonna hail its brilliance. I respect the man for his ideas and theory, but as far as his music, no thanks. He's the ultimate in overly academic snobbery music. If we're talking 20th cent Avant Composition, I'd take Xenakis, Partch, Stockhausen, Boulez, and Varese everyday. But then again, I've only recently been getting into this stuff (past year) and have limited knowledge on the subject. I'm a rock n roll mothafucka.

John Cage did