boredoms – Alternative Press Magazine

15 bands who are crucial to the history of noise music

Tim Stegall — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 15:55:47 +0000

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for this sound in the day was “migraine music.” But most people call the style what it is: noise.

Lydia Lunch

Best heard on: Retrovirus

Since discharging wounded banshee shrieks from her throat and a Fender guitar with Teenage Jesus And The Jerks in 1977, Lydia Lunch informs noise as Iggy Pop informs punk. It all essentially starts with her. She’s refined her assault—musical and literary—in countless forms since. Including 8 Eyed Spy’s atonal swamp rock, her Queen Of Siam solo album’s dangerous Lounge Lizardisms and her guest appearance on Sonic Youth’s post-Stooges Manson family hagiographical single “Death Valley ‘69.” The last few years, she’s performed a “greatest hits” set backed by Retrovirus’ metallic racket—a beautifully effective update of her dissonant spirit.

Throbbing Gristle

Best heard on: The Taste Of TG

Like Lunch and other NYC no wavers, British industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle saw some promise in early punk but were ultimately disappointed that it all boiled down to more rock ’n’ roll. They evolved from performance-art troupe COUM Transmissions, fronted by Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Live, they confronted audiences with ugly imagery such as Nazi/fascist symbolism and pornography, as they warped electronics and tape samples through every distortion device they could find, set to tribal beats. Atop, P-Orridge harangued listeners to abandon conventional thought processes, mores and traditions and encouraged them to think for themselves.

Flipper

Best heard on: Album – Generic Flipper

Four San Francisco punk vets, Flipper assembled in 1979 in reaction to the scene’s increasing orthodoxy. As hardcore urged music to get louder and faster, Flipper opted to crank the volume knobs to 12 and break them off. Then they dropped tempos to the pace of molasses poured in the Antarctic. Guitarist Ted Falconi reduced his attack to a more distorted howl than your average punk six-stringer’s. Performances were unpredictable.Their abominable din surely paved grunge’s path, especially the slowcore blast of the Melvins.

Einstürzende Neubauten

Best heard on: Kollaps

Einstürzende Neubauten, roughly translated, is German for “collapsing new buildings.” These West Berliners were a lotta fun back in the ’80s, banging around on car doors and steel pipes with hammers, maybe applying a grinder or a chainsaw to sheet metal. Meanwhile, Blixa Bargeld looked like Sid Vicious’ corpse writhing around in some crazy S&M outfit, screaming abuse in German and occasionally hitting his electric guitar. The cumulative effect was akin to a DJ spinning both The Sounds Of The Junk Yard and John Cage’s Variations II simultaneously. They’re still around, though playing a more ambient, soothing din in their junkyard.

Sonic Youth

Best heard on: Bad Moon Rising

Meet noise’s MC5 or New York Dolls. With their overamplified junk shop guitars strung with piano wire or whatever they could afford, tuned to anything but A440, banged with screwdrivers or hammers, guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo could raise some truly hideous tonalities. Their innovation was pairing this rethink of rock guitar with the powerhouse rhythm section of Kim Gordon on bass and drummer Bob Bert, replaced from 1985 onward by Steve Shelley. When applied to explorations into standard pop song construction, it created a shockingly new form of rock that could roar violently or chime beautifully. From time to time, as in their cover of the Carpenters’ “Superstar,” it happened within the same song. But at their best, Sonic Youth were the aural equivalent of the “Teen Age Riot” video above: Like every great punk record in history played at once, as someone leans a guitar against an amp, letting it scream feedback before smashing it. Then someone plays a record of Allen Ginsberg reciting his poetry on top.

Butthole Surfers

Best heard on: Psychic…Powerless…Another Man’s Sac

These acid-drenched Texans were the freakiest, most fearsome rolling roadshow of the mid-’80s. Butthole Surfers were a total assault on the mind: Drummers King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa bashing their kits standing up; Paul Leary pulling queasy chords outta his Stratocaster; and psychotic 6’5” frontman Gibby Haynes, the son of Dallas kids’ show host Mr. Peppermint, shaking clothes pins from his hair and yelling abuse, maybe even firing shotguns above your head. Meanwhile, strobe lights flashed, and as autopsy and traffic accident films were projected over this insanity, the band raised a racket akin to hardcore punk 45s played backward at 16 RPM. It was pretty fucking cool.

