Bring the (harsh) noise !

[William Hutson]

i haven't heard much MSBR (koji tano) solo. all the cds i have are collaborations. however, it's not as if there wasn't japanese stuff in the 90's that sounded heavy. killer bug (AKA kazumoto endo) was a huge influence on a many american noise musicians in the early 2000's.

[William Hutson]

I'd like to hear your favorite noise releases of all time (I don't think you contributed to this thread before, sorry if I missed it).

a super quick top ten of HARSH CDs that are all either available right now, or pretty easy to come across.

1. Pedestrian Deposit: Fatale (Hospital Productions / Hanson, 2006)
2. Kevin Drumm: Sheer Hellish Miasma (Mego, 2002)
3. Pain Jerk: Gallon Gravy (Creativeman Disc, 1997)
4. Sickness: I Have Become The Disease That Made Me (Ground Fault, 2003)
5. Macronympha: Intensive Care (Self Abuse, 1998)
6. Killer Bug: Beyond The Valley Of The Tapes (Troniks / Ninth Circle Music, 2005)
7. Crawl Unit: Propietary Acoustics (Pure, 1996)
8. Richard Ramirez & Skin Crime: Pleasure, Commerce & Disease (PACrec, 2004)
9. Merzbow: Pulse Demon (Release, 1996)
10. LHD: Curtains (PACrec / Troniks, 2004)

those are all pretty obvious. less a personal top ten and more an appeal for a genre-wide top ten of all time. of course my age shows through in my list (i started buying noise in highschool, which i graduated from in 2000). some of them are lesser known, i guess. i've never heard a lot of praise for the ramirez & skin crime disc, but i really like both of those projects and think that the collaboration turned out to be everything a fan could hope for. (i could have replaced it with "tsunami" by skin crime, but then i would need another ramirez disc.)

this is not a top ten for noise in general, just the really intense harsh stuff.

[jon abbey]

nice, I'll check a couple of those, definitely the Crawl Unit (my man Joe Colley) and the Pedestrian Deposit. I remember that Merzbow selection being too relentlessly intense for me at the time, I was more a Music for Bondage Performance guy.

[William Hutson]

yeah. i liked both volumes of music for bondage performance, but i was trying to focus on exclusively harsh material for my list. all those are pretty unrelenting, except for the pedestrian deposit, which has prettier moments, but i think he's a genius, and so i included it anyway. propietary acoustics is the most aggressive material i've ever heard from colley, though certainly not his best.

[RFKorp]

That Sickness album is definitely one of my all time favorites too.

[grisha]

i heard about half of that list and will second them easily, especially the PD. i think Richard Ramirez & Skin Crime is Ramirez reworking old Skin Crime material. i only heard a tiny portion of his work, but another favourite is Music for Morgues and New Buildings.

stuff i really liked from last year was:

Pain Jerk & John Wiese - Terrazzo (better than Mental Peace Liberation Front, imo)
Pica / Cain - Sak
Prurient - Adam Tied to Stone (was quite surprised how much i liked it, after not checking out any new Prurient since Black Vase)
Wreck & Drool - Heavymelt / The Hills Have Youth
R/S - One (if it counts)
Lasse Marhaug - The Great Silence (harsh, really good!)
Bizarre Uproar - Unsafe and Insane

also various Astro collabs which were psychedelic and sloppy (Motorcycle Fuck, CCCC, SSD).

[William Hutson]

i think Richard Ramirez & Skin Crime is Ramirez reworking old Skin Crime material

exactly. i don't think skin crime has done anything new since the late 1990's.

i only heard a tiny portion of his work, but another favourite is Music for Morgues and New Buildings.

yeah. ramirez's stuff is all over the place. some of his music is absolutely perfect, but each good release is bookended by so many lazy tossed-off releases (which are usually, at least, okay). i try to stick to buying things he releases under his own name, and under the names werewolf jerusalem and black leather jesus (his texas supergroup with t.e.f. and others). but he has done good work as last rape, an innocent young throat cutter, and crash at every speed. also wish by manplug, which is ramirez plus another (possibly fictional) collaborator, is one of my very favorite albums of the last few years.

