NOISE THAT GETS OLD?

[host body]

For the record, and I can't remember exactly what I said there, but my point wasn't that G.R.O.S.S. tapes etc. aren't wonderful and important, but just that with my limited resources, I'm more interested in purchasing something new from an active artist, or an affordable reissue of something classic, than spending 5-10x the money on a rare OG copy of something that came out 30+ years ago. To each their own, and maybe my habits will change some day, but I don't agree with the sentiment that older and rarer is inherently better, and I also don't like when these older trophies become generic status symbols.

I think it's sensible to separate collecting from appreciating here, I would never spend what the prices are for those old tapes simply because I'm not a huge collector. It's completely separate from whether I find them interesting, I do very much so.

[Andrew McIntosh]

I wonder how much of this is simply because people these days don't have the money to throw around anymore. Things are pretty financially tight these days, the world over. Add increasing postage costs and the idea of paying thirty euro for a cassette on Discogs, or however much for an old vinyl album from the Vertigo label, or whatever is the case, is not only excessive in itself but makes no sense if you're scrounging just to pay the rent and bills.

[Marcellehanged]

I'm a bit amused that the discussion has led to so-called "noise tourists" being at fault, especially given all the examples Mikko listed are releases made in different countries to Finland and then seemingly exported to foreign lands where they feel lost and unwelcomed. Who do you think bought -and brought- those releases over here in the first place? You guessed it - tourists! So I personally find fault with that term, given tourists, explorers, expats or other outsiders are often the ones willing to spend considerably more money to travel to different lands, buy artifacts at inflated costs, redistribute them from a homeland to another place (or "loot" even, if you perhaps consider taking these cultural items from different lands as a form of colonialism), and relay the information to more enlightened types overseas who would appreciate it more than the savage locals. Maybe when you say "noise tourist", you mean "noise migrants" or "noise vagrants" instead?

Anyway, there is something to be said about Old (as in out-of-date, stale, expired, rotting etc) noise, in the sense that all products have not just a cultural lifespan, but a physical one. Either the audience dies, or the product does. It starts its lifespan as something purchased, handled, experienced and in rare instances, maybe even enjoyed repeatedly or celebrated from release day. Then it gets shelved, maybe revisited and savored in special times as a form of nostalgia or to put in context with successive releases. Finally though, if it gets lucky, it gets relegated to that preservative, polythened status as an "artefact" or "collectors item" worthy for museums, libraries or that sad wall on the record shop or retirement fund. A few REALLY lucky ones might even get that coveted "reissue" status for those savvy, self-righteous posters above me who will settle for a simulacrum of the original. But for the most part, all products get forgotten about, dented/damaged/scratched over time, falling out of fashion as technologies similarly falter and fail, swapping hands in ever-more desperate circumstances with ever-diminishing Discogs condition grades (and maybe even being seen/understood by later [de-]generations with euphemisms ranging from outdated to "culturally inappropriate" to Entartete)... until eventually they are landfilled or destroyed. Dementia Noise. It'll happen to us all eventually, it's just a matter of time.

Tourism is no doubt meant to describe the privileged frivolity of people who do not seriously listen to noise, for whom classics are but pearls before swine. Not people traveling to Tokyo, NYC, or Lahti to buy noise artefacts. We all began as tourists. Some tourists one day become students.

While tourist or casual no doubt betrays a hint of exasperated condemnation, is it self-righteous to distinguish between serious historians and people who pass over noise history without a second thought? And why should historians not sometimes choose to study the "simulacrum" of the reissue? All reproductions are a part of noise history. A history which is always ongoing. A history that can never fully apprehend itself. A history whose end is nothing but a mirage. Are not all reproductions of recordings simulacrums? I share in the worship of first pressings, but even those pressings are not original, except as pressings, as the original reproductions.

