Review: Ashcircle – Yet More Warnings / Object Permanence (Chocolate Monk, Jan 28)

Offering the irresistible deal of two Ashcircle sessions for the price of one, Yet More Warnings / Object Permanence is some of the best material yet from London’s most incorrigible sampler spammers. I dub Mackle and Macarte as such affectionately rather than accurately; over the past few years they have developed a musical flow and language that is anything but random. The sound-species they have neatly chopped up and rendered as readily accessible custom soundbanks range from physical instruments like winds (Level Up Everywhere) and guitars (Doubling Down, just released on Hideous Replica) to noises made by their kids (Dadcircle) and heavily processed concrète fragments (Off the Cliff Edge, its name taken from the duo’s stalwart Cliff Edge concert series at Hundred Years Gallery). The way they play is both erratic and focused, volatile and thoughtful, the nuances of the spontaneous interaction changing in response to the quirks of each arsenal of audio. Yet More Warnings seems to be cut from a similar cloth as Level Up Everywhere, except this time the strangled shreds are rounder and more colorful, the addition of brass squawks making “Spirit of Cooperation” and “Ever More Acidic” resemble big band free jazz played by a handful of wind-up robots. I love the way the musicians exchange fleeting roles: one sets up a looping thread for the other to fray and unravel; the other fills space at the surface while the one breaches it with a hectic array of more targeted tones. Object Permanence has the plasticky blips and yelps of squeaky toys and other bargain-bin trinkets, perhaps a synthetic companion to Jamison Williams’ game call improvisations. This is the joy of letting a rogue circuit burn itself out, a circuit constantly reconfigured by raw creation.

Review: STUMPED – Shallow Buoy (Corephone Sound, Jan 26)

Part and parcel of the STUMPED process is “shallow listening”: a modus operandi less weighty and austere than the oft-invoked “deep listening,” but one that doesn’t forego the appreciation for the subtle beauties of sounds usually dismissed as mundane or trivial (to be clear, “shallow” is not meant to connote the level of artistry at work here). Adam Buffington (Pennsylvania) and Page Swanson (Berlin) always keep seasoned ears out for tidbits and trimmings—out of doors, over the radio, buried in closets and corners—to mash into the alluring paste from which the duo’s recordings are ladled, the completed tapes only emerging once there is a sufficient supply to be plundered. Following up 2022’s From the Thaw, the similarly screen-printed, O-carded, and obi-stripped Shallow Buoy embraces an even more eclectic range of materials and moods throughout its four tracks, crudely assimilating snatches of everything from birdsong and wind distortion to canned speech and frankensteined surf samples. Both the reliance on analog gear and the aforementioned approach to source-reaping make these collages as earnest as they are enigmatic; “Surfin'” plays like a waterlogged love letter to the soggy coast, while the jarring shifts of “Litter on the Beach” evoke the humble majesty of a barnacled boombox still spluttering forgotten tunes as its circuits fill with brine. For a remote collaborative project, the fact that the immediacy and intent of both member’s contributions survive so fully in the finished product is a real feat; for STUMPED, the whole Atlantic might as well be a peaty puddle.

Order a copy from either Buffington or Swanson via the inquiries email listed on the Corephone Sound website.

Review: Stefan Maier – Nervous Systems (Party Perfect!!!, Jan 26)

From the earliest developments in digital synthesis to the advent of the laptop and beyond, those who operate within the tradition of “computer music” have always confronted its uniquely symbiotic balance of manual and automatic soundmaking. Vancouver’s Stefan Maier is an artist who refuses to restrict his methodology to one or the other, instead electing to “[walk] the thin line between barely controlling a sound and accepting that it has its own inner life.” As a listener I tend to prefer extremity in this genre, a quality that is more often than not associated with direct artistic input; Maier’s work, however, utilizes the aleatoric dimension as a fertile space for his pure electronic topologies to interact and complexify—letting out some slack in the leash, so to speak—without sacrificing any intensity. The appropriately titled Nervous Systems presents a succinct example of this schema, its twenty-two minutes charting an organic evolution of inorganic substance: thick tendrils of humming glitch textures are unwound by flickering tonal photons; sonorous dissonance dissolves into a sparse yet spacious environment that could be natural, artificial, or both (the release text dubs the observational aspect of Maier’s approach “expanded field recording,” a descriptor that captures this delicate dance of intention and indeterminacy well). Though audibly more composed than the most unruly generative Party Perfect!!! material (Ryu Hankil’s Envelope Demon and Hunter Brown’s Stoppages Vol. 1 [∞]), Nervous Systems is an exciting and fitting new addition to the label’s gleefully posthuman purview.

