From: The Cassette Mythos, Autonomedia 1990
Music has been refined to mean more than "what musical instruments sound like when played by musicians who read music." The new directions include being able to compose using just sound from tapes, making use of the sampler technology and the improvisational sound statement, and combining conventional music with sound effects.
Heck, my first reaction was to lunge for the STOP (not PAUSE) then fast-forward for another sample or so (I'm still curious), then to maybe flip it over or maybe not if it didn't catch on for me.
It's the sound of gigantic metal ships bumping past each other; lots of surface area dragging across more metal surface area, sparks come out of the speakers. This is the biggest work-out for the speakers. Heavy metal rock music tends to have a pulse, but this monstrosity has teeth you've never even seen before.
There are many ways to ride the wildear.
A despicable rumor is that the only people having fun at improvisation sessions are the musicians and their entourage. Noise-art is in the ear of the listener. The real reason is to explore the realms of what there is in the world, the despair, the thrills, the pain, the warning signs, or even the ecstasy of love--all that at once and more.
Textures, word power, washes, color and light, suspenseful drones or shattering collages, multi-tracking layering effects, and always something new. There is so much to incorporate or to try doing.
The passion of the power of using technology to make loud noises.
Humor counts highly, intense emotions rank highly as well (mostly fear and passion); just presenting something new is important too. None of this makes any sense really. Everyone hears things differently, everyone makes art with different ideas. It's a new language of arrangements of sound.
There are many reasons for making noise-art. It's up to the artist. The ability to discuss the meaning of life, pointing out wrong and evil so that it may be repaired and rendered harmless. Hell, that's an activity that has a rather limited appeal--the enthusiasts are interested in each other's work and are supportive of the pursuit of the wildear. The wildear has the quest for new sounds and ideas; the ignition is the on/off switch, and the RECORD button is a standard feature of the audio cassette deck. Let's go!
Before we go any further, let's dismiss the concept of quality. In this article I am making some technical observations and trying to be descriptive rather than saying "This is good" and "This is better." In disavowing quality we allow all kinds of efforts to be displayed. Humor, poetry, a nightmare, a dream, storytelling, social enlightenment, complaints about the government--there are many things that can be found in noise-art. A genuine love for new sounds and ideas, a zeal for experiencing new ways of human expression, is necessary for this artistic muse.
The way that sound feels when it comes out of a speaker at a high volume is part of the experience, and therefore is partly why loud volumes are popular. That and just plain old commercial appeal are the reasons most rock musicians normally crank up the biggest systems. (When attending live spectacles in which noise is to be featured, I recommend putting cotton or something in your ear for protection from damage from the blast. Delicate organic components are difficult to replace.)
Overdrive: Eventually the speaker is going to blow up--what that means is make a quick, sharp, loud buzzing and then...NOTHING! The perfect consumer-oriented art form. There is a pretty good speaker lifespan for conservative use of these effects, but there is a price to pay for equipment use and abuse.
Microphones: Simple, handy, works every time. Just bring the microphone into the path of the output of its own speaker and bingo! It starts singing. Move it around for new tones. Variations include moving the mic into and away from the speaker (be careful), putting the speaker or the mic into metal buckets, doing things to the metal buckets like drop sand or drops of water onto the bucket. Microphones are a primary tool.
Guitars: There are little footswitched devices that bring out a buzzy, crackling sound instead of a chord when you strum the instrument; these seem handy. Tuning the guitar in various patterns, bowing the strings like a violin, putting things on the strings, putting the strings on wrong, or using wire instead of guitar strings all make interesting sounds. So does altering the shape of the guitar body. Hollow-body guitars make quicker richer feedback, which can of course be gotten with digital contraptions too. Heck, you don't even need to set the strings up on a guitar at all! If you sort of stretch them across a box it becomes a zither or something. Electronic pickups for guitars are very versatile, and are worth experimenting with.
Anything with a guitar pickup: A pioneer in this technology is Eugene Chadbourne. He has transformed ordinary household items like garden rakes, bird cages, and even plungers into musical forces to be reckoned with. The effect is funny and loud and challenging and controversial and maybe upsetting if you aren't expecting it, and generally like living near a science fiction airport, only through the magic of home technology.
Mysterious black boxes: Gizmos are capable of enticing you to spend lots of money on them. Newer, faster, cleaner, cheaper. The true secrets of the black boxes can bring you the ability to create new and better gizmos in your own workshop.
Percussion: Once the electrified voodoo thangs are in gear, there are many ways to play them. The simplest is to use them rhythmically. What human hands can do that electronic devices can't is produce patterns that have special meaning, and perhaps this is the basis for what music is.
Yes, there is more. But lets talk about the audience.
One of the most amazing things about noise cassettes as a public art form is the curiosity that the artists have for each other's work. Surprising results come from trying to market these tapes.
It's a concept, sort of an inside joke or a way of examining pain in an artistic form. This is something that is not so unusual for artists to be concerned with. It has been an important tool for expression since technology and warfare have merged, which happened in a global way around the turn of the century, hence the surrealists and the dadaists. Noise is an artistic expression of the outrage of the inhuman technology of our world. A signal about what is happening, somewhere.
If one band or influence could be considered to be an outstanding catalystic it might be the quartet Throbbing Gristle: assaultive voices, tape recordings, loud rhythm machines, themes of war and pain and tragedy. This is just one of many influences which included the basic vocabulary of the trade. The hardware usually doesn't matter as much as the quest for new sounds itself.
Some of the noise artists tell me about customers that buy almost everything they can make. Most people that record normal songs and stuff like that have problems with getting the tapes beyond everyone in their family and their close circle of friends. Many noise-cassette-makers probably have trouble getting their family to listen at all. Ah, the call of art. So another big point of controversy is the limitations of subject matter. Some people are reluctant to sit through a performance of say, Whitehouse (the English art assault team), with all the loud feedback, drawn-out obscenities, and blasphemies. I guess that the intended audience is just that group that would flee immediately upon hearing it. The audience that is there is learning about the nightmare of the subject matter, and about how the performers are doing it. Pain-music bands present the unthinkable thoughts that humans are troubled with, the alien unhuman pain that comes to us all in life, something that remains covered in polite company and never referred to.
So that's one reason to do it.
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