NO-CORE blog

I’ve returned from this year’s International Noise Conference exhausted but alive. If you don’t know, this is an epic annual event in Miami FL hosted by Rat “King of Noise” Bastard. Somehow, despite flying amps and tables, indoor fireworks, mosh pit pile-ups, and of course ear-splitting noise, Churchill’s (the venue) continues to allow this event to go on. Over 100 bands each play 15 minutes or less. (Full line-up HERE)

I shot some short videos when I could. If I didn’t get video of something, it might mean I had to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, get ready to play, or that a band didn’t stand in the light and nothing would have shown up anyway. Instead of posting each video separately, I made this playlist. Use the little tabs on each side to skip through the videos, and click that little tongue icon between Play and Volume to access the video list. It’s kinda sorta in chronological order.

There were a number of friends and regulars who dropped out this year, sadly. No Head Molt, Drums Like Machine Guns, Abiku, Loop Retard. But there was still too much amazing stuff to catch everything. At the risk of omitting tons of mind-blowing stuff, I’ll mention a just a few of the highlights:

Night Burger! Every person in the house was rocking out to this by the end. My video does NOT do the sound justice, sadly. When this set was over, everyone was on a total high, smiling from ear to ear and looking at each other all wide-eyed like “Did you just hear what I heard?!”

Time Ghost! I’d never seen this dude before, but in addition to sounding awesome, his show looked amazing with some kind of light-triggered or maybe light-linked synth sounds and his head and face covered in baby oil for maximum shiny-ness. And my video of this one actually turned out pretty good!

Leslie Keffer’s bouncer skills! Angry army dude was clearly not a noise fan, but he sure seemed to like the Cock ESP set and took it as an excuse to jump in with some destruction of his own. In a way, it’s weird and funny when someone really doesn’t get what’s happening, except that it can also be really uncool. I guess a Cock ESP set might look to someone like it’s free-for-all time, but it’s actually not, and when the show is over, it’s over. And when it was over, army dude decided he still wanted to try to bust in some of Churchill’s amps, stick a bottle up Emil’s ass, and then try to talk up C Lavender. Enter Leslie, stage left, who used some kind of snake charmer hypnosis to wordlessly walk Army Dude straight out the side door and shut it behind him. I was impressed.

There definitely was a trend toward dark synth-rock, always with some noise mixed in. Daily Life, which featured both Kites and Lazy Magnet’s Jeremy Harris as members, was a prominent example of this. But I’d like to say that the real trend was “taking it up a notch.” Everyone who I’ve seen at past INCs put in the best show I’d seen by them ever! Seriously. Blue Shift for example? How amazing did that sound? Dick Neff? INC really is a kind of conference, where everyone brings their A-Game and everyone leaves inspired and with fresh ideas to implement. Next year’s going to rule.

I’ll add some links when I find more good stuff online. Please send me whatever you’ve got or leave a comment! The NOISEBLOID blog (http://noisebloid.blogspot.com) has also promised more emerging photos, videos, and gossip from INC.

You couldn’t be blamed for expecting Hagony to be a rather goofy and lo-fi affair. This is a project featuring Emil Hagstrom of Cock ESP and Jason Wade of the notorious Minneapolis band Faggot. When I first saw this project appear on MySpace, I think they claimed to exclusively play amplified empty beer cans, a statement which seemed perfectly believable. This CDR comes in an economical plastic sleeve with paper insert and no attempt has been made to cover the standard branding on the disk itself. Then there’s the cover art. You can see it here. It’s not terribly offensive, but it’s not safe for work. Emil’s face and those of some political figures are pasted onto a group photo of… nudists? The back cover has Wade’s face inserted into a newspaper article about a man who ate his underwear in an attempt to beat a breathalyzer test.

Okay, I think I’ve painted a picture for you. You would now probably be just as surprised as I was to find that this album is actually carefully crafted, detailed, and intricately-layered noise. Seriously. This is every bit as good and worthy of repeat listens as any noise record pressed onto 180 gram vinyl this year.

The first track is mostly varying layered tones, somewhere halfway between drones and piercing feedback. The way the tones almost harmonize here and there creates an unsettling mood, a tension builder that leads into the second track, which explodes in a dense squall of noise. Things proceed from there with these two properties, harsh/dense and subtle/ominous, more carefully intertwined. No recognizable instruments or sound sources emerge, although I’m pretty sure those are some kind of horror movie screams submerged in the mix. And then best of all, it ends too soon! This is definitely an album and not one of those 3-minute Cock ESP releases, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

I am 100% behind artists who do not take themselves too seriously. Sometimes however, such artists’ work deserves to be taken seriously itself, and this is a fine example. Now, someone repress this thing in a deluxe vinyl format already.

http://freenoise.org
http://www.myspace.com/hagony