Review: Stalwart – Blessed (FIM, Jan 25)

One of two new full-length CDs officially declaring the existence of FIM Records, the record production arm of the prolific concert series of the same name, Blessed captures the unruly quartet machinations of in-house curators Caleb Duval (bass guitar) and Luke Rovinsky (electric guitar) in session with Ben Eidson on alto and James Paul Nadien on percussion. Though it was recorded at The Record Co. studio in Boston, the lengthy album is filled to bursting with the electricity and irreverence of a raucous live performance—a memorable moment occurs at the beginning of “Some Joyful Sound,” when Nadien yells “Do it to ’em! Do it to ’em! Do it!” as Rovinsky works up an infernal racket with a radically pitch-shifted guitar. Seeing the mix and master both credited to Oakland’s Nathan Corder was no surprise; Stalwart’s heavy yet lively interplay very much belongs to a thriving new school of improvised music that transcends state (and national) borders, distilling both the silliest and most serious aspects of the wider tradition’s six-plus decades of existence into an exhilarating, ever-diverse tincture (of which Corder’s records with Tom Weeks, as well as with other projects like Mechanical Bull and Monopiece, are also excellent examples). The longer tracks on Blessed are its best, especially the eighteen-minute burner “All Bad News (Variable Red Pitch Modulation Device and Four Gunshots)” with its effortless shifts between sparse, anxious skitter and full-force surge, but there’s not a single throwaway cut here. The shorter ones bottle fleeting bits of brilliance: serpentine pseudo-rhythms in “A Rare Glimpse,” muscular call-and-response jerks in “Electric Powered Memorial Candle.” A common talking point in free improvisation “theory” is knowing when not to play. These four are well past that—they always know when not to not play.

Review: Dépaysement – Tulpa (Stills, Jan 10)

Many, including me, are drawn to cut-up for not just the exhilarating pace and gestural kinesis, but also the intentionality; few other noise subgenres are as directly reliant upon the artist’s mastery of their own equipment and the musical vision they set out to accomplish. But what happens when the wracking blasts of distortion and cross-stereo jumping become more incidental than intentional, as if the gear itself is internally disintegrating, spitting out the textural equivalent of catastrophic error codes through overblown speakers? This is no hypothetical—Dépaysement’s new C20 Tulpa fully embraces such a messy, volatile approach, the assaults of crunching harsh constantly cracking under their own weight and crumbling into swaths of pensive nature recordings and sighs of fraught ambience. It’s one of those tapes that is strangely satisfying precisely because it seems to outright reject any sort of conventional satisfaction: the loud parts are gone as soon as they arrive, the quieter stretches refuse to resolve or climb toward a climax; listening is like trying to scale a jagged, landslide-prone mountain that actively resists your very presence. But at the same time there’s a certain logic at work, one that reveals an aesthetic purpose not immediately obvious. It’s about unpredictability, the excitement of being completely uncertain what will happen next. That bubbling brook/contact-mic shuffle duet in “Skin” draws ears into a false stasis that exists only to be broken, while the delicate drone of the latter half of “Visage” does the exact opposite, leading up to something that never actually happens. As much frustration as there is fulfillment: a lost art in noise these days.

