Today been listening to STIMBOX "Crush". Solid punishment from 1997. I think that this band probably received some non-music releated dislike back in the day, and that combined to some later days lazer-noise cdr's what wasn't in its popularity at certain time, have made band band less appreciated than it could be.
I'm not sure has he been around for 10 years now? At least doesn't seem to have releases. However, if you ask me, actually his 90's material would certainly qualify as material to reissue. Crush is multi-layered, highly electric - but no way "lazer noise". It utilizes electronics, tapes, junk metal, guitar, etc. and everything melts into saturated highly fast moving harsh noise.
It basically has all the finest points of 90's american noise. Tasty crunch, as opposed to flat distortion. The speed, as opposed to stillness of hwn. Clear direction, instead of aimless jumping around or too much stutterloops and cuts. While it is strong and firm, it has the handmade and "unedited" feel to it. Things happen all the time on several level of the song, displaying spontaneous noise energy - but also skill to handle it.
Should probably dig deeper to the 90's Stimbox works in near future! Definitely recommend people too. Doesn't seem to be much of his old stuff uploaded.. Stimbox site and harshnoise.com is gone long ago.
Some old comments are still floating around the internet from some drama long ago.
Harsh noise website is still up and running, what a relic it is.
http://www.noisemp3.com/
My favorite stimbox recording in this style described above is the "Power Dump" tape on Labrynth
Tried contacting him in 2014 it was not a fruitful endeavor.
I'd like to think hindsight is going to treat Stimbox and his label well. I think it needs a little more time, though. In ten years, when people are digging around US noise for lesser known treasures, Stimbox will be in that chest of goodies. Recycled, Caveat Emptor, and Morphonic Resonance are all good quality.
Powerrr Dump is great, yeah. Has that spaced out acid-trip-gone-bad vibe also heard in his track on the Americanoise compilation. Great stuff, and it's failry cheap when it shows up for sale.
Pretty underrated. Probably because of more personal conflicts with others more so that anything. CDrs leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths as being garbage, but it doesn't mean the material on them is also garbage. Quite the contrary with Stimbox.
Some favorites are Morphic Resonance, Crush, Collab with RHY Yau, Caveat Emptor, Split with Xome.
Definitely great psychedelic approach to noise. All the drama on one of the old message boards kinda really changed noise up a bit - Stimbox was one of the artist that just disappeared after that. Unfortunate for sure.
Well known old video - thought it wouldn't hurt to share it again:
https://youtu.be/4rD-HUz4d7U
Quote from: Potier on March 18, 2017, 06:28:05 AM
Definitely great psychedelic approach to noise. All the drama on one of the old message boards kinda really changed noise up a bit - Stimbox was one of the artist that just disappeared after that. Unfortunate for sure.
Bullying isn't just for children (unless you acknowledge adults never cease being children).
Caveat Emptor is one I quite liked at the time. Very live in-your-face full throttle full body, with nice wide open feel of room acoustics. The full bodied character of Stimbox overall is one I generally enjoy. The Crush tape is another in which this really comes through, with maybe a bit more Macro-influenced crunch.
I recall that Oliveira was bemused that someone kept insisting on describing the work as "ambient" ... but I'd at least have to concede "psychedelic". The Shining Path takes this psych-ambient sheen to an exceedingly severe peak while the collab with Abfall could injects the echoing space with more rocket-flavored roar.
There were two collabs with RHY Yau, one on Yau's label and one on Oliveira's. Both are good, the latter is favorite, actually among my favorite pieces of noise of the time. Huge burly canyons of sound.
Would love to hear those Yau tapes. Suspect all that would have been on CDR eventually. Unfortunate that it didn't happen.
Don't have the two Yau collabs handy but a while back some dickhead posted some comments on an old blog:
QuoteStimbox+Yau - :stim:yau:/:yau:box: C60 (HLAS)
"Part 1 in a two-part collaboration".Released around the time of the Mo*te masterpiece, "Life in a Peaceful New World" (HLAS), this beautifully dense foray into the harsh harmonic resonances of amplified spring, string, voice and buzz, offers everything you ever wanted in a harsh, industrial-strength drone, and does for the field everything Mo*te did for ultraharsh ambient-flavored noise. A Stimbox world ascending, Yau hanging on the edges. Slowly developing, enveloping crystal shards sleet across the perimeter of a roiling central inferno. Truly gargantuan depths moon and moan within glittering, skittering crooks and crannies. Feedback slides from clean sheen back into dreamy dust-choked caverns, submerged reverberations scraping metallic screeching luster delving diving deeper deeper still the whirlpool pull sucks the noisebrain into thunderous angelic hell, somehow growing larger larger, blotting out everything, more, the name, not, nothing, drone...
