Faust

“There is no group more mythical than Faust,” wrote Julian Cope in his book Krautrocksampler, which detailed the pivotal influence the German band exerted over the development of ambient and industrial textures. Producer/overseer Uwe Nettelbeck, a onetime music journalist, formed Faust in Wumme, Germany, in 1971 with founding members Hans Joachim Irmler, Jean Hervé Péron, Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, Rudolf Sosna, Gunther Wusthoff, and Armulf Meifert. Upon receiving advance money from their label, Nettelbeck converted an old schoolhouse into a recording studio, where the group spent the first several months of its existence in almost total isolation, honing its unique cacophonous sound with the aid of occasional guests like minimalist composer Tony Conrad and members of Slapp Happy.
So Far
Issued on clear vinyl in a transparent sleeve, Faust’s eponymously titled debut LP surfaced in 1971. Although sales were notoriously bad, the album — a noisy sound collage of cut-and-paste musical fragments — did earn the group a solid cult following. Another lavishly packaged work, Faust So Far, followed in 1972, and earned the group a contract with Virgin, which issued 1973’s The Faust Tapes — a fan-assembled collection of home recordings — for about the price of a single, a marketing ploy that earned considerable media interest. After Outside the Dream Syndicate, a collaboration with Tony Conrad, Faust released 1973’s Faust IV, a commercial failure that resulted in the loss of their contract with Virgin, which refused to release their planned fifth long-player.
Rien
When Nettelbeck turned his focus away from the group, Faust disbanded in 1975, and the members scattered throughout Germany. However, after more than a decade of playing together in various incarnations, Faust officially reunited around the nucleus of Irmler, Péron, and Diermaier for a handful of European performances at the outset of the 1990s. In 1993, they made their first-ever U.S. live appearance backing Conrad, followed by a series of other stateside performances. After several live releases, a pair of new studio albums, Rien and You Know FaUSt, followed in 1996.
Ravvivando
Péron left the group in 1997. Ravvivando appeared in 1999 with the lineup of Diermaier, Irmler, Steven Wray Lobdell, Lars Paukstat, Michael Stoll, and Amaury Cambuzat (of Ulan Bator). The album received almost universally favorable reviews, prompting more invitations to play festivals and tour. Faust continued releasing new material with this lineup until 2004 when Péron rejoined the group for Trial and Error, a DVD released in 2007 by Fuenfundvierzig Label. Diermaier proposed to Péron to start a “new” Faust together with Cambuzat and Olivier Manchion. The new Faust made their debut at the Art-Errorist Avantgarde Festival in Schiphorst, Germany, where they also presented a new release entitled Collectif Met(z), a collection of live, new, and unreleased material. This incarnation of the group released several CD-Rs and DVD-Rs and toured almost continually. From their 2005 U.K. tour they released In Autumn, though it didn’t appear until 2007. This band also featured ex-Henry Cow saxophonist/flutist Geoff Leigh, vocalist Lucianne Lassalle, poet Zoë Skoulding, and members of the Welsh group Ectogram.
Disconnected
Former member Uwe Nettelbeck died on January 17, 2007. In April the trio of Diermaier, Péron, and Cambuzat performed at the Rock in Opposition Festival in France and recorded a new studio album entitled Disconnected. C’est Com…Com…Compliqué, the second album from this trio, was issued under the Faust moniker on the Bureau B imprint in 2009, though by 2007 the lineup had changed again– Cambuzat left and was replaced by guitarist James Johnson (Gallon Drunk, Bad Seeds) and former filmmaker turned keyboardist/percussionist/vocalist Geraldine Swayne. In 2010, with the release of Faust Is Last by a group consisting of Irmler, Paukstat, Lobdell, Stoll, and Jan Fride, Faust had actually split into two groups with different lineups sharing the same name. Continuing in that vein, Something Dirty was released on Bureau B by the quartet faction with Diermaier and Péron. (Allmusic)