Big Black

Best heard on: Atomizer

The brainchild of future ’90s recording genius (Nirvana, Pixies) Steve Albini, everything about Chicago’s Big Black was designed to be an assault. For starters, there’s their drummer: a Roland TR-606, run through a clapped-out PA system pushed to its limits, so the beat was as abrasively distorted as Albini and Santiago Durango’s guitars. Or Dave Riley’s bass, for that matter. As all this sonic information drilled through your skull and pounded your frontal lobe, Albini hollered the ugliest tales he could find, such as “Cables” chronicling the slaughter of cows in a Midwestern abattoir. Industrial punk at its finest.

The Jesus And Mary Chain

Best heard on: Psychocandy

Four surly Scotsmen dressed in black, the Jesus And Mary Chain somehow balanced a love of ’60s pop, punk and garage with a desire to create the most obnoxious racket they could muster. This involved future Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie beating the shit outta two and four on a minimal drumkit, William Reid abusing a cheap Japanese fuzzbox and his brother Jim letting a hollowbody guitar dangle from his neck, spitting constant dentist-drill feedback as he mumbled something atop. Following their perfect debut LP, Psychocandy, JAMC alternated between their pure pop and noise/assault sides. These elements worked best unseparated.

Pussy Galore

Best heard on: SAMPLER

Mid-’80s Washington, D.C. emigrates to the Lower East Side, Pussy Galore brought the rock ’n’ roll and punk attitudes back to noise. Fronted by future Blues Explosion mastermind Jon Spencer, PG raised an unholy din not dissimilar to putting a copy of the Nuggets ’60s garage comp and some scuffed-up Rolling Stones 45s through a meat grinder. It helped to have ex-Sonic Youth drummer Bert pounding a kit that featured a few bits and bobs culled from a junkyard. Lacking a bass guitar, PG’s three-guitar assault was the ultimate simultaneous desecration/celebration of all that’s great about rock ’n’ roll.

Halo Of Flies

Best heard on: Music For Insect Minds

Named for an Alice Cooper song and masterminded by Minneapolis hardcore vet and ex-Marine Tom Hazelmyer, Halo Of Flies were a unique monster sewn together from seemingly random parts: post-Hendrix guitar moans; side two of Black Flag’s Damaged; primal scream therapy; and the European version of ’60s garage dubbed freakbeat. Add to the potent stew Hazelmyer’s determination to push the pissed-up Ugly American stereotype to cartoonishly pissed-off extremes and you have some of the most combustible music of the ’80s. Tracks such as “Headburn” and “No Time” still have a kill ratio of 500 yards—and still sound fresh and juicy.

Cherubs

Best heard on: Heroin Man

You couldn’t spit in early ’90s Austin without hitting a noise band. Honestly, it got to be a bit of a cliche. But Cherubs were exceptional among that spate of Austin bands who sounded like power tools being thrown down a water well. Ex-Ed Hall drummer Kevin Whitley moved from behind the kit to be mean to his throat and an old Univox guitar. Owen McMahon made a bass guitar sound like a cement mixer. And Brent Prager was all flailing limbs and flying dreadlocks behind the drum set Whitley abandoned. The nicest guys offstage, Cherubs made the most ferociously angry caterwaul of the era. This was a good thing.

Lightning Bolt

Best heard on: Hypermagic Mountain

One part crazed early ’90s Japanoise a la Boredoms or Ruins, one part avant-garde composers such as Philip Glass and Sun Ra and one part extremely lo-fi/ultra-subterranean hardcore, Lightning Bolt have shocked and awed audiences since 1994. Former Rhode Island School of Design students Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson favor guerrilla-style performances, setting up on the floor in the middle of the crowd. Chippendale batters high-speed jazz drums and hollers into an old telephone receiver mic inside his Lucha Libre-looking mask. Gibson flails crazed riffs on a bass tuned to cello frequencies, patched through what seems like 62 distortion pedals. It’s the most insane high-volume performance art you will ever see/hear/experience.

Boris

Best heard on: Live At Third Man Records

The Tokyo-based trio of Atsuo (drums, vocals), Wata (lead guitar, keyboards, vocals) and Takeshi (bass, vocals, rhythm guitar, on a self-designed double-neck) have been at the intersection of doom metal, noise and psychedelia since 1992. The sheer volume at which Boris perform is both overwhelming and the source of the overtones which define their music, besides being heavier than the elephant cars on the Ringling Brothers train. At times, their tunes take on a beauty bordering on ambient, despite being louder than Motörhead. Possibly best heard on the above-named live record cut at Jack White’s Nashville record shop, though they’ve released 26 studio full-lengths, not counting collaborations with the likes of Merzbow, Sunn O))) and Cult vocalist Ian Astbury.

