It's not just noise

• Source: Global Times
• [09:51 August 25 2010]
• Comments

The local band Torturing Nurse performs at 696 Livehouse. Photo: Cai Xianmin

By Nick Muzyczka

You are in an unassuming, dimly lit, box-shaped bar. The barman is wearing a Velvet Underground T-shirt and the slightly awkward-looking patrons aren't really talking to each other. Music is playing, but you aren't really sure what it is. If pushed you might suggest avant-garde gypsy music meets Spanish poetry. It is Saturday night at the 696 Livehouse on Jiangwan Road East and something extremely unusual is about to happen.

After some original DJ-ing and a short introduction in Chinese, one of Shanghai's very sporadic "noise" gigs began. Noise music, or simply "noise" for the purists, is a diverse and progressive genre that includes many different forms, including "ambient-noise," "electronic noise" and "industrial noise."

The night, organized by NOIShanghai, was divided into short, 20-minute sets and featured Arrebato (SH), Torturing Nurse (SH), Szkieve (Canada) and Florian Schmeiser (Austria).

Arrebato's excellent set began with a piece that included pulsating timpani-like sounds, metal crashes and rhythmical spasms of wood blocks. It was highly percussive and semi-creepy. Occasionally faint traces of jazz instruments (sax/walking bass) were perceivable but everything was pervaded by a deep reverberation of mechanical pulses and distorted drums. The music wasn't "in time" but continually modulated, cutting in and out of various patterns.

As different performers took to the stage the audience was confronted with a rich and deafening sonic display. Something like a thunderstorm taking place down a well, shot through with vicious shrill clashing sounds and heavy distortion filled the air.

At one moment the sound of water droplets hitting a pool was heard, but the sample had been "electrified," producing a dizzying, nightmarish effect. In another, a sound akin to that produced by blowing through a blade of grass momentarily appeared, but was soon lost in a "music" that was continually shifting and redefining itself.

One long track from Torturing Nurse, a pioneering Shanghai outfit, was an endlessly transforming assault on the senses, produced from various pieces of electrical equipment, including a series of connected guitar effects boxes.

Main protagonist

Chaos Junky, the band's main protagonist, was writhing around on stage, using a handheld device in a sort of shamanic dance ritual that resulted in a profoundly contorted sonic degradation.

"Live shows are important to me; I enjoy physical and inner satisfaction every time after I perform. And I don't really care about the audience's reaction. I do it to make my own noise," Junky told the Global Times.

Szkieve (Dimitri della Faille), a Belgian-born Canadian and professor of social sciences at the University of Quebec was up next. Using a computer synthesizer with two external controllers and making every change to the sound in real-time, Szkieve's fluttering oscillations were somehow more surreal and malevolent. The slowly undulating waves of sound were almost cinematic, with Tarkovsky and Otto Mueller coming to mind.

"My music is like a Rorschach stain card. Everyone sees something different in it. After I perform, members of the audience tell me they have felt overwhelmed by emotions," explained Szkieve.

"Sometimes it is melancholia, sadness, fear or extreme awareness. But it is not my intent to create emotions."