How do noise releases "imprint" themselves on your memory?

[BatteredStatesofEuphoria]

Something I was giving some thought to the other day...we all know harsh noise in practice for the most part eschews the elements of traditional music (and this can also apply to other related experimental genres like drone, dark ambient, etc). There are no melodies, no harmonies, no rhythms, no lyrics...or at least if any of these do show up at times they are very minimal. In short, there are no "hooks."

And this goes against how we as humans typically remember music and let it imprint itself in our minds. We hum a melody, sing lyrics to ourselves, that sort of thing. With noise you don't have any of that. So, for me at least, how I remember a noise release is more general and vague, stuff like "this has a lot of low end," "this is the track with the junk metal loop," "they used a lot of feedback on that album" etc etc. But the minute details don't really stay with me all that much.

In one way, there's a part of me that would like to better retain that kind of thing. OTOH, though, I've found its kind of a salutary effect in that, even if its been only a few days or so since I last listened to something, coming back to it, its almost like I'm listening to it again for the first time, with a whole world of sound to both discover anew and reacquaint myself with the best parts.

Of course, you can certainly discover new wrinkles from a great album with traditional music structures even after many listens. But something about how it works with noise is just a different phenomenon for me.

Its not surprising to me also that a lot of power electronics albums, having a bit more of those elements listed above, imprint themselves on my memory more akin to something like metal or classical (sometimes I'll find myself humming particularly memorable parts of pe tracks to myself).

Just curious if this is how it works for others. Or do you find you remember noise pretty much like anything else?

[Andrew McIntosh]

Probably depends more on when I first heard whatever the piece/release is. Merzbow's "Hybrid Noisebloom" tends to stick with me for example, because it was the first Merzbow release I brought. A piece that also stays in my memory, because it was one of the first Noise pieces I heard, is Hermit's "Burn It All Fucking Down". And I suppose these things become more memorable because they were more first impressions.

Also, some Noise pieces are more distinct than others. Non's "Ragnarok Rune" is pretty distinctive in itself, compared to, I don't know, any number of other Noise releases.

Whereas, for a counter-example, I've got three Macronympha six-cassette releases, and apart from remembering one track that was pretty much layered feedback, I couldn't possibly tell you right now what else is on it.

[Hellofaholyguru23]

That's an interesting question.we can attribute sound and its effects on our everyday lives . We know what a train sounds like we know what a motorbike sounds like etc . All these everyday sounds are imprinted on our mind and so I find that certain artists leave an imprint on my mind . Bizarre Uproar Bless the sickness I hear it from start to finish or Merzbow Pulse Demon I think of the cover art and then I'm able to hear the sound . Throbbing Gristle 2nd Annual Report is another one etched on my psyche .

[Into_The_Void]

Aggressivity and variation between distortions/feedbacks, then the sound layers, a good sound spectrum where all frequencies are audible and if there's a kind of "narration" through the release.

[Moran]

With releases I listen to intently, I remember whole sections that I can re-create in my mind. With releases I didn't pay much attention to, I remember conspicuous parts with degrees of accuracy depending on how focused I was at the time those parts were being heard. Accurately remembering noise tends to require awareness of more detail than other genres that are based on abstractions; I think this might be a reason noise eludes some people's memory more than other music.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

There was other topic where I mentioned about The Rita interview where he mentioned that "remembering noise album" or knowing how it goes is valued too much, and wouldn't it be better if album is not familiar, but always new? This question can be interesting when thinking about getting tired of pop song, as it just gets old at some point and you just don't really need to listen to it again. Noise? How soon that gets old? Some get tired of albums, others could be listening them any time.

My own favorite noise albums, all of them, has very clear personality and form. Even if being fan of very abstract harsh stuff, the absolute best ones tend to be the ones that do have the "hooks", so to say. Not only they are some of earlier things I heard, but also objectively you could come into conclusion that there are very specific sound, something that is absolutely trademarks of the artists, and pretty much nobody else does it like that. Think about things like The Haters "Ordinarily Nowhere", Gerogerigegege "Senzuri Power up", TNB/Organum "Pulp", Merzbow "Artificial Invagination", and even if they wouldn't have melodies, rhythm or harmonies and such like ordinary music, they are noise that is not "wall of pedal fuzz".

So for me, question of How do noise releases "imprint" themselves on your memory may be actually question of are there such qualities in first place? When thinking The Haters car crash, shattering glass, metal crushing loop releases and indeed they imprinted clear image into your brain. Or any of the mentioned ones. Then there are a lot of good releases, that you may have listened bunch of times, but in a blind test, probably would not know what it is, hah...   I tend to value this quality where release is able to stay in your memory - but in ways that they do not become old.

[Earth O.D.]

