Humor in noise

[Marko-V]

Your thoughts about humor in noise. Thumbs up or absolute no-no? Good/bad examples.

I personally have no issues with humor in music in general, but it depends on the quality and the style it is incorporated in recording and performance. Unfortunately most 'humorous' noise stuff I've heard/seen is A) that basic childish 'piss-shit-insult-'em-all-snuff-the-bitch' humor which has been made by too numerous noisecore bands already, or B) "look, i got a bunch of kitchenware and i can make funny noises with them" -stuff.
Yeah, I know some people like their humor juvenile fart gags, some like it intelligent, some like Monty Pythonesque and some like it dark, so it is possibly a matter of personal taste what you find as being 'appropriate' comic noise.
Besides, there is nothing more embarassing than a 'funny music' which doesn't make you laugh.

[cutter]

I can say that humor in noise can be a really good thing like not everything in this genre is ugly, morbid and shit.

Talking about the examples, Breakdancing Ronald Raegan is absolutely great, watching his performances when he is almost always shirtless, with a chain with a dollar sign and Dahmer-like glasses. And when he suddenly starts singing a song is absolutely gold. The second thing here is the albumarts, but the most hillarious thing i came across watching his videos on his youtube channel was the announcement of new album i don't really remember the title but the aesthetics can be compared do dank memes (pictures from shutterstock still with the logo, comic sans font, some gifs and cheesy music)

In conclusion, a big dose of humor and distance and i really really liked it.

[david lloyd jones]

Whitehouse.
esp late period

[Theodore]

There is a line between humor and being a clown. Good humor comes from someone who is mostly serious. He who does "humor" all the time, 99,9% is a fucking clown, a boring joke. This applies in life generally. In music as well.

[PTM Jim]

Very thin line. Absurdity is usually good a la Emil, Smell and Quimm, Yellow Tears. I often like inside jokes or concepts of humor. It's best when it's taken seriously, and worst when, as stated, it's just clown shit.

[impulse manslaughter]

I can enjoy some playful or absurd stuff like Fckn' Bstrds live performances or subtle humor like some Whitehouse material. When it's too obvious or forced it usually becomes embarrassing very quickly..

[BlackHole]

I think Brethren "The Chosen" is pretty hilarious.  Having an awarness of the Zionist "Jew World Order" is necessary to get the "humor" in it though.

[FiEND]

emil beaulieau springs to mind immediately for me. Top notch noise with good natured and memorable live performances. Yellow Tears fit this category as well.

Edit.. Damn Jim you beat me to it.

[RyanWreck]

You think I photocopy holocaust imagery a dozen times to get the correct saturation levels so you can fucking laugh? omg you fuckin plebs.

[Marko-V]

There is a line between humor and being a clown. Good humor comes from someone who is mostly serious. He who does "humor" all the time, 99,9% is a fucking clown, a boring joke. This applies in life generally. In music as well.

Ditto!

Every art style (be it musical or something else) dealing mostly with death, destruction, dark and morbid themes is in danger of turning into parody of itself ('totista torvensoittoa' as we finns say it) if there's not a healthy dose of right humor brought in --- look what happened to goth.

[Vermin Marvin]

I think there is long cap between someone dedicated his stuff like Crank Sturgeon and someone that just messing around without real idea behind and usually it can be heard too. 

There is plenty of fucked up and morbid humourish stuff on my songs.
Some more obvious than others but it is not ever the main thing when i record, it is just part of me so it`s natural that i use it on my works.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Smell & Quim and Cock ESP? I'm too boring to be into humour in Noise. I think I started a thread like this at the old Chronic site, or something. I used to like the idea. Now it just makes me grumpy.

A friend of mine once opined that Whitehouse started as a joke, saw that people liked it and just kept running with it. Seems like as good a theory as any other. Not that jokes are the same thing as humour.

Is a sense of humour all that important?

[Leewar]

Its all pretty funny really if you take a step back and think about it.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Its all pretty funny really if you take a step back and think about it.

Totally. This is something what most people understand. Whatever effort on puts to xeroxing holocaust image grain or spending time with modular synth to get odd electronic signal out, is quite amusing when you simply take one step back and look it from "normal" perspective.

Of course this applies to most things in life.

In new Fight your own war book there is a piece about (lack of) humor in noise. I've seen some people praise it, but I found it beyond stupid. Endless name dropping of "real artists", who "get it".

For being british writer, I would have assumed the sense of humor is slightly more developed than you'd expect from some other countries where humor equals most of all underlined punchline jokes.  Perhaps in modern world one can sense humor only when it is combined with audience laughter or smiley face.

I wonder if dressing up to clown costume is the sign of "good humor"? When he concludes that finally now, in the later days Whitehouse/Consumer Electronics became funny and good, one would ask did he actually listen for example Great White Death? I'm coming' up your ass? Whether they are meant to be funny or not, I doubt there's anyone who wouldn't accept they are also rather amusing. But it goes way beyond. If typically british humour would be satire aimed to absurdity of everyday life, which very often involves also sexual taboos, one could probably file vast majority of UK power electronics under it.

When you got the clown suited men doing slapstick noise, it seems to imply generally significant drop on intelligence of humour. Of course exceptions exists.

In this piece, it's not sure whether the piece itself is merely humor, what is meant to "provoke" people who want to take their favorite bands "seriously". I assume so. But it would have been much better if it would be less about writers posturing of knowledge of popular culture and more about knowledge and understanding of quality of humor within noise.

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

It's just a very British thing to want to put people in their place. No one rises above their station and the few who do are soon slapped down by their own. Humour and sarcasm is a very important tool in that hierarchy. What may seem funny and humorous on the surface often has a nasty undercurrent which is aimed at destroying the spirit of those who've broken off from the pack.

Not that the above necessarily applies to "humour in noise", it's a reflection on a particularly murky side of the British mind set gleaned from 20 years of living here as a foreign national and one which I suspect the author in question suffers from. As do many others on this island.