[grisha]

t.e.f.

definitely one of the best noise musicians right now.

[apfEID]

Gallon Gravy is now easy to find? It wasn't for a long, long time.

Amazing cd, for sure.

[mshiflet]

Gallon Gravy is now easy to find? It wasn't for a long, long time.

Amazing cd, for sure.

easy to download???

[labrat]

anyone noticed that Russell Haswell's (superb) Second Live Salvage cover is a parody of Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert?
(or is it just me?)

[Skuj]

Bemp!

I'm a Merzboxee. The Merzbox must be the most ridiculous and satisfying object that I own. Merzbient and Merzphysics are also very worthy sets in my collection. I think Mr Akita is a psychedelic Noise genius. Is there much love for Merz at IHM?

Akasha Gulva remains my alltime favourite Merzdisc. When I first heard it I literally puked. I wasn't ready for such an assault. Subsequent attacks at various volumes facilitated my entry into the harsh Noise world.

Hijokaidan - Modern and Romance soon followed. Absolutely epic, cleansing, invigorating releases. Like jumping into the North Pacific ocean on New Years eve. (I do this often.)

Harsh Noise is clean and unpretentious. There is a thousand bands trying to do it right, but they don't understand the dynamics and subtleties that Merz, Incapacitants and others employ, ....sparingly, patiently, suspensefully......

I have not listened to Whitehouse in a very long time. There are days when I think I will just give my (aprox 10CD) Whitehouse collection away. I can't put my finger on the reason for not caring anymore. Perhaps their music was too literal. Merz and Incapacitants leave much to the imagination, and keep things abstract.

Sorry, this post meanders. I am drunk. Hope this thread is resurrected in a useful and enlightening manner.

[mudd]

i haven't paid much attention to the last 15 years or so of merzbow releases, but lots of his work prior to maybe merzbeat still kicks my ass.

my harsh noise namedrop would be the early stages of the men who can't love crew: impregnable, privy seals, moth drakula, persimmons pomegranate, their various combinations, and connections to oscillating innards, pedestrian deposit, the cherry point...

most of those guys have been doing cool stuff in other areas of music since maybe 2009, but the noise tapes they put out from say 2006 are really powerful and varied.

m

[J.F.]

Akasha Gulva remains my alltime favourite Merzdisc. When I first heard it I literally puked.

I never really cared for this stuff, but this statement made me curious. I spent some time with this one (not the complete 73 min though). I'm sure that sitting with headphones in front of a pc listening to this music limits its effects, but anyway a few thoughts: I'd find it more interesting to follow if the textures were more "perforated". The simplest way would be irregularly muting fractions of a second, every fraction of a second. Or taking a cartridge and hectically scratch over everything near you.

something like this
I .II I._ .II| _|I.. ~I| |.

instead of this
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

(isn't that a cute graphic for music I'm not even familiar with?)

I'm aware that likely has not so much to do with the concept of the Merzbow track I just heard. But I can imagine something like extremely "perforated" harsh noise exists - something offering that much contrasting information in a short time span that one has no chance to really process everything. Something one cannot "follow" so easily. That kinda noise would have more chances to really appeal to me.

Anyway an interesting moment was stopping the music after a longer while. For a short moment, my tinnitus was shining in a new light.

[Zeno Marx]

but anyway a few thoughts: I'd find it more interesting to follow if the textures were more "perforated". The simplest way would be irregularly muting fractions of a second, every fraction of a second. Or taking a cartridge and hectically scratch over everything near you.

something like this
I .II I._ .II| _|I.. ~I| |.

instead of this
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

(isn't that a cute graphic for music I'm not even familiar with?)

I'm aware that likely has not so much to do with the concept of the Merzbow track I just heard. But I can imagine something like extremely "perforated" harsh noise exists - something offering that much contrasting information in a short time span that one has no chance to really process everything. Something one cannot "follow" so easily. That kinda noise would have more chances to really appeal to me.

