Signal-to-Noise Rock

Over the past several months, I’ve often found it easier to expound on the things I want people to know via Facebook – more of my friends were there and reading it more often.

Until ‘more’ became ‘too many’.

Now, my posts drowned out by the dozens and dozens of other friends they desire to keep up with, even my friends don’t see and comment on my status updates. I know, because I’ve become the same way. Clearly, it’s time to start blogging with more frequency again! Here we go!

There was a time where a band who tried to use noise artfully would have gotten the cold shoulder from me, but those days have certainly passed. Ages ago boo [utau-inu.com] started exposing me to music that skewed towards a noisy aesthetic, but it wasn’t until I’d spent a good amount of time with (and seen live) the Japanese band fra-foa that I really began to hear the possibilities. Years later, another of my musically-inclined friends Andrew [goviolet.com] gave me a proper introduction to shoegaze [wikipedia.org] – a genre of rock music known for it’s noisy ‘wall of sound’ guitars. First came Asobi Seksu [wikipedia.org], whose second album Citrus [amazon.com] is a multi-layered masterpiece, revealing itself to tenacious listeners as an album of increasingly rare qualities. He then reached back to the early 90s for the seminal shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine [wikipedia.org] – a band I’d been recommended before but never investigated (their name conjured mental comparisons to Type-O Negative who had always failed to engage me). Recently, he turned my tastes toward The Twilight Sad [thetwilightsad.co.uk], a fantastic four piece from Scotland whose recently released second album Forget the Night Ahead [fat-cat.co.uk] is a melodic shoegaze masterpiece (and is available for streaming in it’s entirety at this link). Still, it’s hard to blindly recommend the genre, because it represents a challenge to the average listener.

Ultimately, I luxuriate in a well-crafted noise aesthetic in music the same way I do one of Paul Signac’s [wikipedia.org] masterpieces. Unlike well-crafted pop music or art (for both of which my love is well known), these more complex manipulations of the media challenge me – but as I invest more time in trying to enjoy them, they continually reward me with more to enjoy. It’s simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating. And certainly not for everyone.

But it might be for you?

So tell me what you know and then it will be said and done
She said, be gentle, be fair was the fog even there
You’re looking at the guilty one
I only want some honest fun
I’ll always be your honest one

2 Comments

• By chosha, 2009.10.17 @ 03:23

  I used to have more patience for music that was an acquired taste, but I find myself more reluctant now and inclined to stick to artists who ready-to-listen without working for it. I suspect what you’re talking about is a little different to the artists I’m thinking of (Bjork, the White Stripes) but it does sound like just as much work. What do you think?

• By JB, 2009.10.20 @ 22:08

  I can empathize – sometimes I want nothing more than accessible music – but I strongly feel that it’s worth fighting against that tendency. Just enough to make sure you get at least a handful ‘challenging’ products a year. This may sound bizarre (and any attempt to explain/justify it would be worthy of an entire post) but I think it’s an important aspect for expanding and improving your taste in media, and perhaps art in general.

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