[Baglady]

As much as I preach the "listen to the classics, learn the history"-thing... If you're lucky enough to be a listener or artist in a very vibrant local scene, being fully into that and the now rather than delving into the past, I get that. I guess that's how many stumble into noise, just walking into something that's very much alive and present. Give it a couple of years though, if the interest is still there, and these newcomers will most likely start laying the whole puzzle and check out the old classics. And if they don't, well maybe they're still fully occupied and too excited about the present to look back. That's fine too, and it doesn't mean that kind if listening/participation is less sincere than that of the "noise historian". There are plenty of "tourists" with deep pockets out there who's read some lists of classics who end up losing interest and sell off their $€£ scores after a couple of years too.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I was listening today history of Finnish poetry and journalist asked the historian that what is the lifespan of poetry, and how soon it gets forgotten. Historian who just wrote huge book covering the topic said that like it or not, next generation will forget the previous and people that will be remembered in history, will remain usually for other reasons than being good. In that sense, of course noise is very different. Plus very much self sustaining and expanding scene.

Like I mentioned in opening message, I am not saying if something is good or bad. I do feel it is good to move on, being excited about slightly newer. Idea that noise would be all about studying history seems odd. It can be other things. I personally like learning and discovering about old releases (plus new, which I listen more), but don't expect anyone spend more in studying history than it remains rewarding.

My curiosity would be more that shift of when something becomes inevitable "old", and there must be indeed new passions, new interesting things. Not like we all got to list same names to top essentials, but indeed that instead of everybody being into GROSS, could be that there is similar passion towards HARSH HEAD RITUALS or something?

As another example, what a lame situation it feels to ALWAYS get yet another book of 1977 punk of Finland, and hear the same stories, year after year, and thinking how come its like one book ever that tried to cover 90's and onwards? Hah..  Or yet another book re-telling story of Norwegian black metal and you think yes yes, it is vital and interesting today, but come on... Maybe there is time for few new stories too. So my perspective being mainly that it could be that there is slight unhealthy distortion in a way that its either really old or really now and seeing how there would buy a guy who doesn't really know about Merzbow but is absolutely obsessed about 2010'ish tape label could be neat.


Tourist -word appears to often stir anger. I think there is so vast difference of people who are curious, interested, even when just starting, that it doesn't mean such people. It means the type of people who have very little interest in local history, habits, culture or whatever. Its like bunch of arrogant western dudes hit it to southern islands merely to have cheap quick fun, treating locals badly, demanding being served and entertained. The type of people who will look down at local food, insist going into macdonalds and complain if something isn't how they want. Lets say, you got the punk chick coming to noise gig and complains about seeing people she doesn't like. Thats a tourist cunt every, by definition, that every local hates, but simply tries to tolerate because being, well, nice people. But that's why many tourist places have recently run out of their patience with such folks. I could only assume it will happen within noise too.  Just about anyone is welcomed when they come with genuine passion and interest, even when knowing nothing, but willing to find out and experience. Vast difference compared to bitching to every little detail and making demands they feel they are entitled to, even if not being really part of it. Just temporary dropping by. Usually wanting tourist souvenier level experience. They leave and locals clean it up.

[Marcellehanged]

Like I mentioned in opening message, I am not saying if something is good or bad. I do feel it is good to move on, being excited about slightly newer. Idea that noise would be all about studying history seems odd. It can be other things. I personally like learning and discovering about old releases (plus new, which I listen more), but don't expect anyone spend more in studying history than it remains rewarding.

My curiosity would be more that shift of when something becomes inevitable "old", and there must be indeed new passions, new interesting things.

It is good to move on. And I feel a kind of reciprocity sometimes exists between old and new passions.

Just a week and a half ago, in the Canadian province of Alberta, I saw twice The Rita (with performance artist Lorelei). I attended first in Calgary, and it was well worth the 6 hour round trip to attend also in Edmonton the next day. Sam's "CRACKED POINTE SHOE" pedal provided classic The Rita sounds. All the rest belongs to the recent era of The Rita. Two-stroke motocross engines and WWII fighter machine guns. Lorelei applying excessive lines of eyeshadow and tearing off her nylons.

