Barbelith Underground > Radio & Music

as far as a GENRE, there is certainly a genre and scene for Japanese Noise, which includes groups or performers like Massonna, CCCC, early Boredoms, Merzbow, Kaiji Haino, Fushitsusho (sp?), the truely amazing Violent Onsen Geisha, and literally THOUSANDS more.

the genre sounds is simple to recognize by being totally anti-song. Groups like Sonic Youth and Swans and any number of other bands that are "noise-rock" are a different genre, though obviously there's interpenetration of influence and fanbase. Thurston Moore, outisde of Sonic Youth plays in various groups that are much more "noise", and with Byron Coly he releases all kinds of noise and experimental type records.

The music was (is?) very chaotic, violent, assaultive. Stage shows / performances were based around violence, destruction, and often used images of bondage and weird sexuality.: an early boredoms show consisted of Yamatska Eye driving a bulldozer into the club and smashing shit apart, then cutting his leg open with a buzzsaw. CCCC (i think) had extreme S+M onstage. Gero Gero Gai Gai Gai (sp?) consitantly would play grating, impossible to listen to music onstage and jerk off to the point of orgasm, at which point the audience would chear. (i know this from having owned multiple live albums).

Masona might be among the most brutally unlistenable of the bunch, though truly amazing. I saw him perform once -- he had a belt he'd contructed full of distortion and effects peddle, through which he ran a microphone. the performance was: he jumped around with an unbelievable anaimation and fury, screaming and tweaking through the peddles, creating a sound that was very much like putting your head in the devil's futuristic blender. he's got tons of albums too.

that was another thing about the genre -- ridiculous amounts of output. leave it to the Japanese to form a wholly uncommercial, nearly impossible-to-sustain subculture, and then attack it with the stick-to-itiveness you'd expect from any other potential genre bubble.

This is a genre whose international appeal had its day way back around 1998, when you would see "primers" and "guides" in magazines like Raygun. There was once a very well written zine called Bananafish that covered this kind of music and related topics -- i don't know if the zine is still published but the website at www.midheaven.com

i was big into this stuff back in the day, and really have no clue if people still do it. certainly at record stores like Other Music and Kim's in New York (and online) and Amoeba in Los Angeles, you will find sections called NOISE/EXPERIMENTAL or JAPANESE NOISE. Revolver Records is a US distributor that will sell you endless amounts of this stuff. I think they have a main store in the Boston area; as does Forced Exposure.

There are plenty of American groups related to this sound, falling into the category of "noise" -- Harry Pussy was a great example of screaming chickdrummer pounding lunatic shit out of her kit while awful distorted dueling guitars spat shit out the high end.

New York free music group No Neck Blues Band, who i plug a lot (full disclosure -- i toured with them many times) -- were linked into Noise back in the day, and their Sound@1 record label has hundreds of insane music releases. being dedicated musicians of a sort they sound has adapted and evolved over the years, whearas most of the "noise" bands were pretty much fuck-the-man styled novelty acts.

that's all for now. is this stuff making some kind of weird comeback? Is there a new "generation" or has this stuff just bubbled a little closer to the surface? fuck, Eye + Zorn were doing fucked up mindripping soundtracks for playstation 1 commercials back in '95 -- is it going to go further this time?