Review: Pacing Animal – Pacing Animal (self-released, Jan 6)

The jailer flinches when the prisoner slams against the steel, reaches through the gaps in the bars, howls and harangues. But the true terror sets in when they hear the cell’s occupant begins to move quietly, methodically: “They walked in a space even smaller than the confines of the cages made necessary, moving in an area just barely the length of their bodies. A few steps up and turn. A few steps down and turn.” A plan is in motion—one antithetical to the jailer’s wellbeing. Pacing Animal captures that steady seethe of pooling resentment and righteousness on their self-titled debut tape, wrangling heavily distorted textures that writhe and rattle with the patient fury that only a cage can create. There is no fancy digital hardware within these unforgiving confines, only a latrine that’s always overflowing and a filthy food bowl that’s never full; the new Hudson Valley project restricts their palette to the warm-blooded roar of a ragtag analog chain, riding dense torrents of rumbling heavy electronics intermittently gouged by pained yelps of feedback. At time the sound resembles a disintegrating diesel engine, at others an foundation-shaking quake—always brazen and brutal. Slow-burn harsh noise that does not hesitate, but rather bides it time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Copies are available via email: pacinganimal@gmail.com.

Review: nula.cc – Mayrau (self-released, Jan 1)

“This work’s namesake is a coal mining pit in Bohemia turned into a museum. The ghosts of Mayrau still hang in the changing room, where the workers’ street clothes were hung high above the floor to serve as a visible sign that their uniformed selves were still down in the pit. The chain and pulley system has grown rusty, and its squeaks have become one of the voices in this piece.”

Mayrau is a 3″-length electroacoustic piece that examines the sonic ecology of the Mayrau Mining Museum in Vinařice, Czechia. One of six new “filecast” entries in the ever-expanding catalog of Lloyd Dunn’s multimedia project nula.cc (both an alias and a URL), it might be my favorite release so far. The descriptive text reprinted above explicitly introduces a paranormal aspect, which is then explored further in the actual music; the scrapes and shrieks of the time-gnawed pulleys soar and then fade in a sweeping expanse of darkness, conjuring a haunting atmosphere that lingers long after the track is over. The composition is built upon field recordings that are both presented in original raw form and digitally processed into shifting shards that contort and complicate the soundscape, reaching toward and occasionally coaxing out the intangible currents of a location marked by hardship and pain. Mayrau is an excellent example of interpretive phonography in how it both depicts and deconstructs the physical environment, achieving a rare strain of hypnosis with its carefully sculpted industrial churn and paranoia-inducing signs of human presence like voices and applause. “Rich” is a word that keeps coming to mind… there is so much detail here, the kind that rewards any level of engagement, whether one just puts it on in the background or listens closely for a deeper investigation of how much of a place can really be preserved, and what that “preservation” does (or doesn’t do) to the things people leave behind.

List: Favorite Albums of 2023

Happy New Year. Thanks so much to anyone who reads, follows, likes, comments, submits, chats, et cetera et cetera. I love you all and wish you the best of the best. I am so much busier now than I once was, but I always make as much time for Noise Not Music as I can because it brings me, and hopefully you, some modicum of happiness, which is so crucial these days. Please keep listening, reading, and learning with me in 2024.

Note: No honorable mentions this time, sorry. Trying to get those formatted correctly has disastrous consequences for my mental health. If you want to see what else I dug this year, check out my Rate Your Music.

Olivia Rodrigo – GUTS (Geffen, Sep 8)

To many of you this will come as no surprise. But at first, much like SOUR before it, GUTS didn’t make the most significant impression on me the first few times through. The best part about Rodrigo’s music is that the more you listen to it, the better it gets. Now, deep in the winter months, every single song on this impeccably crafted LP hits like a truck as new layers are revealed, new emotions are piqued. There’s a much better flow to the tracklist than its predecessor had, the slow numbers timed just right amidst the generally high energy level, and in fact the best moments of all are when Rodrigo combines her predilections for aughts-indebted electric teen rock and delicate balladry: “Making the Bed”, “Pretty Isn’t Pretty.” Lyrically it’s messy and melodramatic but in a way that pop is sorely missing these days; Rodrigo continues to dig deep into her insecurities and, for better or worse, sings from what she feels rather than what she knows to be true (which makes “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” one of the most unforgettable songs).