Indeed, it´s the ever morphing sound and structurelessness that is one of the most special traits in this kind of music. Even those albums that were the first of such ilk I bought, just keep on giving after all these years... Genocide Organ´s "In-Konflikt" for example... a very song-oriented and catchy one, and most of the stuff is for sure imprinted in my mind forever, but recently I noticed I was just blown away fresh by the "Industrial Strife" (pure old style industrial/noise) tracks - this has also much to do with the contrast/comparison of other stuff I´m listening to at the moment, of course.

The more abstract sounding quality stuff always imprints itself enough with personality and the feeling, which may keep you coming back and always discover something in a different way. The Rita was right, what´s better than that?

[Moran]

One could listen to conventional music like one listens to noise: paying lots of attention to timbral changes and "texture". For me, this way of listening makes conventional music more enjoyable than having variations of notes and beats as the main focus. But the "lattice" underlying conventional composition can be insistent during listening since it's fundamental to conventional music, so it usually takes more effort to listen without engaging in that narrow way of listening for melodies, rhythm, etc, than when listening to noise where it feels natural to listen to the whole sound.

[BatteredStatesofEuphoria]

One could listen to conventional music like one listens to noise: paying lots of attention to timbral changes and "texture". For me, this way of listening makes conventional music more enjoyable than having variations of notes and beats as the main focus. But the "lattice" underlying conventional composition can be insistent during listening since it's fundamental to conventional music, so it usually takes more effort to listen without engaging in that narrow way of listening for melodies, rhythm, etc, than when listening to noise where it feels natural to listen to the whole sound.

That idea of "lattices" underlying music is really a great way to describe it. And that certain forms of music encourage a default focus on a particular part of the lattice by their nature. I do think that listening to noise does tend to lead to being aware of a broader range of factors when listening to conventional music, which is a good thing.

So for me, question of How do noise releases "imprint" themselves on your memory may be actually question of are there such qualities in first place? When thinking The Haters car crash, shattering glass, metal crushing loop releases and indeed they imprinted clear image into your brain. Or any of the mentioned ones. Then there are a lot of good releases, that you may have listened bunch of times, but in a blind test, probably would not know what it is, hah...  I tend to value this quality where release is able to stay in your memory - but in ways that they do not become old.

That notion of "distinctiveness" is pretty important, yes, and is what makes some releases stand out from others. I definitely don't want to give the impression, though, that I think those noise releases that would fail the "blind test" mean they're necessarily bad in any way. If something doesn't stay with me, but still invokes enjoyment whenever I put it on, that's still worthwhile. And of course it'll be different for every person. For instance, I can't honestly stay most Government Alpha releases I own are highly distinctive, but I still have a blast when I put one on the stereo because of what it evokes in the moment.

Genocide Organ´s "In-Konflikt" for example... a very song-oriented and catchy one, and most of the stuff is for sure imprinted in my mind forever, but recently I noticed I was just blown away fresh by the "Industrial Strife" (pure old style industrial/noise) tracks - this has also much to do with the contrast/comparison of other stuff I´m listening to at the moment, of course.

I love In-Konflikt. A lot of GO's reputation has been made from their more aggressive pe tracks, but I've come to enjoy their more restrained, industrial (in the old school sense) side more than anything over the years, and I think that's where they really shine. In-Konflikt and The Truth... are probably my two favorite albums from them because of that. In-Konflikt in particular is just a feast of sound. And they still bring some of the power even there. The end of "Industrial Strife Part 1" with that sound of an aircraft engine about to go out in a blaze of glory is one of those rare, perfect moments that made it all worth it.

[Zeno Marx]

There was other topic where I mentioned about The Rita interview where he mentioned that "remembering noise album" or knowing how it goes is valued too much, and wouldn't it be better if album is not familiar, but always new?

I'm with The Rita here, but it hasn't always been a comfortable notion.  At times, long ago, it made me question why I was listening to experimentalism and whether I genuinely liked it.  Why did I rarely mark anything specific in my mind, even if subconsciously?  I came to realize it was one of the most rewarding aspects of listening to sound abstraction.  You aren't tethered to a single thing or idea.  You don't necessarily establish perspective in concrete.*  Ever-changing, always new.  There's a substantial freedom in something never being entirely familiar, but marked more by technique or vibe or atmospheres that play in parallel abstraction with the abstraction.  Because it is all more of a active process like that, it also maybe re-wires/re-teaches how we hear everything.  I suspect...no, I know...this is a similar thing that happens with people who listen to improvised musics, like jazz or jam bands.  It's entirely common to hear jazzheads throw in "it's still new 40 years later" into their opinions.  Their favorite parts of a piece might be the there-then-gone bar or two of melody, rhythm, or structure; but their favorite part about the listening is that it all never strikes them from the exact same direction.  Of course, that has a ton to do with mood, circumstance, situation, etc, but the sound itself leans into that type of experience as it begins from a not fully recognizable place.

