(Early) expectations for noise?

[Balor/SS1535]

A very interesting topic---especially in bringing forward some areas of overlap for several users here.
Filth & Violence became an early favorite for these reasons.  I think the label and associated projects are sold short fairly often when people characterize them as brutal, crude, etc. when they actually consistently developed in increasingly complex ways.

While I read above that we are not meant to talk about thwarted expectations, I did mention some frustration in my post here.   

More hoping that instead of expectations,
Preferred not to talk only about.. hmm disappointments. Hah. But sometimes there is a bit of that too.

Related to this, sometime 2008 or so, I was sitting in NYC and there was noise playing at stereos. I didn't choose what was being played. One veteran level label boss had been listening and went "uhm.. this is good! What is it?" and guy reponsible of stereos says BIZARRE UPROAR GELSOMINA collaboration CD! And man says nothing, look away.

Hah. Expectation was clearly two things: 1) This great noise must be made by someone great.  2) The finn noise boneheads can not be good.  When blind hearing sort of proved both expectation being incorrect, reaction was sort of funny. Not like this would be some sort of injustice if BU's musical merits are not acknowledged. I would say some artists in noise indeed are way way way beyond possibility of being positively recognized beyond the mileau where their work happens.

ha  I couldn't really help myself there.  Sometimes I think we only realize our expectations when something gets in the way of them, unfortunately (as the story you relate here also suggests!).

Your story also brings up another expectation that I had in the past as well, though a bit more of a peripheral one for me---expectation might even be too strong of a word for it, actually.  When exploring noise early on, I was sort of surprised by the importance of theme/concept for noise music.  Of course, it's obvious why it is important and interesting, but I would have thought there would be more people taking a sort of "sound object" approach to listening where there is only focus on "the sounds themselves" and not what they are packaged with.

Maybe these people exist, but I don't encounter them too much.  It also makes me wonder who, if anyone, is really doing "content-less" noise today?

[UnsophisticatedSorehead]

I got into harsh noise and industrial through metal and grind in my late teens. An older friend who had turned me on to John Zorn and Khanate showed me Merzbow and the rest is history. Like others have said, a big part of it was trying to find the "next logical extreme" when it came to sound.

These days I do not really care whether something is extreme or not. It is all about texture, atmosphere and "personality". Nevertheless, I still find myself drawn to records that carry the transgressive appearance of the stuff I fell in love with when I was younger.

What is interesting is how quickly my brain has adapted. Things that once sounded completely alien eventually ended up becoming familiar and emotionally meaningful (at the risk of sounding sappy). Maybe that is part of why we seek out challenging art in the first place.

[Vrenndel]

One of my early memories of noise music was a HNW track from some Japanese artist that a friend sent me while discussing about extreme stuff. I thought "The fuck is this...". I had a quite similar reaction when I stumbled upon the Goatmoon 7" splits with BU and XE. The Black Metal side, great! The noise side? I didn't understand what I was listening to. It was quite upsetting not being able to understand. It took years, to be honest. Everytime someone mentioned noise music art school students immediately came to mind, or heavily droning music eventually. I guess it has become easier for me now to make the difference between good and mediocre stuff. Experimental music is great when there's a real intention behind it, and not just young adults sitting on the ground moving stuff, smoking joints and drinking wine while someone in the back reads beat poetry outloud. Not my thing indeed.

I guess that for years I was quite disappointed not being able to encounter enough of the good stuff to distract me from extreme music material which later I would consider being "not enough" to satisfy my audial and visual craves. It's probably a common feeling and I think it's ok. Unprepared ears will react differently to some sounds, also based to what this or that person will have to say about it. Would it really be possible to describe noise music objectively to someone who never heard it? I remember another thread about this matter. To "quote" the Backrooms movie in this context, "it is like describing noise to someone who never heard a sound".