Jeromes Dream – The Gray in Between (Iodine, May 5)

It topped my mid-year list and my opinion has not changed since then. The Gray in Between is hands down my favorite thing Jeromes Dream has done in all 25+ years of existence and one of the most compulsively replayable albums of the year. It has a distinct, committed sound that it’s impossible to get enough of: “Conversations: In Time, on Mute” and the razor-edge catharsis of its powerful bridge section begs to be looped; the crushing, faintly major-key 3/4 drive of “The Future of Memory” works its way into your bones; the creeping hints of resolution that tantalize throughout “The Last Water Pearl” taper off into an uncertain end. The tone and production choices are deliberate (and good) enough that the stylistic homogeneity never wears; I have little doubt I’ll still be playing this five years on.

Gemengung – Ruins of Convenience (Mechanical Presence, Aug 20)

I wrote in the previous list about the misconception that good noise, especially good harsh noise, is easy to make. I’ll admit that, at least for a while, it was an I-know-it-when-I-hear-it thing, and that’s why I’m grateful for examples like Ruins of Convenience: of such high quality that when blasted at max volume any ears can appreciate the creativity and talent at work (even if those ears are being covered as their owner begs for mercy). Gemengung has consistently captivated with excellent tapes such as The Indifference of Nature and Forced Collapse, but this cardboard-sleeved CD-R released by Jersey’s Mechanical Presence Records is arguably his first album, a perfectly paced set of nine tracks that are both more active and more focused than anything before, fusing scrap-metal agility with a burning undercurrent of heavy electronics. “Trill” is one of the best things I’ve ever heard; one particular moment is a borderline religious experience.

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden… (Constellation, Sep 29)

The Coin Coin series has already proven to be an incredible work of art, even though it hasn’t even reached the halfway point of its promised twelve installments. Each entry expands upon that which came before, bringing in new elements and delving into different histories, spreading new ink across Roberts’ sprawling sonic map. Their virtuosic storytelling anchors In the Garden…, the emotional heights and depths channeled into transcendent free sections unified by some of their most evocative sax playing yet (incendiary in “Predestined Confessions”, pensive in “A Caged Dance”) while insight into the central character is set against backdrops as diverse as propulsive jazz-rock, uneasy electronics, and choral hymns. As usual, Roberts executes effortlessly their dual role as bandleader and worldbuilder.

Guido Gamboa – Left-Handed Club (XYZ Editions, Dec 10)

Originating from a broadcast commissioned by the Viennese radio program KUNSTRADIO (which comprises the first of the CD’s two tracks), veteran sound artist Guido Gamboa’s Left-Handed Club is an ambitious and enthralling suite that blurs compendium and collage, interview and interpretation into “a new collective voice.” Featuring the words—transformed by varying levels of digital interference/deconstruction—of left-handed artists across all genres, media, and time periods, both “Left-Handed Club” and its “Addendum” capitalize on the processing methodology Gamboa has been honing over the years in both research-based explorations (Music for Tape and Spectral/Granular Processes) and more thematic assimilations (2018, A Droll). It doesn’t take long for the abstraction to start making sense, for connections to form, ideas to recur…

Éric La Casa & Seijiro Murayama – Supersédure 2 (Swarming, Nov 21)

I’ve been happy to see many others finding the same joy in Supersédure 2 that I do (and also because it definitely deserves the acclaim). It’s one of those rare albums that reminds you why you fell in love with this stuff in the first place, that difficult, inauspicious beauty is often the best kind. La Casa and Marayama each have extensive and impressive discographies, but this specific duo with its compelling symbiotic approach is easily my favorite project of either artist. Supersédure 2 is such a good sequel to the original release because it doesn’t actually concern itself much with being a sequel, instead simply charting new territory in this mostly familiar, occasionally uncanny dimension where observation, improvisation, and composition meet. Original review

HWWAUOCH – Under the Gaze of Dissolution (Amor Fati, Nov 27)

What a silly thought—that a lighter, more gentle production approach would make a HWWAUOCH record any less terrifying. In “Thou Shalt Not Exist,” the first track on the enigmatic entity’s fourth full-length Under the Gaze of Dissolution, warmer guitar work and clearer drums evoke a kind of sickly ecstasy as the vocals wail what could either be nonsense or the primordial truth of the dark, meaningless cosmos in typically disturbing fashion. This current of deranged joy runs through all 38 harrowing minutes, anchored by agile, Lake-esque bass runs (which are also more audible than ever) and a relentless plodding pace. Highlights include double-tracked tritone leads dueling with tortured shrieks on “Anthrophobia”, corrupted opera moans dissolving into ravaged yelps atop furious blasting on “Echoes from a Thousand Dying Worlds”, etc.

