Is there any escape... from noise?

December 26, 2005 11:14 AM

MAN - Mothers Against Noise."Noise is music that uses unpleasant or painful or extremely loud or discordant sound. Noise is also a very dangerous musical trend that is hell bent on destroying civilized culture, this anti-cultural movement is quickly sweeping the globe, and is very dangerous to our youth." via MonkeyFilter and our own panoptican.
posted by loquacious (70 comments total)

Where the fuck is Negativland?

They should get together with MADD and the could call themselves MADDMAN.

Then we could form MADAM = Musicians Against Dumb Ass Moms.

ULTIMATE POWAR BATTLE FIGHT!
posted by loquacious at 11:15 AM on December 26, 2005

the = they
posted by loquacious at 11:15 AM on December 26, 2005

how very very funny -- complete with misspellings and all -- a classic!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:20 AM on December 26, 2005

heheh
posted by mischief at 11:20 AM on December 26, 2005

hoax.
posted by quonsar at 11:23 AM on December 26, 2005

That reminds me I'll have to continue my way through the Merzbox at some point today.
posted by bobo123 at 11:24 AM on December 26, 2005

Oh yeah. This is really real. "...a split release, whatever that is..."

In any case, a band doesn't have to be a threat to western civilization to just plain suck.
posted by Faze at 11:27 AM on December 26, 2005

Radiohead is a gateway band. This lady know her stuff, hehe.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 11:43 AM on December 26, 2005

Be sure to check out the Mailing List.
posted by klaruz at 11:47 AM on December 26, 2005

Hey, this lady is kind of hip. Spencer Yeh? Awright.

I had no idea Andrew W.K. toured with To Live and Shave in LA.
posted by kenko at 11:48 AM on December 26, 2005

I vaguely recall my mother (she started high school in 1945) describing how offensive, degenerate and degrading my grandparents found "swing" music. Plus ca change, I guess....
posted by alumshubby at 11:50 AM on December 26, 2005

This is only funny if it isn't a parody/hoax.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:51 AM on December 26, 2005

They're too late.

Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes.

Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve. We are therefore certain that by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a new and unexpected sensual pleasure.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:58 AM on December 26, 2005

A+++++ WOULD BELIEVE AGAIN
posted by dhartung at 12:00 PM on December 26, 2005

MAN, it's so loud in here?
posted by luftmensch at 12:01 PM on December 26, 2005

I try to read the website and comprehend M.A.N.'s outrage, but all I can see/hear is blah_blah_blah.

P.S. Can I get the name of my band added to the noise list?
posted by HyperBlue at 12:10 PM on December 26, 2005

NOISE MUSIC EMBRACES:
1. Rebellion
2. Violence
3. Nihilism
4. Escapism
5. Drugs / Alcoholism
6. Perversion
7. Dissonant / Offensive Sound
8. Paranormal / Occult Activities
9. Anti-God / Anti-Authority
10. Cult-like Organization

All the music that I love embraces at least one of those things.
posted by psmealey at 12:11 PM on December 26, 2005

What?? Nothing about It's gettin' hot in here! So take off all your clothes! I am getting so hot, I wanna take my clothes off
posted by rolypolyman at 12:11 PM on December 26, 2005

hmm, perhaps they killed Derek Bailey?

I posted a couple of thoughtful articles onto the MAN board... perhaps they'll learn something.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 12:12 PM on December 26, 2005

Where do I join up? The other day as I was walking across campus, and a truck was backing up and making that damned 'bleep bleep' sound, and then the friggin' engine kicked in as it drove away, and it was bloody loud. Painful. And the guys in the bumper yard across the alley like to bang things on Saturday mornings, and it pisses me off.

Yeah, this site is only funny if it's real, and I doubt that it is. But it's a diversion, at any rate.
posted by jokeefe at 12:19 PM on December 26, 2005

On the other hand, I have to give them credit for the message board. That must have taken a bit of work...
posted by jokeefe at 12:23 PM on December 26, 2005

Apparently their objection to noise does not extend to rejecting it as a web design motif.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 12:24 PM on December 26, 2005

Well, I know what I'll be doing over the next few hours - checking out some new music! I might even buy a few CD's and then.....hey....wait a minute!
posted by photoslob at 12:25 PM on December 26, 2005

The best part of the message board are the posts from hapless defenders of music:

p.s. i love radiohead. i am a christian. i voted libertarian.