NoiseGrade: A
Harshness: 6.4
Density: 8.6
Rawness: 7.3
Craftsmanship: 7.4
Spasticity: 6.4
Harmonicaness: 9.8
:RHY:Yau:Stimbox: - Tactile C60 (Auscultare)
"Collaboration Part II"Following the release of Part 1 on HLAS, this Yau/Stimbox collaboration sees much more Yau in the structural unfolding and articulation. If liner notes ring true, Stimbox supplies only "sound source" this time around, making it less the pure collaboration featured in Part 1, and more the Yau-pulated Stimbox reworking. Yau jumps in lozenge first, hacking and weezing at an ill-tempered bludgeon which gradually works its way into a solid spluttering, grumbling mess. If Stimbox enters the picture at all, then, it is in a much reduced capacity, gasping and sputtering against Yau`s unforgiving tonsils and tongue-work. Hogtied, branded, dragged kicking and screaming through razor`d sphincter-flesh and whirlwind ass-swipe, frenetic chainsaw wheezing splices into stop-action fidelity and badly burnt tape-head... winking out and off before the raging besquashed Stimpy behemouth is allowed but a floppy few playful plugs against a calmly controlled acoustic ding-a-ling and savage oral choking.
NoiseGrade: A
Harshness: 6.2
Density: 7.1
Rawness: 7.2
Craftsmanship: 8.8
Spasticity: 9.3
Harmonicaness: 3.1
Note that the dickhead gives the HLAS release high scores in the areas of Density and Harmonicaness, whatever that means, while the Aucultare release scores big in Craftsmanship and Spasticity. (Phrases like "sheet metal bumbiscuit" abound so you have been warned.)
http://harshnoise.blogspot.jp/2005/10/rhy-yau.html
Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial? I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly. Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.
I recently sold all my recycled tapes except stimbox. maybe its because I used to listen to it tripping, but that tape is really incredible. its very dark, but not in a death industrial way, super unique HN. its is repetitive waves of reverberated nastiness.
Quote from: Zeno Marx on June 17, 2018, 10:56:45 PM
Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial? I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly. Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.
As coincidence would have it, this thread popped up just as I scored a copy of the "FORCE FEEDback" tape (Extraction Records), which sounds very death-industrial to me. I don't know if it's an effect box or not (a zube-tube is credited, and those can make vocal-ish sounds, so maybe it's that), but there's a recurring raspy voice-sound that makes me think of exactly the sound you're talking about. It's very dark and reverberating and a bit psychedelic without being overly blissful about it. Since the three tracks are about interruptions of the standard food cycle (track 1, "Binge," track 2, "Purge," track 3, "Feeding Tubes"), the implied vocalizations make sense.
Quote from: CMSFoundation on June 20, 2018, 10:05:51 PM
Quote from: Zeno Marx on June 17, 2018, 10:56:45 PM
Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial? I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly. Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.
As coincidence would have it, this thread popped up just as I scored a copy of the "FORCE FEEDback" tape (Extraction Records), which sounds very death-industrial to me. I don't know if it's an effect box or not (a zube-tube is credited, and those can make vocal-ish sounds, so maybe it's that), but there's a recurring raspy voice-sound that makes me think of exactly the sound you're talking about. It's very dark and reverberating and a bit psychedelic without being overly blissful about it. Since the three tracks are about interruptions of the standard food cycle (track 1, "Binge," track 2, "Purge," track 3, "Feeding Tubes"), the implied vocalizations make sense.
I'll keep my eye out for a rip of that. I'm definitely interested in hearing it.
All I have is one Obscurica release by him, I liked it.
https://www.discogs.com/Stimbox-12-01-2005/release/593086
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on March 26, 2019, 04:18:37 PM
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on March 26, 2019, 04:16:01 PM
Quote from: Zeno Marx on March 24, 2019, 10:30:50 PM
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on March 20, 2019, 04:52:17 AM
Incapacitants – Zouvneree cd (Alchemy)
Holy laser noise, Batman!
Listening to Stimbox and thinking back to the lazer noise deal. Are we talking about anything similar?
Good question. I wanted to take the time to give it the response it deserves. So, let's see. Just to consult my extensive notes here...
Ah yes, here we are. The answer is: no.
More seriously. Zouvneree seems one of the more Mikawa-driven of the recent Incaps, sitting cleanly inside a crisper, cleaner, digital-sounding range of wheedling, mewling, squeal and scree. Rapidly ascending and descending overlap of criss-crossed sweep and swoop. Fuzz and feedback making way for more laser-pointed precision, free-wheeling psych extremes never quite losing the sense of strictly delineated range of movement. Gear would have to factor strongly into the equation. With Stimbox, different gear, different times, just, different.
And as far as the Stimbox lasers. One should probably refer first to the vast majority of artists coming out of Japan, any one of whom would have had as much or more on the laser side of noise. Quick list off the top of the head: Merzbow, Pain Jerk, Incapacitants, Monde Bruits, CCCC, Astro, Aube, MSBR, Masonna, Thirdorgan, Government Alpha, Gasolineman, Kazumoto Endo. Plenty of laser action, none of it really defining any of the projects (unless one is inclined to want it to). I'd again chalk it up to gear plus general predilection for more dynamic, high energy blasting of the Le Shit. (Mileage may vary.)