Rhino Diaries – Dear Visitors (Ghost City Collective, Jul 3)

I haven’t been able to find much information about Rhino Diaries beyond the basics: Pordenone-based, duo project of Accotica and Zinaida James. But when the music is this good I can weather a little mystery, especially when the songs seem to belong to the shadows of ambiguity anyway. Dear Visitors draws its infectious atmosphere from both heavy, well-mastered instrumentals (full of crushing post-industrial downbeats and halting, dissonant earworms) and the effects-laden vocals, which range from soft croons to dying robot gasps, never breaking out of a deadened apathy that makes this short sophomore release sound utterly apocalyptic, even in its tenderest moments.

Tinashe – BB/ANG3L (Nice Life, Sep 8)

Even though “Treason” is probably the best opener I’ve heard this year, it took a while for BB/ANG3L to grow on me as much as it has, which I think is my fault; for how light and breezy these songs are, their full essences demand a lot more attention than a few cursory listens provide. The production drives the momentum while Tinashe’s voice lulls it, either tempering busy garage trills and trembles (“Talk to Me Nice”, “Tightrope”) or clinging to the very back of the beat to give a more straightforward instrumental double the snap (“Needs”, “Uh Huh”). Though thoroughly nocturnal, the twenty-minute album is good at any time of day, with tunes like “Gravity” opening up a portal to neon-bathed night.

Shitstorm – Only in Dade (ALT MIA / Malokul, Jun 1)

From what I understand they’ve been around since 2006, and yet Miami-based four-piece Shitstorm are just now releasing their debut studio album in 2023. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely—Only in Dade delivers a much-needed adrenaline shot to contemporary grind, ripping through 27 tracks in less than ten minutes in a bass-heavy register that makes each one feel like a jackhammer held flush against your skull. These are no improvised shitcore cuts either; each is tautly composed and carefully sequenced in the track order for maximum punishment. Not even clearing twenty seconds, “Slumlord” and “Bloodclot” are more rewarding and memorable than many songs I’ve heard that are three times that length. The album cover is great, but an alternate choice could’ve been a photo of the drummer’s snare after the recording session—would be just as violent and chaotic.

List: Favorite Cassette Releases of 2023

Renee Willoughby – 33 (Irrational Tentent, Feb 10)

This is the third time I’ve written about this tape, yet I’m discovering that I doubt I’ll ever run out of praise for it. You can read the text from my mid-year list or the original review for the usual pontificating. The bottom line is that 33 feels like an answer to a question you’ve always had. Not some painful epiphany but more of a reminder, a hazy window to the other side as a gentle hand guides you back to ours. Willoughby makes a strong case for this new, powerful form of music-making as invocation with a performance that must have been transcendent to witness in person, and that we all our lucky enough to be able to hear again and again.

Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio – Northwoods Sleep Baseball (Worried Songs, Oct 27)

Ever want to hear the soothing sounds of a baseball game over the radio without the commitment or stakes of a real-life matchup? Enter Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio, a free podcast that provides this exact service, complete with made-up teams, players, and ad spots for nonexistent products and services. UK label Worried Songs were such big fans of the idea that they released Northwoods Sleep Baseball, a double-cassette set housed in a handsome wooden box that comprises a single game played by the Tomah Tigers against the Big Rapid Timbers. As music this is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of “focused ennui,” the commentator chatter and muffled roar of the crowd blending into bliss.