Heh.
posted by jokeefe at 12:28 PM on December 26, 2005

Uh huh.
posted by jokeefe at 12:35 PM on December 26, 2005

I'd buy one of those if the design weren't so crappy.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:39 PM on December 26, 2005

"In order to take the spiritual temperature ......"

*Flips on some Merzbow and bends over with a smile*
posted by zerokey at 12:45 PM on December 26, 2005

That reminds me I'll have to continue my way through the Merzbox at some point today.

If you really do own the Merzbox you are truly a king among men.
posted by crank at 1:08 PM on December 26, 2005

Zeppelin rule!
posted by Joeforking at 1:14 PM on December 26, 2005

Lightning Bolt rule too!

These people have good taste, but express it in a strange way. People will seek out this music: mission accomplished!
posted by Drexen at 1:31 PM on December 26, 2005

Someone needs to send her a certain Lou Reed album for a late Christmas present.
posted by muppetboy at 1:36 PM on December 26, 2005

This reminds me of one of those sites that schizophrenics make telling you how to communicate with the rest of the human race now that Julie Andrews and Adolf Hitler have invaded everyone's brains.
posted by Afroblanco at 1:41 PM on December 26, 2005

And what about Frank Zappa? You can't argue that he's unmelodic.
posted by muppetboy at 1:42 PM on December 26, 2005

Yeah, I can't stop humming The Black Page.
posted by kenko at 1:47 PM on December 26, 2005

The panoptic(a)n is everyone's own. THE PANOPTICAN IS EVERYWHERE.

I love that bands list. I think the next Radio MetaChat I do will consist strictly of the bands that Mother's Against Noise claim will destroy civilization.

On another note, I wonder how it is for us users who post at MeFi, MeCha and MoFi determine which links go where. For whatever reason, that link screamed MoFi to me.
posted by panoptican at 1:48 PM on December 26, 2005

If they get right on eliminating the Black Eyed Peas, I might give them some cred.

They'll probably start with Nirvana or something, though.
posted by weston at 1:56 PM on December 26, 2005

Hokes.
posted by soiled cowboy at 2:39 PM on December 26, 2005

The silly thing here is that they're railing against noise one chooses to listen to. I'd rather see them battle noise pollution.
posted by bingbangbong at 2:52 PM on December 26, 2005

c'mon, it a fansite. it's by people who LIKE noise.
posted by lapolla at 3:15 PM on December 26, 2005

Then answer me this, if it doesn't matter then why aren't they singing about birds and waterfalls and living in a wonderful world??

The noise scene is also structured a lot like terrorist organizations, they work in small numbers with no clear leader and work feverishly on their 'music' often self releasing cds and records
posted by signal at 3:37 PM on December 26, 2005

Did you people know that with super-drag-and-go and the appropriate search-engine-plugins it takes like 2" to begin downloading this ladies reccomendations?
posted by signal at 3:38 PM on December 26, 2005

2 whole inches?
posted by quonsar at 3:44 PM on December 26, 2005

quonsar writes '2 whole inches?'

What's an "inch"?
posted by signal at 3:46 PM on December 26, 2005

On second thought, I believe this is a hoax. The mailto links to a hotmail account.
posted by Afroblanco at 3:51 PM on December 26, 2005

This if funny... if there's one thing I love about the noise scene is the humor. The Radiohead part is classic.
posted by melt away at 3:53 PM on December 26, 2005

is... is... is!!!
posted by melt away at 3:53 PM on December 26, 2005

I dunno. I'm not convinced it's a hoax site. I think she might be on to something.

I mean, every time I go to a noise show there's hardly anyone there, there's no one running the show and often times random people just walk up and start jamming and making the most lurid, disturbing sounds and noises.