You might want to check out THIS RELEASE, because your description is how I'd mostly describe what Mr.Goudreau employed there. If you're looking for microscopic textures, it's a nice one. Avoid youtube and MP3 rips, because this is also of the highest fidelity.

Personally, I think Merzbow was in a sweet zone in that early-90s to mid-90s era. Green Wheels, Noisembryo, Artificial Invagination, Hole, Oersted, Pulse Demon etc are all rich in textures and psychedelics.

[jon abbey]

that is the same record Bill and Richard recommended upthread a bit. I don't listen to much noise these days but I might have to check that one out.

[Zeno Marx]

that is the same record Bill and Richard recommended upthread a bit. I don't listen to much noise these days but I might have to check that one out.

Whoops. I didn't see those inclusions for some reason. If you put that album through a spectrum analyzer and then used the sharpest scalpel to shave all the peaks, thus creating two points from each peak, I think this is what the result would sound like. As if the absence of those peaks creates a better something in the newly-found spaces.

[Skuj]

Akasha Gulva remains my alltime favourite Merzdisc. When I first heard it I literally puked.

I never really cared for this stuff, but this statement made me curious. I spent some time with this one (not the complete 73 min though). I'm sure that sitting with headphones in front of a pc listening to this music limits its effects, but anyway a few thoughts: I'd find it more interesting to follow if the textures were more "perforated". The simplest way would be irregularly muting fractions of a second, every fraction of a second. Or taking a cartridge and hectically scratch over everything near you.

something like this
I .II I._ .II| _|I.. ~I| |.

instead of this
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

(isn't that a cute graphic for music I'm not even familiar with?)

I'm aware that likely has not so much to do with the concept of the Merzbow track I just heard. But I can imagine something like extremely "perforated" harsh noise exists - something offering that much contrasting information in a short time span that one has no chance to really process everything. Something one cannot "follow" so easily. That kinda noise would have more chances to really appeal to me.

Anyway an interesting moment was stopping the music after a longer while. For a short moment, my tinnitus was shining in a new light.

Fascinating!

Everytime I hear Akasha Gulva it sounds different. It is very "wall of noise", even for Merzbow, but it really does meander throughout the 73min. There are so many layers to it (and even some vocals), which ebb and flow, and reveal themselves in different ways at various volumes. (I have always thought that playing Merz at low volume is an essential task after initial high volume listenings.)

[J.F.]

You might want to check out THIS RELEASE, because your description is how I'd mostly describe what Mr.Goudreau employed there. If you're looking for microscopic textures, it's a nice one. Avoid youtube and MP3 rips, because this is also of the highest fidelity.

Spot on, sounds like more fun to me. While listening I thought it has, on some level, something more "narrative" to it. I guess I need that.

I wonder how very short irregular complete silences would come across (Melt-Banana have that kind of cut-up moments here and there, and it can add some sweet irritation), but I could fumble around and try that myself if I can't stop to wonder about that. It would involve some kind of obvious digital post-production, whereas the two things I heard in the context of this thread sound more analogue to me, in a way.

Of course I heard the meandering in the Merzbow track, the broadening of the scope into more bassy regions (and many more things) while the track progresses. What surprised me was repetitions leading to pulsating structures. Does Merzbow also use guitar? There were moments that to me sounded like a massively distorted wha-wha guitar - almost rockist

Do these people reveal, for example in interviews, how they connect to the tradition of what they do?

edit:
I checked two Merzbow interviews. I was surprised to read that he was into quite the same stuff that I like(d) (for instance Soft Machine, King Crimson's Earthbound, White Light/White Heat, Ayler, stuff from the FMP- ICP- Incus-labels, Xenakis etc).

[Hayao Yamaneko]

Glad this thread got revived. My listening diet has gotten increasingly noisy this last couple of years, but having come to noise via SHM and mostly just groped about blindly from there, there's lots of stuff here I didn't know about.