Met Glas – Crooked Like a Dogs’ Hind Legs (Pube Provisional Society, May 7)

Something that I end up having to explain rather frequently is that while it’s not hard to make harsh noise, it is very hard to make good harsh noise. There’s so much more intent and skill involved than most would expect, and while you don’t necessarily need the latest top-of-the-line gear, a certain amount of technical knowledge and experience is also required. Canadian newcomer Met Glas is a project that takes the tradition seriously, but not too seriously, and of the several excellent tapes he’s put out this year (Moody Brooding, Out and Out and in Favor of Anythiing with THRTDSPLY, Speed Museum), Crooked Like a Dogs’ Hind Legs has ended up the clear favorite. Get a hold of a physical copy if you can, or at least listen through speakers.

Áine O’Dwyer – Turning in Space (Blank Forms, Nov 10)

For anyone who’s been listening to O’Dwyer since Church Cleaners, it’s clear that Turning in Space, her most developed and ambitious release to date, has been a long time coming. The nearly two-hour triptych set (composed of sections titled Motorwave, Playing Place, and Slipstream) marks a new breakthrough in her ongoing research into soundscapes and their strata, each of the many individual pieces a sketch of swirling colors and boundaries, either restless with tension or warmed by light, always fluid and free. This is one that seems like it would be easier heard piecemeal, but I recommend taking the time to listen front to back.

T. Jervell – A Love Letter to Coco (Take It Easy Policy, Nov 18)

Jervell first caught my attention earlier this year with the short but sweet 2nd Two, one of many excellent entries in a busy year of output. But his most recent, A Love Letter to Coco, is a real step up, something truly special. The tape’s loose, abstract concept/narrative serves as a stage for the Norwegian artist’s assimilative blend of ambient, glitch, and concrète approaches to ascend to new emotional heights. Though still knotted with digital cracks and shudders, there is breathtaking beauty to behold here; “The Warmth of Your Hand as it Brushes Against Mine” alone is one of the most gorgeous pieces of abstract music I have ever heard.

Luigi Bilodo (Vacancy, Aug 8)

“Low-stakes sound art” is a phrase I’ve found myself using more and more to describe a form of experimental music that consistently interests me. This debut tape from the elusive Luigi Bilodo is a perfect example; the approach is both artistic and scientific and the results are delightfully inconsequential. One side offers the hypnotizing percussive texture of rain hitting the top of a cardboard pizza box, the other the rich yawn of a lawnmower trundling across a green, sun-drenched scene—and, together, both are a hastily but lovingly scrawled love letter to backyard shenanigans, the joy of just listening. Original review

Puddle – The Gift That Keeps on Giving (Minimal Impact, Aug 9)

As was hopefully implied by its presence on my Favorite Labels list, Brisbane’s Minimal Impact had a particularly strong 2023. I would’ve had several answers to the question of which was my favorite tape of theirs throughout the year, but the one that seems to have stuck around most is The Gift That Keeps on Giving, the first release by Brisbane project puddle. Advertised as “[taking] influence from the glut of contemporary Americanoise, citing Worth’s Blinder LP as as well as classic Japanoise such as C.C.C.C.,” it follows through on its promise, delivering a lush bout of dynamic harsh with a fury that burns through the six feet of grave soil it’s buried beneath.

Aaron Dilloway – Bhoot Ghar: Sounds of the Kathmandu Horror House (Hanson, Jun 2)

Dilloway’s visits to Nepal have generated several great field recording series over the years, but Bhoot Ghar, which documents a family trip to the eponymous haunted house in Kathmandu Fun Park, has to be the best yet. Though not overbearingly so, the tape is structured so as to allow the listener to join in on the journey, from the entrance and surprisingly scary (and physically hazardous) halls of the attraction itself to other environments in the park like the bumper cars and Ferris wheel. The Hanson honcho has a knack for making his appreciation for the sounds he captures clear without it getting in the way, and thus Bhoot Ghar is an account of a memorable experience than is memorable in itself.