And at most shows at some point during the evening I seem to pass out, only to wake up with the unmistakable taste of fresh baby flesh in my mouth and covered in burning demon jizz. At the shows I don't pass out at, there's invariably these huge drink and drug fuelled orgies - giant, quivering, pulsating mountains of naked human flesh doing unspeakable things to each other.

Sometimes I think that it's time to burn all my bootlegs and one-offs, atone for my sins and seek the acceptance, forgiveness and ultimate love of Christ.

But then I usually just put on some Bourbanese Qualk, Blackhumor, Instagon or Not Breathing or something and those kind of insane urges fade quickly under the unbearable lightness of overwhelming bliss. Furiously masturbing often helps, too.
posted by loquacious at 4:00 PM on December 26, 2005

She has a point. Rock of the past few decades has really sucked ass.
posted by HTuttle at 4:10 PM on December 26, 2005

The HTuttle Theory of Distortion Evolution:

1- A generation of kids listens to its music on a crappy audio device which increases the distortion.

2- Those kids grow and start performong music and attempt to replicate the distortion they recall from their early days, and push it further.

3- Next generation hears THAT, but on a crappy audio device which again increases the distortion

4-Go to 1


As validation I cite the experience of growing into a moneyed adult, buying a decent audio system , and having the revelation of hearing the music of youth sounding VERY different than it's remembered.
posted by HTuttle at 4:17 PM on December 26, 2005

Or Go to 2, whatever.

Yeah, GoTo is idiot coding, but tough toodies.
posted by HTuttle at 4:18 PM on December 26, 2005

Yes..but does it go up to 11?
posted by Mr Bluesky at 4:35 PM on December 26, 2005

Eleven.
That's not even funny.
Eleven.
That's ridiculous.
Eleven.
One... two, three four...
Eleven.
posted by loquacious at 5:10 PM on December 26, 2005

(what, no mention of Slogun?)
posted by neckro23 at 5:20 PM on December 26, 2005

Also, Htuttle. I'm going to have to refute your flawed and reductionist theory of noise as presented as a negatively entropic feedback loop. There are many paths to noise, not all of them are pop or punk or lo-fi or guitar based.

As a wee young kneebiter, I was - and still am - fascinated by crunchy electronic bleepy-bloopy noises. This started very young. About six years old or so.

I used to listen to various oldschool electronic toys very, very closely. I'd put my ears right down to the speaker or piezo disc and listen intently, analyzing the sounds for hours on end. Among the toys that I listened to were this educational robot thingy and a "Merlin" handheld game, and a number of other "lower end" devices.

In retrospect I now realise that what I was listening to was the FM synthesis and PCM (pulse code modulation) noise - the stairsteps, sawtooths and modulations betwixt and comprising the waveforms themselves.

A few years later I was probing a Heathkit Microproccessor training kit with a pair of headphones and some homemade leads, listening in on the gated noise and clock cycles of an old 4 bit digital circuit and it's memory banks, simplistic system bus and clock circuits. All while mucking about with the hexadecimal programming keypad, experimenting with how different memory values or loop functions sounded.

Then there were tapes and mucking around with tape decks, tweaking the external or internal speed controls, degrading the recording quality, doing tape splicing and cutups and even very rudimentary mashups.

Even later I'd obtained a cheap as dirt Harmony brand Sears special guitar that I'd modified the pickup circuits on, stripped all the frets out of and had turned into a some kind of 5 string space bass that I often threw things at and did feedback experiments on, above and beyond the weird, atonal bass-like "guitar playing" I did on it.

The odd thing about this to me is that this all happened years and years before ever hearing anything like Sonic Youth, techno, acid house, or experimental music. I had no idea who Throbbing Gristle was. Nine Inch Nails effectively didn't exist, yet. Pop Will Eat Itself was probably playing tiny bars somewhere in England. The most industrial music I'd heard at that point was probably Depeche Mode or Sigue Sigue Sputnik. And yet, meanwhile there was the pre-Negativland "Over The Edge" radio shows going on somewhere in the Bay Area.