Boris

Japanese cult favorite sludge/doom rock trio Boris take their name from a song on grunge godfathers the Melvins’ Bullhead album. They also have a lot in common with the Melvins musically, including a fondness for heavily downtuned guitar/bass tones and exceedingly slow tempos. But they also incorporate elements variously drawn from other sources, including psychedelic rock, punk, noise, minimalism, pure sludge-drone music à la Earth, and more. Also, despite the unpretentious psychedelic/stoner rock imagery that accompanies much of their work, there is an ambitiously experimental aspect to much of it. Their albums, for example, have tended to be massive conceptual projects: Absolutego, in its original form, was a feedback-heavy drone exploration consisting of a single 65-minute track; Flood consists of another extremely long track, 70-plus minutes in length, exploring the band’s quieter sides with a minimalist/phase music slant. Also on the more experimental end of their discography are collaborations with Japanese avant-garde enigma Keiji Haino and power electronics/noise legend Merzbow. (Allmusic)

Throbbing Gristle

Abrasive, aggressive, and antagonistic, Britain’s Throbbing Gristle pioneered industrial music; exploring death, mutilation, fascism, and degradation amid a thunderous cacophony of mechanical noise, tape loops, extremist anti-melodies, and bludgeoning beats, the group’s cultural terrorism — the “wreckers of civilization,” one tabloid called them — raised the stakes of artistic confrontation to new heights, combating all notions of commerciality and good taste with a maniacal fervor.

Formed in London in the autumn of 1975, Throbbing Gristle consisted of vocalist/ringleader Genesis P-Orridge, his then-lover, guitarist Cosey Fanni Tutti, tape manipulator Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, and keyboardist Chris Carter. A performance art troupe as much as a band, their early live shows — each starting with a punch clock and running exactly 60 minutes before the power to the stage was cut — threatened obscenity laws; during their notorious premiere gig, P-Orridge even mounted an art exhibit consisting entirely of used tampons and soiled diapers.

Upon forming their own label, Industrial, the group issued their introductory release, The Best of Throbbing Gristle, Vol. 2, in 1976. A full-length debut, The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle, followed in 1977, in a pressing of only 500 copies; bowing to fan demand, the record was later reissued — cut from a master tape played backward. The 1977 underground hit “United” marked a tiny step toward accessibility, thanks to the inclusion of a discernible rhythm. Typically, when the track reappeared on 1978’s D.O.A: The Third and Final Report, it was sped up to last all of 17 seconds; no less provocative was “Hamburger Lady” (inspired by the story of a burn-unit victim) or “Death Threats” (a compilation of murderous messages left on the group’s answering machine).

20 Jazz Funk Greats, a harsh electro-pop outing, followed a year later, and after 1980’s live-in-the-studio Heathen Earth, Throbbing Gristle called it quits. P-Orridge and Christopherson soon formed Psychic TV (though Christopherson split again to form Coil), while the remaining duo continued on as Chris & Cosey. As Throbbing Gristle’s influence swelled, a seemingly endless series of posthumous releases followed, most of them taken from live dates; among the more notable were 1981’s 24 Hours of Throbbing Gristle, 1983’s Once Upon a Time (Live at the Lyceum), 1998’s Dimensia in Excelsis, 2001’s The First Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle, and 2004’s Mutant TG and TG+. Throbbing Gristle reunited during the early 2000s for performances, and released Part Two: Endless Not, their first album in 25 years, in 2007. (Allmusic)

Pan Sonic

 

Pan Sonic — originally Panasonic, until an inevitable confrontation with the Japanese manufacturing giant of the same name — was among the most active and well-known exports from Finland’s experimental techno underground, the first to reach acclaim at an international level. Pursuing the jagged edges of minimal and hardcore techno, Pan Sonic earned an enduring association with industrial and noise music through their incorporation of antiseptic production techniques and power-tool electronics. As they junked together studio equipment from spare parts and ancient analog debris, Pan Sonic’s search for the untried in techno was their compositional m.o., which placed them closer to the genre’s Detroit roots than is often understood. They represented a collision between the Motor City’s Jeff Mills and Cologne’s Mike Ink: dance-based electronic music with maximum impact made with minimal extraneous detail. (Allmusic)

Keiji Haino

Keiji Haino (灰野敬二) born 1952, May 3, in Chiba, Japan, and currently residing in Tokyo, is a Japanese Avant-Garde musician/ shaman whose work has included rock, free jazz, noise, singer-songwriter, avant-folk, blues, solo percussion, drone and electronica, among others, always keeping the experimentalism and psychedelia at the highest levels possible. (Last.fm)