Whores.

Best heard on: Gold

Three Atlantans playing exactly the sort of metallic caveman art-metal Hazelmyer’s Amphetamine Reptile Records oozed in its sleep through the ’90s. Whores. guitarist/vocalist Christian Lembach must’ve bought every distortion box in the state of Georgia. The ones he didn’t get, bassist Casey Maxwell must have gotten. Surely Joel Willis goes through a drum kit per week—he so pulverizes those skins. And Lembach’s continual vocalizing in the key of “AAAAUUUUGGGHHH!” certainly resulted in the installation of a bionic larynx by now. They boast two EPs, several singles and no further releases since 2016’s punishing debut full-length, Gold. Hopefully, something new’s on the horizon.

Girls In Synthesis

Best heard on: Now Here’s An Echo From Your Future

“Make all the noise you want!” this London three-piece shout in the coda to 2020 single “They’re Not Listening.” If you won’t, Girls In Synthesis will. Straddling the poles between post-punk and Crass-style anarcho-punk, their racket may be the most propulsive and political on this list. “The vision was to bludgeon the ears without resorting to heavy riffing, distortion, rock ’n’ roll clichés, etc.,” mastermind John Linger told Echoes And Dust in 2018. Yet, they excel in all those things, save for the rock ’n’ roll clichés. Likely the most vigorously thrilling music to appear in this index.

These 10 unknown ’90s bands will make you wonder what else you missed

Alternative Press Magazine — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:53:35 +0000

If you were a music fan coming of age in the 90’s, you were having a blast. Nirvana‘s success effectively killed hair-farmer metal and boring mainstream rock. In its place was a new generation of artists ready to etch their marks on the veneer of culture. Many of those names—Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins—have been accepted into the canon of alternative rock. But there were thousands of unknown ’90s bands who were doing interesting things. This APTV video is dedicated to 10 who, for whatever reason, didn’t get the accolades or bank balances a select few did.

Alternative Press turned 35 this year. Obviously, we had a ringside seat for the proceedings. There was so much happening in the world’s music scenes, it was hard to keep up. Sure, there were genres at play. The important thing was that the success of a few bands opened a door to some greater aesthetic consciousness. We wouldn’t have to deal with the worst excesses of FM rock or the aforementioned poodle-metal dudes. However, major labels and corporate radio lackeys sold the country a sanitized, flavor-free version of “alternative.” Which meant a lot of relatively unknown ’90s bands still had no chance of breaking through. No matter how great their songs and ideas were.

Here are 10 bands from the ’90s you never heard and it’s a damned shame

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:50:35 +0000

AltPress was started 35 years ago because there was more great music happening than what radio and MTV would let people believe. We’re confident about this throwback list of bands from the ’90s you’ve never heard of for a few reasons.

First, the geographical spread of these bands is worldwide. We can’t help but think that each band’s environs and communities had something to do with the stuff coming out of their amps. Secondly, this list illustrates how fertile the music scene was at the time. Even if radio station music directors and segment producers didn’t want to hear it. And finally, like we stated, we’re sure you’ve never heard of them.

Bailter Space – “Projects”

Christchurch, New Zealand, trio Bailter Space hit all of the sweet spots in the world’s underground. After releasing several records in their homeland, the band moved to New York City and completely ratcheted up the extremity. Menacing riffs, commanding vocals and both guitar noise and samples were their stock in trade. “Projects,” from their 1994 release Vortura, approximates Sonic Youth sniffing glue while playing through Dinosaur Jr.’s stolen amplifiers. You may also want to check out the live version from their Retro EP. Unless, you know, you’re a coward.

Boredoms – “My Mum Is Car”

Boredoms hailed from Osaka, Japan, with an aesthetic that completely embraced chaos. If you ever wondered how twisted and fractured rock could get while still being semi-linear, you should get to streaming. Lead singer Yamantaka Eye had a gnarlier scream than four-fifths of the bands who played Warped Tour. Oh, and as far as lyrics go, you can make up your own: Think of Eye as another instrument and not an introspection porthole. Nirvana had them open dates on their In Utero tour, and the Japanese delegation polarized the crowds magnificently. When Boredoms signed to Warner Records, the company allegedly sent out more promotional copies of their first U.S. release, Pop Tatari, than actual store stock. Who cares? This writer bought one…

Chavez – “You Must Be Stopped”

Chavez founder Matt Sweeney is so connected, he can play six degrees of separation with your music library. (He’s done stints with Queens Of The Stone Age, Iggy Pop, Billy Corgan, Josh Groban and tons more.) In this writer’s mythology, he will always be known for the last song on 1996’s Ride The Fader. “You Must Be Stopped” is quite simply the alt-rock masterpiece that never happened. Sweeney’s Gen X-angst vocal rides on a meaty, harmonic riff, with drummer James Lo driving it all. Listen to it repeatedly as you file your vote-by-mail paperwork.