<trigger alert! about to jump off the deep end>
Plus, and not to put too fine a point on it, a healthy spirit of wtf aka willingness to experiment. A lot of these folk were/are serious gear fetishists, as often seemingly willing to be led by as much as to lead the gear. A matter of willingness to take the good with the bad and the ugly, to let the sound speak for itself. But... perhaps that willingness has always- and will always- be there. Forever locked in battle with the apparent fetish of the moment. And the winner is...
I'd meant to come back to this for a few things. First, to move it here. Second, the above off-the-deep-end thing about "forever locked in battle with the apparent fetish of the moment" refers to the
sound fetish, not the gear fetish, which may occasionally be the same thing but for the sake of the above argument were/are very definitely not. Ugh. Now I've almost lost myself. But essentially: letting the gear speak for itself may be a calculated risk that does not necessarily pay off in critic-proof sound. But, y'know, fuck the critics (and their ratings systems). You know who you are!!
This was funny to me in light of the Merzcast. Tim was easily the most Merz obsessed listener I'd encountered. The one who almost on the day new Merz dropped would already be out with a very pithy assessment on its worth. And here we were, in Merzcast number two, and one of the guests arguing what sounded like one of Tim's old (ancient) arguments about cut-up noise...
The question about lazer noise reminded me of a dumb-ass review I'd written a while back. I think that particular release was later incorporated into an anthology representing Tim's, um, official "comment" on the subject.
So I decided to dig the review up and repost it here, just for fun. (Plus any limerick involving the ancient and storied town of Dundincter is almost automatic win.)
originally posted to alt.noise march 2002QuoteSTIMBOX - Lupus Tuberculoso MCD (Tabula Rasa)
There was a young man from Dundincter
Whose nostril was also his sphincter
This is his story.
Too silent too long, two years plus, Oliveira-san. The bowels of noise welcome you back like the world`s biggest jellied asshole, puckered up, panting, primed for pleasure. A bit of a departure, it is, from Stims of yore. No longer so shamelessly reliant on the subsurface interplay of overarching, saturated harmonics, a stripped-down surface tension flays about wide-open water tanks populated with collapsible fishing rods willing white-hot whip-action on squealy-mouthed wigglypigglies. Tingly tissues teased and tweaked in tandem. Kebab skewers dance and twist on frayed-raw mechanical nerves. This is a dirtier, smellier Stimbox, one with some kind of nervous twitch and fresh crop of colorful skin diseases. The opening alone is hint of deviation to come, sounding like an out-take from QR Ghazala`s "Threnody to the New Victims of Hiroshima". Wheex-wheex-wheex-wheex, whoop, wheex-whoop, wheex-whoop, wheex-whoop. A few more windshield squeegees later and he`s taking what sounds like a chainsaw to all semblance of insect orchestration. Locusts mutate on cue into giggling, bigwheel-bound orangutans, before giving way to the pay-off: a heaving symphony of flatulent warthogs, all snuffling and snorting in an unwholesome orgy of sludge. Our man from Dundincter is in top form, administering the freestyle blump in characteristically over-exuberant fashion. Signature Stimboxims abound, in the way of brittle, crumbling kernels of creak and crunch. The circular throb of lurch and shudder deliciously stutters and staggers along mutant spines in a vaguely familiar way. Yep, unmistakably, the same sick, slime-coated sweetness, complete with slow-build into red-zone oblivion, haunts this puppy. Here, however, imminent scorchout balances neatly – make that messily -- with a buttload of belching and wheezing, slurping and gulping, plumbing the depths of depravity, delivered with all the subtlety and patience of bad-tempered hippo at a Japanese tea ceremony. Twenty-one fucking tracks indexed on this twenty-one minute mini-cd, and I`m not convinced he`s not taking a guarded swipe at the pause-button school of cut-em-up noisesters. They deserve it, wankers. Nice one, sphincter boy. Another satisfied customer.
Nice. And fucking QR Ghazala. Where's that "box sets needed" thread?
and mon, ma? mon!!! seems pretty lasery
Not sure if this was posted elsewhere but it appears Dada Drumming has returned and released this: https://dada-drumming.myshopify.com/products/stimbox-a-fail-association-split-lp
Quote from: Cdan on April 14, 2019, 08:07:56 AM
Not sure if this was posted elsewhere but it appears Dada Drumming has returned and released this: https://dada-drumming.myshopify.com/products/stimbox-a-fail-association-split-lp
Killer LP - great material from both projects.
i have 2 or 3 tapes buried somewhere and they're powerful, stimbox is quality!
I'd been playing '12-01-2005' recently off the back of this thread and really liked it. On investigation I'd found out more about why he stopped and was sad to hear as the work was really good.
where's the box for Stim?
for those interested, someone on youtube has been uploading some Stimbox tapes, compilations, etc that aren't readily found. if that someone is here, thank you.
I recall it was mentioned somewhere that he is no longer interested? Dropped out from scene and doing noise and no longer interested. Of course, we see it time to time, that eventually people come back.