Noise

Noise

In much the same way the early modernists were inspired by primitive art, most contemporary noisicians are excited by the archaic technologies of wire-recorders, the 8-track cartridge, and vinyl records. When given the choice of having their work released as either a vinyl record or digital CD, most still choose vinyl. Most noisicians would rather develop their own personal technology then conform to the commercial mass-media norm. Many not only build their own noise-generating devices, but even their own specialized recording equipment. Rejected sounds together with rejected technology married in attitude. Without having anything in common, noisicians all record, document and achieve the very sounds nobody else wants to hear.

The idea that distortion illustrates transformation has become central for many a noisician. Based in Tokyo, Masami Akita, who works under the name Merzbow, started experimenting with tape-loops in the early 1980's. But by the time Akita and I did our first live collaboration, at the DMA2 festival in Bordeaux in '89, Merzbow had become notorious for compositions of pure feedback and distortion.

When distortion becomes a fetish for sound, noise is the result. With Merzbow, sound is transformed into noise by distortion. It is his means of showing how a person becomes transformed into someone or something else by fetishism.

With very little else in common, the issue of fetish, obsession, or mania is the one thing that all contemporary noisicians seem to share. After a century of audio experimentations by art movements, academia, and the fringes of pop culture, the current Noise scene has taken avant-guard sound and given it unprecedented passion.

On his 50th birthday David Jackman told me that his first noise performance, albeit unintentional, was when he was 14 years old. He and his father demolished an old piano using an axe and hammer. David called it "a huge racket".

An outburst of emotion is the effect given by the performances of the group C.C.C.C., headed by former Japanese porn-star Mayuko Hino. One senses a socio-political fetishism with the work of Con-Dom, formed by Mike Dando to explore the many sides of personal faith. In a sensuous merging of body and machine, the French sound-composer Manon Anne Gillis gives birth to her noise. Intimately demonstrated by a 1995 performance, in which she kept pulling out, from under her dress, strands of audio tape accompanied by the sound of recorded material being yanked over the playback heads of a tape-deck.

Many in the Noise scene are fixated on either one sound, or one type of sound. A.M.K. uses, as his only sound source, the montage. His montages are flexi-discs that he cuts up and recombines and then plays on regular turntables. Even his CD releases sound just like broken records. A.M.K. started to cut up readymade flexi-discs in 1986. Eleven years later he would start to record and release his own limited-edition flexi-discs for the sole purpose of montaging them.

Others in the Noise scene base their sound on the type of audio equipment they build for themselves. I find both Chop Shop and Damion Romero to be the most compelling in this approach. Chop Shop was formed by Scot Konzelmann. Konzelmann builds speakers. Since '87 he's been developing his speaker constructions to focus the listener into linking physical sounds through visible sources. Konzelmann thinks of it as a kind of ventriloquism. His speaker constructions are assemblages made from found and scavenged materials. His basic building-blocks are pipes, cylinders, and machine parts of every kind from junkyards and construction sites. A vibrating cone would, for example, fill a small metal compartment with a tone that would cause the outer-casing to emit sound. No two speaker constructions effect a sound source the same way. The same sound source in fact would never sound the same from speaker to speaker.

Damion Romero, deals with tones and frequencies that are very seductive to the listener. To achieve these soundscapes, Romero builds a variety of custom-made devices. These include microphones that look like small wooden boxes, and antique audio test-equipment re-wired as feedback generators. In one of his 1996 performances in Los Angeles, Romero would quietly sit in a chair. Between two very large speakers, he would be gently shaking what looked like a small flat wooden box with wires coming out. The resulting sound was both staggering and monumental. The contrast between how the sound was made and the characteristics of the sound itself was considerable.

The noise-poet blackhumour, who has been active since the mid-80's, uses only recordings of human voice. Some noise critics have described blackhumour's work as a hybrid of noise and literature. However, blackhumour has stated on many occasions that he sees his noise as an extension of literature. Godzilla, not literature, is the inspiration for Daniel Menche's recent interest in human voice. Since '88 Menche has carefully crafted noise from sound sources like his heart, lungs, chest, and fist. Better known for running his amplified fingers through some very loud salt, it doesn't seem to matter what Menche does, it always winds up sounding just like the monster-movie sound effects he loves so much. On stage everything becomes extravaganted as every physical movement of his body is amplified into a sound that conveys an viciousness and aggression that is both sharp and brutal. For Menche the extreme physics of noise equals the extreme physics of the soul.

Kimihide Kusafuka, better known as K2, originally came onto the scene in 1984, just to disappear from Noise a few years later. He returned in '93 after having just graduated as a Pathologist. K2 has a Ph. D. from the Tokyo Medical & Dental University. He works at a city hospital, researching the morphogenesis of salivary gland tumors and cartilage formations. He's also conducted his studies at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. K2 sees no difference between the act of making noise and the act of science. K2 says he practices a kind of alchemy through his noise. He aims to metamorphosize himself with both the insight he gets from his scientific experiments, and the emotional strength he gains from performing and listening to noise. "Noise", as K2 puts it; "can not be refused by either ears and heads!"

By GX Jupitter-Larsen