I've been thinking about this topic for the past week or so. I had attended noise focused shows around 2012-2014 (with less attendance in 2015), created some recordings during that period up until 2016. I'm not entirely certain but it felt like the
Oakland Ghost Ship fire and the fallout from the incident had an effect on the los angeles art gallery and noise scene. I know a couple of the venues that would host noise shows either closed or stopped hosting events entirely. I had talked with a guy who was involved in one of the bigger venues here, one that still hosts shows, and they had to bring their event space up to code to prevent shutting down.
I had moved farther and farther north, away from the area that hosted most shows and my motivation for noise and experimental music in general waned. I have held onto my collection of noise tapes, CDs, and records. Once my wife found my collection of tapes, specifically the more fetish focused releases and asked me "what the fuck is this?! why do you have this??" She has known I tend to be more snobby when it comes to art, music and film in general so she wasn't very surprised when I had explained what noise is.
Life became a bit busy and I fell out of the noise scene and world. I would attribute some to the lack of major depression, loneliness and addiction problems that affected me between 2011-2017. I've seen Richard post every year about some tour that is suppose to happen and I've wanted to go see BLJ live again so hopefully the tour does materialize. The past few weeks I've gone through some instagram accounts of noise folks I was aware of and seeing some of the live footage the past few years, and reading through a mini book of an art gallery I went to a lot before they closed, really gave me a big sense of FOMO and sad nostalgia about not keeping up with things.
With Maniacsonly and stench forums ceasing to exist, I'm really glad to see this forum, special interests and freak animal still alive and well. The writes ups done involving the noise shows in Finland have been amazing and the White Centipede Noise youtube video about Oskar's recommendations and interviews has me diving back into noise. I've spent a little bit of money to get an audio recorder again, luckily I had all my gear I had used previously, and have decided to try and make some sort of "sound collective" in my area since I live near a big arts college. Even if it ends up just being me again, I'd be happy to just see what sound I go for and where it takes me. I was never big on performing live because I tend to suffer from some stage fright/performance anxiety but I think creating something and throwing it online would be fun.