When Lorelei draws a dotted line on her bared legs in lipstick, I feel her action creates reciprocity with older works like Sharks and the Female Form. A shark bite on a woman's naked leg painted in blood red lipstick. So with The Rita's past/present works in view, I enjoy asking: where to next?

[Johann]

A few scattered thoughts on this...

I wonder if the reason some of this stuff is becoming less coveted is because the access to it is much easier than in the past. A lot of older noise is on YouTube so a person could easily check out parts of it and decide they don't need to buy or by not finding the samples not want to take the risk, among the younger folks I know people buying physical media is in a steep decline. This is having an effect on attention spans and you can see it in new artist too with folks putting out the equivalent of monthly singles via Bandcamp etc, I imagine people are not listening to full albums as much anymore. After all in the past when you bought something you were kinda stuck with it, you couldn't just shuffle to the next thing at the click of a tab. This is causing a decline in close listening as well, after all how well do you know a release on a single listen? I think we are all guilty of this on some level nowadays. The access to information exceeds our capacity to utilize it effectively.

As the noise scene is becoming more and more subdivided while home recording technology has improved massively artist seem to have really begun to trim the fat leading to really tight releases, where as many of the 90s tapes often have clunky parts, a c60 was the standard length of most of those old releases and now most albums are 30 minutes tops. I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just different and there is a different level of refinement.

A final thought on buying older media. It suck's when you track down a tape at a higher price than it's ever sold for just to have it jam and unspool first listen or turn out to be partially blank. It hasn't happened much, but it does happen. It's not like it was back in the day where the prices at your local store are set regionally to the community that is shopping there. Everyone (with a few older regional dinosaurs) are using the internet to check on value and supplementing parts of their business online. Often times the weirder stuff isn't even hitting the floor. With records at an all time high price wise I'm not even surprised stuff isn't selling like it used to.

I think reissues help keep the younger generation invested in the history of noise but only if someone they respect is telling them to check it out.

[Cranial Blast]

A few scattered thoughts on this...

I wonder if the reason some of this stuff is becoming less coveted is because the access to it is much easier than in the past. A lot of older noise is on YouTube so a person could easily check out parts of it and decide they don't need to buy or by not finding the samples not want to take the risk, among the younger folks I know people buying physical media is in a steep decline. This is having an effect on attention spans and you can see it in new artist too with folks putting out the equivalent of monthly singles via Bandcamp etc, I imagine people are not listening to full albums as much anymore. After all in the past when you bought something you were kinda stuck with it, you couldn't just shuffle to the next thing at the click of a tab. This is causing a decline in close listening as well, after all how well do you know a release on a single listen? I think we are all guilty of this on some level nowadays. The access to information exceeds our capacity to utilize it effectively.

As the noise scene is becoming more and more subdivided while home recording technology has improved massively artist seem to have really begun to trim the fat leading to really tight releases, where as many of the 90s tapes often have clunky parts, a c60 was the standard length of most of those old releases and now most albums are 30 minutes tops. I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just different and there is a different level of refinement.

A final thought on buying older media. It suck's when you track down a tape at a higher price than it's ever sold for just to have it jam and unspool first listen or turn out to be partially blank. It hasn't happened much, but it does happen. It's not like it was back in the day where the prices at your local store are set regionally to the community that is shopping there. Everyone (with a few older regional dinosaurs) are using the internet to check on value and supplementing parts of their business online. Often times the weirder stuff isn't even hitting the floor. With records at an all time high price wise I'm not even surprised stuff isn't selling like it used to.

I think reissues help keep the younger generation invested in the history of noise but only if someone they respect is telling them to check it out.

