“Turn off that noise!” © Your Dad

One decades-old way that people have written-off music they don’t like, don’t understand, or don’t identify with is to describe it as “nothing but noise.” From Rock’n'Roll in the ’50s, to Rap in the ’80s, this has been the guilt-free method of dismissal favored by the closed-minded. But little did the pioneers of the “nothing but noise” clause (whoever they may have been) know that one day entire genres of music would be founded upon the very notion that they are in fact “noise” and that the musicians who make said music would wear that label proudly.

Comprised of former Helmet drummer John Stanier, guitarist/keyboardist and vocalist Tyondai Braxton (son of avant-Jazz composer and musician, Professor Anthony Braxton), guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka (ex-Lynx), and guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams (formerly of Don Caballero), experimental “Math Rock” band Battles is something of an indie “supergroup.” They’re also more than a little difficult to pigeonhole. Their debut LP Mirrored, out now on Warp Records, is all at once organic, electronic, industrial, angular, noisy, and melodic, with songs drawing on the traditions of Prog-Rock, Punk, Metal, Electronica, “free” Jazz, Noise, New Wave, and Glam. Even when they’re going way-way “out,” there’s often something refined and pimpish about their riffage that recalls the pompous cock-rockery of old-school Glam and Arena Rock. Album-opener “Race: In,” which features manic, jack-hammering percussion and a memorable whistled refrain, sounds like the theme-music for some old film-strip on Norway they showed your class in Elementary school, but with rock-hard Metal drumming, nerdy guitar shreddery and traces of Blues-Rock boogie.

– Listen to Battles “Race: In”

If Battles didn’t break your brain there’s a very good chance that Vancouver, Canada-based Electronic musician Andy Dixon, who composes and performs under the alias Secret Mommy probably will. A former guitarist and vocalist for Canadian Punk band d.b.s., Dixon’s output as Secret Mommy finds him working in the field of “Glitchtronica,” micro-editing other records, samples, recordings of his own musicianship, field recordings, and found-sounds into new compositions. His newest LP Plays was conceived of as an “anti-electronic” Electronica record, and was compiled from original in-house recordings made by Dixon and his musician friends (violinist Jesse Zubot, Todd Macdonald, Tyr Jami, and Paul Patko of The Winks, Shane Krause and Ryan McCormick of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Sean Maxey, Berry Higginson, and Sarah Jane of The Doers, and others) using only non-synthetic, non-electric instruments. The result is a glitchy Electronic album that features no synthetic, electronic, or even amplified sounds. Listening to a track like the manic Punk-meets-Breakcore “Kool Aid River,” it’s kind of hard to believe it’s made entirely of acoustic sounds.

– Listen to Secret Mommy “Kool Aid River”

Yes, it’s true, some music may in fact be “nothing but noise.” But for artists who set out to make angular, atonal musical compositions that shy away from the melodic norms of traditional popular music, calling their work “noise” may in fact be a compliment. So maybe the next time an old person tells you to “turn off that noise” you’ll actually be listening to something that fits the bill?

-El Keter

This entry was written by El Keter, posted on June 14, 2007 at 10:07 am, filed under Music and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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