The God Machine – “The Tremolo Song”

This trio of ex-pat San Diegans snuck over to the U.K. and made jaws drop with their 1993 debut, Scenes From The Second Storey. The God Machine understood that you can generate tension with decibel levels and slow-motion minimalism. “The Tremolo Song” is stentorian in both its power and its sadness. Guitarist/vocalist Robin Proper-Sheppard sets his trem pedal to “wound” while barking his invective. The song is from their second and final album, 1994’s One Last Laugh In A Place Of Dying. Sadly, bassist Jimmy Fernandez passed from a cerebral hemorrhage during the mixing. In tribute to their friend, Proper-Sheppard and drummer Austin Lynn Austin kept those mixes for the final LP.

Kinky Machine – “Shockaholic”

Kinky Machine (like a lot of bands in those days) hailed from West London. We never heard them saddled with the term “Britpop” like most of their millionaire contemporaries were. “Shockaholic” is a sweet slice of ‘70s glam swagger with some Sex Pistols snottiness and a weird synth squiggle for flavor. (They also had a great song called “Clever?,” which was the best song Buzzcocks never wrote.) “Shockaholic” remains great at top volume in a convertible or echoing in the lobby of the bank you’re robbing after hours.

Mercury Rev – “Young Man’s Stride”

In some parallel universe, this song is bigger than Nevermind. Mercury Rev formed in Buffalo, New York, with a neo-psychedelic blend that was trippy, semi-pastoral and volume-dealing. After two albums with frontman David Baker, guitarist Jonathan Donahue assumed center-mic position for 1995’s See You On The Other Side and unleashed this burner. The Rev still exist under the aegis of Donahue and guitarist Sean Mackowiak. Last year, they recorded their version of country-pop songwriter Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete with a cast of female singers.

Moonshake – “Seen & Not Heard”

British unit Moonshake were considered by many to be the premier post-rock band. They were one of the first bands to use samplers in their inspired post-punk creations when keyboards were the providence of industrial rock and dance music. “Seen & Not Heard,” from their 1992 album Eva Luna, is definitely none of those things, owing more to Public Image Ltd than Ministry or C+C Music Factory. This one is cool and creepy, with frontman/guitarist Dave Callahan taking on a persona of a normal guy by day and complete maniac by night. Definitely one of the more artier bands from the ’90s that didn’t get their due.

Skyscraper – “Choke”

This 1993 workout was too propulsive to be considered grunge, too deranged for Britpop and too concise for noise-rock consideration. Skyscraper were a British indie supergroup consisting of members of Swervedriver, Milk and Octopus who released two albums before calling it a wrap. “Choke” was their murderous debut single that distilled so many things that were happening in the underground at the time. Nearly 30 years later, it’s the kind of thing you turn up in the car so you can drown out the sounds of sirens outside.

Wool – “SOS”

Respected hardcore dudes need paid, too. Brothers Pete and Franz Stahl were the founders of legendary Washington, D.C. punk band Scream. When Dave Grohl left to make rock safe from poodle metal with Nirvana, the Stahls enlisted Government Issue drummer Pete Moffett and bassist Al Bloch (Concrete Blonde). Wool’s 1992 EP, Budspawn, was noisy enough to appeal to the underground but accessible enough to people proud of their first Jane’s Addiction shirt. With “SOS,” Wool delivered a solid track that was deserving of all of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” spins. Don’t kick yourself for missing it. We’re stoked you’re hearing it now. Out of all the bands from the ’90s on this list, everyone should’ve heard Wool.

Urusei Yatsura – “Hello Tiger”

In the late ’90s, Scottish noise-pop hopefuls Urusei Yatsura were holding court and tearing up the U.K. indie scene. When genres such as grunge and indie-pop were becoming tired and cliched, Yatsura took the best elements of each. The result felt like a mound of fresh ginger to the brain. “Hello Tiger” was the pop song My Bloody Valentine wouldn’t deliver. And the title of their album, Slain By Urusei Yatsura, was funny in a hyperbolic way. But it didn’t matter: In 1998, America was all up in Marcy Playground. That was the kind of thing really great bands from the ’90s had to endure.