I think you're right about the lack of desire to hunt down the old relic, because of easy streaming, Youtube, easy access and ect in the modern world of today. It's not like back in the day where you picked up everything almost blindly. There is pros and cons to this of course too. This way of absorbing media also definitely impacts attention spans, back then you had to sit through an album even it was a disappointment, where today it seems like one can scan through an album in minutes and go...okay nothing else to see here, NEXT!... In my opinion is a bad a thing, because obviously everything discography of any artist is going to have some highs and lows and if you stumbled on the "low" and your attention span is fuck em and forget it, you could miss out on some great things.

You're correct in the reissues keeping young people invested. I also think it's a not a necessary but a more noble duty when more younger artists/labels decide to reissue some blasts from the past. Tribe Tapes is stellar example of this sort of homage/action. I think it's good to pay homage to the great, not even necessarily greats but to to those forming something that was first starting to take shape.

[Zeno Marx]

It'll be interesting if this culture, or if any, can develop or exist or continue without the artifact.  Not only are attention spans fleeting, but so are actual physical goods of craftsmanship, durability and longevity in general. Nearly everything falls under disposable or planned obsolescence.  I'm mostly digital these days, so I have no grudge here. I'm no anthropologist, but anthropologically speaking, the artifact has been a key component in developing and maintaining culture since the beginning. Even relationships are shortlived these days.  Exchanging friendship groups in a short few years.  Antique shopping, estate sales, garage sales...very, very little is older, and much of it is broken.  A television program like Antique Roadshow would not only be of little interest in twenty-five years, but the actual goods won't even be around by then.  It'll all be in landfills by design. I find this kind of thing fascinating.  I don't think this is too off topic either. 

[Bloated Slutbag]

Gonna pull a bit of a tangent here, but just running with my first reaction on seeing the topic in big block letters, NOISE THAT GETS OLD. Which I read as sounds that sound dated, as in "not currently trending". To feel a sense of things not currently trending is also, almost by definition, to feel a sense of things that are trending. To be part of the conversation is to be conversant in trends, both in the long and short term. At least as far as the pejorative, and where this topic is concerned, we'd probably be more fixated on the short. And so a question as to how to potentially get past that (if deemed necessary).

The topic immediately brought to mind the ignoble history of computers in noise (and noise-adjacent sound making in general). I have this distinct memory of the how in the electro-acoustic community, at least in Canada, in the early 90s, folks would drop lines like, "I wish we could just pretend that (electro-acoustic computer music in) the (early-mid) 80s never happened". There's this wonderful interview clip with Kaija Saariaho (RIP), in which she fondly recollects the punishingly long process of working with computers in the mid-80s, doing all the calculations, running the program on these massive machines, then going out with the team for lunch or whatever and coming back later in the day to see if, indeed, the computer has successfully generated the hoped for "beep!" [OT. Her point, if you make to the end of the two-minute clip, is not an excoriation of the use of computers, but a celebration of the necessarily focused commitment to the process of producing a work of art. So obviously preaching to the converted, I'm sure, I digress.] But what I'm getting from these two anecdotes, at least as far as the topic is concerned, is that a certain perceptual distance from the point of origin may be a necessary part of getting past the pejorative preoccupations. (Now watch me come back to this in a year's time and completely disparage my former position!)

[Marcellehanged]

It'll be interesting if this culture, or if any, can develop or exist or continue without the artifact.  Not only are attention spans fleeting, but so are actual physical goods of craftsmanship, durability and longevity in general. Nearly everything falls under disposable or planned obsolescence.  I'm mostly digital these days, so I have no grudge here. I'm no anthropologist, but anthropologically speaking, the artifact has been a key component in developing and maintaining culture since the beginning. Even relationships are shortlived these days.  Exchanging friendship groups in a short few years.  Antique shopping, estate sales, garage sales...very, very little is older, and much of it is broken.  A television program like Antique Roadshow would not only be of little interest in twenty-five years, but the actual goods won't even be around by then.  It'll all be in landfills by design. I find this kind of thing fascinating.  I don't think this is too off topic either. 

Last Saturday at my local bookstore, a place "for the discriminating bibliophile" - I discussed there with the owner the growing infrequency of obscure books on the used market.