Tupperware – Summer Tour Tape ’23 (self-released, Jul 18)

Though physical copies were only available on the actual tour and somehow there was not a single date in any NYC borough—so I’m still in the market for one… hint hint—this list would be amiss without the latest recordings from the most tape-bound band in hardcore right now. As fast, minimal, and punishing as always, this new round of seven songs are some of the trio’s most rough-edged and unpredictable yet, from the breakneck blowout of “Intro” to the equally whiplash- and headbob-inducing tempo changes of “Memo.” Still holding out hope to see them play someday, which will no doubt leave my eardrums as maxed-out as the machine these tunes were tracked to.

John Collins McCormick – Healthy Alternative to Thinking (Eh?, May 9)

Tactility is the name of the game in McCormick’s work. No matter how concrete or abstract the sources he happens to be utilizing are, there’s always a distinct sensation of one’s head being massaged by physical actions. Healthy Alternative to Thinking is one of the more literal manifestations of this that the Detroit-based artist has released; after a diverse set of four tapes on his new self-publishing arm Garbage Strike, here he returns to the familiar basics of trivial object interactions, this time driven by agitated surfaces (by way of stand-mounted subwoofers) rather than direct manipulation.

Heat Signature – Wired for Intrusion (Head Meat, April)

This eminent US-based duo is well known for their technical and thrillingly fast-paced live approach to direct-action harsh noise, but Wired for Intrusion sees Tandy and Griggs experimenting a bit more on the studio side, wrangling source material contributions from scrap metal maestro Ahlzagailzehguh on A-side cut “Packed with Plastique” and stitching together the loose collage of B’s “Blown to Hell.” None of the usual intensity is sacrificed, however; both tracks have an unrelenting momentum to them that holds up throughout the intricate layers of detail and distortion.

Ezio Piermattei – Rosume (Joy de Vivre, Mar 29)

Piermattei has developed a distinct and singular sonic language with his past few releases, and Rosume feels like a culmination of it in a lot of ways (though I’m sure I’ll be saying the same thing, with even more enthusiasm, about whatever he does next). Since Gran trotto the textures have grown more anxious and the environments more claustrophobic, and here we descend into dream territory with tape-based arrangements that give a semi-intelligible voice to lost trinkets and dark empty spaces. With Piermattei, any given sound—no matter how ephemeral or bizarre—is always leading into another, and the resultant narratives are filled with shadow, suspense, and a strange sort of sense.

Feature: Favorite Labels of 2023

There are no narratives so loud and encompassing as decline, negativity, doom… which is why Noise Not Music is resolutely concerned with currents flowing in the opposite direction. While I never aim to ignore or neglect that which is undesirable but no less real, I always hope to spotlight progress and promise rather than downturn or failure. I always hope that those who come here for support leave feeling supported. I always hope to be more amplifier than noise.

Here are the active initiatives that deserve our support, the noises whose amplification is well-earned.

[Majazz Project] مشروع مجاز (Palestine / UK)

It is difficult to focus on much at all, let alone art, when a genocide is being carried out. We should all be spending every possible moment doing what we can to spread awareness of and stop the zionist entity’s active extermination of the Palestinian people. But one need only look to the voices of Gaza and the West Bank to see that art, and specifically music, is one of many ways those so far removed from the suffering can enter into universal solidarity with those experiencing it. Mo’min Swaitat founded Majazz Project, also known as the Palestinian Sound Archive, not only to share the sounds of his nation with the world but also to preserve a history that is under direct threat of being intentionally erased. Reverently curated to preserve a culture determined to resist but not solely defined by such, the Archive makes available archival material that ranges from protest music of the First Intifada (Al-Fajer Group, Riad Awwad) to recordings of wedding band performances (Atef & Qassem, Ahmed Al-Kelani) and spoken word poetry.

Buried in slag and debris. (Nova Scotia)

In addition to regularly publishing handsome cassette and LP editions of work by sound artists based in Canada and beyond, Buried in slag and debris. is also behind the (relatively) widely read Untitled zine, a semiannual full-size periodical that collects essays, interviews, and reviews by a revolving cast of contributors both familiar and new. Even in a world where pundits have been declaring the death of print for decades now, the noise community unsurprisingly retains its fair share of physical publications, with new ones seeming to pop up left and right. But Untitled fills a gap that Rocker (which just saw its first issue out via the hard work of the No Rent team) and A Wall of Text (edited and produced by Sven Kay, wall noise aficionado and Absent Erratum operator) don’t in that it’s less personal and more anthological, providing a neutral, composite platform where bubbles are broken and ideas are shared. That’s not to say the zine overshadows BISAD’s musical arm, because both are formidable; 2023 alone saw a total of twelve new releases, no two of which sound alike.

