My opinion is that new needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements. It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age find its own technique.
—Words of Jackson Pollock, modern American painter. A recording of this quote was sampled by noise group Birds of Tin at the end of their set at the 804noise festival.
The 804noise festival could be heard expressing this present age with their own technique this past Sunday in Richmond, Virginia. Featuring nineteen experimental and noise projects in one industrial space, the 804noise festival emphasized experimentation and community. The festival was organized by the 804noise collective, a network of persons committed to creating a supportive community for experimental, noise, and avant-garde art. Performers included the outfits Birds of Tin, Harm Stryker, Drums Like Machine Guns, and ENE.
The festival was housed in the Art Works Gallery, an industrial space turned gallery. In a large open room, performers created bizarre sounds from various kinds of equipment. Pipes ran along the ceiling. Glowing christmas lights were wrapped around steel columns. Art creations, like a sculpture resembling a head covered in neon paint and yarn, were placed throughout the room. Audience members sat in folding chairs facing electronic gear stacked on tables and spread over the floor where performers manipulated them.
What the performers created is called (at least by some people) noise. Noise is music, but it challenges traditional notions of what that means. Kelly Nourse, an organizer of the 804noise festival and member of Harm Stryker, an outfit which performed at the festival, appreciates the openness of noise. "It’s endless. It can be beautiful laptop music or it can be offensive pain-inducing noise," she said. "I like that it’s not this exclusive club. Anyone can do this. Anyone can make amazing sounds . . . It’s an opportunity for you to try something completely out of the norm, when everything has already been done."
While defining noise is difficult (and perhaps irrelevant), the basic tenets of the genre include stepping outside of conventional musical traditions and the manipulation of gear in some manner. The sound created varies immensely depending on what the performer wants to make.
Nourse said, "People come at noise from so many points of view. There are people coming from an academic background or people who come from just picking up a piece of gear and messing with it."
Messing with gear can include a process called circuit-bending. Brian Morsberger of Drums Like Machine Guns, a noise group from Philadelphia that played at the festival, defines circuit-bending as "creatively short-circuit[ing] electronics to make them emit sounds they would not otherwise." During their set, Morseberger used a circuit-bent kid’s toy guitar while the other half of Drums Like Machines, his brother Richie, used multi-effect guitar pedal fed back into itself "so it kind of drives itself crazy."
Nourse explained the technique she used during her set with Harm Stryker: "What I did today was manipulate two feedback loops generated from a distortion pedal and a delay pedal. Basically, the twisting of the knobs affects how often the loop repeats, the delay, and the feedback. So, I had some deep low ends that I worked on keeping pulsating and then I brought in crashing sounds on top of it."
Part of the immense variation within noise is due to the improvisation technique that many artists utilize. Birds of Tin, a Virginia Beach-based noise duo featuring Jo Ben Whittenburg and Brooks Oates, improvised their set using pre-recorded CDs and "very cheap samplers" (as they described them) while a projector shone a film they made onto a sheet hanging on a wall.
"I think what I love about what we do is, even if it is pre-recorded, the CD recorder is still an instrument," Whittenburg said. "It’s sort of like free jazz improvisation, but with not-normal sounds."
Oates added, "The sounds dictate where they want to go. So, you have to be in a receptive mood, I guess. That sounds pretentious, but it’s really how I feel."
Although they don’t play instruments live, Birds of Tin are quick to point out that the noise they make is still the result of a musical process. "We spend time collecting sounds, organizing sounds. We talk about a basic outline of a set. For instance, we decided our set today would start out quiet with the chanting and then get faster," said Whittenburg.
Similarily, the freedom of noise attracts members of ENE to the noise genre. A Richmond-based duo with Scott Hudgens and Rob Miller, ENE used doctored samples and an Ensoniq ARS10 keyboard to create a set consisting of "all out board effects" and "a lot of improv." Discernable were synth sitar, accordian, and drums. "I like the whole abstract communication that can happen with each other or with the audience," Miller said,
In the end, noise is just another way to think about music. When Birds of Tin closed their set with a quote from the painter Jackson Pollock in which he says that each generation must find its own technique for expressing its reality, the performers are making a point: when one considers the world around us, making noise makes sense. As Moresberger said, "Everybody can’t always listen to whatever is on the radio. It is just an alternative."