[theotherjohn]

Used record stores run the danger of becoming like used bookshops, both designated places where the obsessions of usually older [single] men have run amuck and out of control. That's for both the customers that frequent it and the sellers behind the counter. I distinctly remember overhearing the two brothers that own Glasgow's Voltaire and Rousseau discussing the depressing ecological cycle of their shop, whilst I waded among the overflowing piles of books on the floor that came up to my chest - their customers buy books from them, the customers die, and the books they bought inevitably end up returning back to them again. It's been quite a few years since I last visited there, but I don't remember it being quite as bad as this when I last visited (I don't even know how recent this photo is if I'm being totally honest).



Feel free to swap books or records for other specialist/nostalgia-driven hobbies like model trains, vintage/retro toys, collectible cards etc.

[NedOik]

Used record stores run the danger of becoming like used bookshops, both designated places where the obsessions of usually older [single] men have run amuck and out of control. That's for both the customers that frequent it and the sellers behind the counter. I distinctly remember overhearing the two brothers that own Glasgow's Voltaire and Rousseau discussing the depressing ecological cycle of their shop, whilst I waded among the overflowing piles of books on the floor that came up to my chest - their customers buy books from them, the customers die, and the books they bought inevitably end up returning back to them again. It's been quite a few years since I last visited there, but I don't remember it being quite as bad as this when I last visited (I don't even know how recent this photo is if I'm being totally honest).



Feel free to swap books or records for other specialist/nostalgia-driven hobbies like model trains, vintage/retro toys, collectible cards etc.

The irony here is that to anyone entering this store for the first time it would look like a treasure trove with hidden gems lying at the bottom of these piles, when in reality - if they tidied it up and put everything on shelves you would see quicker that its mostly all worthless junk. Makes me think of this place below - Leaky's Bookstore - also in Scotland (Inverness). Its a lot better arranged but when I visited found nothing to buy and my first impressions were quickly dulled due to being subject to shelves and shelves of average dross. This is a tangent to the original conversation but in both cases its an example of the reign of "quantity over quality" - to misuse a phrase all you Rene Guenon disciples will know about. 

[Zeno Marx]

To add to my previous post...when new new new new new is the mindset and MO, there is a lessening value in the old.  I don't think Bill Blass (fashion designer) is the originator of this comment, and I'm not sure if it was in print/radio/TV, but when asked what his favorite thing was, his reply was, "The lats thing I bought." Commentary on both consumerism and (unknowingly) the 20th century precursor to the post-internet, short attention span, new new new new mindset. Why would someone younger, who has only lived in the internet age, place much value on the old?  There are, of course, exceptions who are history buffs or romanticize older times, but even a culture such as ours here in experimental music isn't going to escape the mindset of the era.  On the brightside, it isn't so retrospective like in punk, but on the darkside, there's no solid sense of time.  "archival?  what's that?  why?  It's not new."  Maybe a nice GROSS cassette collection will be on the Antiques Roadshow horizon?

And I joke a little about can culture be created or be maintained without the artifact, but really, can it?  Not too harp on this Antique Roadshow paradigm, but entire spans of time would be more than less void/unrepresented in such an exercise.

[Sonicgeist]

...
And I joke a little about can culture be created or be maintained without the artifact, but really, can it?  Not too harp on this Antique Roadshow paradigm, but entire spans of time would be more than less void/unrepresented in such an exercise.

Isn't the artifact for noise, noise itself ?! Can be the technology, new "machines" are also instruments for creating noise. That's why with this constant progress, there will always be individuals to test new sounds. Afficionados of sound experience or noise fetish will always be there.
The non-harmony of the structure of the noise also gives a complete artistic freedom. Its sources can come from any sound emitted by any objects, samples etc

Will we ever come full circle?
I don't think so, well, that's what I'm thinking, I'm maybe wrong.

But with new things, it can also probably evovle, into what, I don't know.