Krim Kram (Cork)

After staking out a sizable slice of the underground landscape with one of the stronger inaugural batches in recent memory, Krim Kram has kept things consistent with each drop since. This year saw three rounds, and each continues to be more eclectic yet inspired than the last: first Cyess Afxzs, Rick Potts, and LDNS & Yakkida in May; then Ted Byrnes and Maggiore & Speers in August; and finally (with a jump from KK-11 to KK-15, a sign that another tripartite drop is in the works) an impressive swan song from UK outsider mainstays Usurper in the form of a colorful six-panel digipak CD earlier this month. The forces behind the already venerable label clearly have a love for abstract music that is not just deep, but holistic, and there’s a tremendous amount of care put in to faithfully representing drastically different approaches and spheres of the global avant-garde zeitgeist, to honoring longtime legends while simultaneously giving new blood a leg up.

Minimal Impact (Brisbane)

Fiercely committed to immortalizing the diverse, often hazardous transmissions burbling up from the Brisbane scene, Minimal Impact is also of a final bastion of tape labels with a radically DIY ethos and aesthetic. When utilized effectively, low fidelity is not a gimmick but a governing principle; the psychoactive aura of tapes like Gypsobelum’s Chitinous and CC & Tiles’ Subaru Is Somehow Related to the Pleiades is only catalyzed by the layers of dust and grime that swathe them. There’s definitely a unifying focus on noise and its various mutations, luckily for me often tending toward shit-fi harsh (Puddle’s The Gift That Keeps on Giving is one of the best recent examples I have encountered, and the collaboratively produced Enjoy Our Last Century on Earth / Armenia split forges ties with like-minded imprints in Ecuador/US and elsewhere in Australia) or no-fi motheaten scuzz worship (S27E152’s A.D.T.F.), but MI also keeps things interesting with lighter, melodic digressions such as Cristian Usai’s Lily’s Memories.

Black Editions (Los Angeles)

One part of a threefold partnership along with Thin Wrist Recordings and VDSQ under the Black Editions umbrella, Black Editions oversees some of today’s most exciting and important archival music projects. Thin Wrist initially caught my attention with their devotional remaster treatment of Surface of the Earth’s debut last year, but BE really stepped it up in 2023, concretizing avant-garde history in both the US and Japanese scenes with posthumous documents from Milford Graves, Shizuka, and Masayuki Takayanagi.

Party Perfect!!! (Chicago / Queens)

Getting their start in the final month of 2022 with a superb four-way split, Party Perfect!!! really hit stride this year with releases that exemplify their focus on radical computer music. Technical Reserve’s Personal Watercraft presents the winning combination of TJ Borden and Other Plastics, Envelope Demon / For David Stockard digs deep into the conceptual side of things, Stoppages Vol. 1 [∞] makes process composition fun for the whole family.

Everyday Samething (UK)

An excellent rule for a label is to not release anything that follows the rules. Everyday Samething, along with its artists (Garden Path, Perrier and Rigg, Positive Paranoia, and some who are not even named) are dedicated to subversion; their flagship website is a noninteractive static page, their choices of physical format are often deliberately inaccessible, and the music they peddle is like nothing anyone has heard or will ever hear. Heroes.

pan y rosas discos (Chicago)

Even if they didn’t put out material as fascinating as they do, Chicago’s pan y rosas discos get plenty of points in my book for maintaining an independent distribution platform for digital music free of both price and formal copyright for over a decade now. Over three hundred releases later they’re still going strong, spicing up the scene with unruly works ranging from duo free improvisation (Crossings, Wasserläufer) and outsider electroacoustic (Fifty-One Aural Selfies // Real Time) to sensory-overload samplefuck (Psionic Youth).