Sounds like an awful lot of pretentiousness, but yeah, remaining new is the ticket.

*this was one of the big complaints from many artists when music videos and MTV came on the scene so heavy.  They had to put their ideas...their storytelling...into something concrete, and in doing so, the audience was no longer going to create their own narrative and relationship with the song.  It would stunt the magic.  It would stunt their imaginations.  Now, the song meant what the video showed, rather than becoming something personal.

[groesk]

As someone who uses harsh noise as their noise genre of choice, it's a combination of factors for me.

Part of it is vibe and repetition. It's very aggressive and overwhelming, but having something to latch onto throughout really helps with the experience.
Another is something interesting that makes me want to stay. A great example of this is something like Tokyo Times Ten from Merzbow's Pulse Demon. The clangy percussion creates a whirlwind of an atmosphere, with the abrasive noise kind of bending around it.

I guess that the best way for me to discribe it is like hyper aggressive ambient music, for the most part.
But then I still like stuff from Kazumoto Endo with his stop and go type of noise with sound collage to spice things up.
Basically reason I like noise is the same reason people like ambient music.

[Fanalstatt]

Atmosphere. The feeling. When emotions occur while listening to something, everything has been done right.

[Minus1]

I never feel like I have come to "know" the fine or broad details of a Noise album fully, (unlike many pop-rock albums), and this might be one of the great aspects of Noise for me.

Many of these "harsh" albums present a long, winding, hilly road for me, even in the case of Vomir. His 6CD black box all sounded the same for me initially, but I keep detecting new flavors and colours on subsequent spins, and new feelings/reactions.

Just when I think I "know" an album, I become surprised by something.

Early in my Noise journey I blasted Merzbow - Akasha Gulva one night, (perhaps the closest he ever got to HNW?), and...don't laugh...I literally felt ill afterwards. I wanted to puke. The high-pitches embedded in the soundstorm got to me.

I avoided it for a long time. When I finally returned to it, the experience was much more positive. Over a hundred spins and many years later, this became my favorite Merzbow.

I "remember" aspects of it - some narrow/specific, and many broad. For me that album is like layers of grey stratus cloud - always changing with every spin.

So my "memory" of Harsh Noise keeps evolving, no matter how often I have heard an album.

[AArmstrong]

This strictly depends on whose releases we're talking about. I realize that the topic says noise releases specifically, but I'll assume that that includes all of the usual suspects falling under the greater industrial noise umbrella, i.e., PE, death industrial, etc.

Power electronics and death industrial are easy for me, and I would wager are for most avid listeners, because much of both has something conventionally distinctive about it: vocals and (at least a loose) structure, not to mention the frequent inclusion of synthesizer tones that aren't necessarily "noise" by the strictest definition.  I know most early Whitehouse albums front to back, for example, and noone's gonna forget "show me your fucking titties!" with the hard Ts from Sutcliffe Jugend's The Victim as Beauty. Then there's Prurient, who, depending on the album, makes brilliant use of melodic, analog synth lines that are frankly unforgettable.

I know those things aren't really what the question's getting at, though, so when it comes to noisy-ass noise proper, it depends on the artist. For example, Merzbow I tend to remember in terms of mood, technique, and sonics: I remember Venereology as "the chaotic, organic, relentlessly harsh one", Pulse Demon as "the blown-out/bassy, multi-layered/complex, cut-up one", and 1930 as "the moody, unconventional (for Merzbow at the time), heavily loop-based one". Merzbow is a singular example though, being especially evocative of different moods for me, and I can't necessarily say the same for every noise artist.

That being the case, harsh noise wall records I tend to associate mostly with texture and dynamic (or lack thereof): The Rita's Magazine and The Cherry Point's Night of the Bloody Tapes are on the more dynamic end of the spectrum, with the former abruptly shifting wall textures mid-track, and the latter burying sub-textures beneath the monolithic overtones. In fact, I associate Sea Wolf Leviathan and Thousands of Dead Gods with the same buried, gestural sub-noise. Vomir, obviously, is on the other end, with the most impenetrable, unvarying, oppressive noise walls that you can make. They do vary significantly from record to record, however, but Vomir for me has a distinct enough sound that I simply remember his albums as exactly that: Vomir. These three projects also illustrate something that I find that I do when it comes specifically to HNW, which is recalling albums by dominant frequencies, rather than simply texture. For example, The Cherry Point tends to have a lot of highs and high-mids, the Rita leans toward mids and low-mids, and Vomir is brutally low-mid and low end.

All of that being said, I do think that there's something to the notion of noise and heavily noise-based albums being some degree of novel every time you put them on, and therein lies a big part of the magic for me.