I know I'm not alone, either. Many friends that I've made as an adult that like similar music had similar childhoods that involved "circuit bending", tape manipulations, feedback experiments and other similar themes, most of them without any obvious inspiration or connection to existing themes or artists - just doing it because it felt right and was fascinating.

"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all run around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989.
posted by loquacious at 5:38 PM on December 26, 2005

crank:
the merzbox was posted on oink a few days ago. grab it now while the ratio-free time is still in effect :)
posted by p3on at 6:35 PM on December 26, 2005

loquacious, that was beautiful. Just in the interest of the gullibility squad: the Nintendo quote is a common misattribution.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:40 PM on December 26, 2005

hmm, whois says that the site is registered to a fellow in the netherlands named "Snijders". that doesn't sound right.
i'm guessing hoax as well.
posted by p3on at 6:42 PM on December 26, 2005

awesome loquacious.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:46 PM on December 26, 2005

when baby jesus cries it's noise.
posted by brandz at 7:19 PM on December 26, 2005

I had no idea Andrew W.K. toured with To Live and Shave in LA.

I believe he was in To Live and Shave in LA for a time.
posted by brevator at 8:52 PM on December 26, 2005

i'm almost sure this is a joke. if it not...*ahem*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
(back to my xiu xiu)
posted by es_de_bah at 8:55 PM on December 26, 2005

It worked for me! I immediately started googling most of the band names (the ones I didn't know). I am an ad agency's wet dream.

Oh, and no Nurse With Wound? That's criminal.
posted by fungible at 9:32 PM on December 26, 2005

omg mothers gone nuts.
posted by grafholic at 11:07 PM on December 26, 2005

MILF!
posted by If I Had An Anus at 6:30 AM on December 27, 2005

(p3on: thanks for the heads-up. holy crap!)
posted by neckro23 at 9:55 AM on December 27, 2005

Andrew WK killed Kennedy.
posted by sellout at 11:16 AM on December 27, 2005

Seems like their list could use a little flushing out. Perhaps they should consult the NWW list?
posted by malocchio at 11:53 AM on December 27, 2005

...once our kids get hooked on dissonance they will only go further down the road for a bigger kick.

It's true! I mean, first it was just a little harmless Romantic-period tonal exploration, right? A few diminished chords thrown in for nonfunctional, coloristic purposes. But look where it gets you: suddenly, you're listening to people who chose their chords for sonic effects rather than traditional functional harmony. Who thought Ravel and Debussy and Scriabin would be gateway composers? But then I started listening to Shostakovich and the bitonality wormed its way into my head and pretty soon I had all of his string quartets and now I can listen to music from the Tallis to Mozart to Beethoven to Respighi to Ives to Schoenberg to Cage to the ROVA Saxophone Quartet and enjoy it! Where will the madness end?

To the creators of this site, if they were crazy enough not to be joking, and to those who actually do think like them: Some of this music is legitimately crap. However, the fact that you don't understand something (especially when that something is musical) does not automatically make it bad.
posted by musicinmybrain at 6:36 AM on December 28, 2005

The “official” mothers against noise wesbite is MOTHERSAGAINSTNOISE.US.

The strange thing is that the address and phone number in the registration is the same as several record labels including Island Records which btw is the label under which Andrew WK released his last two records. Is it merely a coincidince that Andrew WK is involved with one of the bands in the top ten list of “noise” offenders??

Domain Name: MOTHERSAGAINSTNOISE.US
Domain ID: D9279687-US
Sponsoring Registrar: .US REGISTRAR L.L.C.
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID: 40281715
Registrant Name: Mothers Against Noise
Registrant Organization: Mothers Against Noise
Registrant Address1: 825 Eighth Avenue
Registrant City: New York
Registrant State/Province: NY
Registrant Postal Code: 10019
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Country Code: US
Registrant Phone Number: +1.2123338000
posted by xdugef at 9:54 AM on January 5, 2006

Oh, this group does exist. Except they're known as Malaysian Tabloid Newspapers and Those That Read Them.
posted by divabat at 3:02 AM on January 14, 2006