Melt-Banana

Japanese noise rock band Melt-Banana found more success in the US and the UK than in their own country, gaining a small but dedicated fan base among American and European punk rock fans. Although their music sounds noticeably different from any sort of traditional punk, it contains some punk elements: shrieking vocals, overdriven guitars, and one-and-a-half-minute songs. Melt-Banana’s unique style, however, comes as a result of the distinctly piercing vocals of lead singer Yasuko O., as well as the frenzied, effect-charged playing of guitarist Agata. Searing, intense, and mind-blowingly fast are perhaps the first adjectives that come to mind when listening to Melt-Banana’s music. Try to imagine an even more energetic incarnation of the Boredoms.

But, for many, the appeal of Melt-Banana is not entirely limited to their music. Yasuko O.’s lyrics and song titles reflect a Japanese pop culture that is fascinating and strange, yet attractive to many non-Japanese fans. Melt-Banana has capitalized on this phenomenon heavily, in their merchandising as well as on their albums. As time passes, their overshadowing influence is becoming more and more evident within the cultish following of the noise-core movement. However, it is the band’s incredible severity and furious sound that has gained them the most recognition. Their shockingly intense live shows are that of sheer legend, with many fans leaving sweaty and exhausted, and Yasuko O. often persevering through nosebleeds.

Agata and O. joined bassist Rika in 1992, and they played as a trio until later that year when drummer Sudoh Toshiaki joined the group. In 1994 they signed with British label Chocolate Monk, and that label released one title, Cactuses Come in Flocks, which was made available at first only on cassette tape. They later signed to Skin Graft and released their second album that year, Speak Squeak Creak, followed by Scratch or Stitch in 1995. Scratch or Stitch was recorded and mixed by Chicago avant-garde masters Steve Albini and Jim O’Rourke, and showcases some of Melt-Banana’s best work.

Prurient

Prurient is noise musician Dominick Fernow. Active since 1997, Prurient has become one of the most well-known and influential names in the noise field, having been covered in major outlets such as Pitchfork Media and The Village Voice.

Fernow works primarily with a microphone and amplifier, and sometimes drums. On some releases he has been joined by Ben Barnett, Richard Dunn (FFH), John Wiese, Jeff Plummer (Immaculate:Grotesque, Shallow Waters), Kris Lapke (Alberich, MCMS), Sickness, Wolf Eyes, Macronympha, Philip Best (Whitehouse, Consumer Electronics), Sutcliffe Jugend, The Hototogisu, Carlos Giffoni, Wilt, Grunt, Nicole 12, and Emily Salvatierra. Fernow grew up in Wisconsin but now lives in New York and runs the Hospital Productions record label and retail record store. Fernow was also the guitarist of bands Football Rabbit, Vegas Martyrs, Taylor Bow, and Ash Pool (in which he also sings). More recently, Fernow has started marketing to the black metal audience with his label and creative works. He also is the primary live synthesizer player for Cold Cave. (Last.fm)

Merzbow

Merzbow (メルツバウ) is an experimental music project created in Tokyo in 1979 under the direction of musician Masami Akita (秋田昌美). Since 1979, Akita has formed two record labels and has contributed releases to numerous independent record labels. As well as being a prolific artist, he has also written a number of books and has been the editor of several magazines in Japan. He has written about a variety of subjects, mostly about art, avant-garde music and post-modern culture. His more renowned works have been on the topics of BDSM and fetish culture. Other artforms Akita has been interested in include directing and Butoh dance.

The name “Merzbow” comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters’ artwork, Merzbau. This was chosen to reflect Akita’s dada influence and junk-art aesthetic. In addition to this, Akita has cited a wide range of influences from various progressive rock artists such as Frank Zappa and King Crimson to Japanese bondage.

Black Dice

Hailed as sonic groundbreakers or derided as alienating and pretentious, Brooklyn’s Black Dice push the limits of hardcore and noise rock. Taking their cues from Melt Banana, Merzbow, and Harry Pussy, Black Dice fixate on a few notes per “song” and focus on producing a sound that’s as abrasive and distorted as possible. The group debuted in early 1998 with a single on Gravity Records, and released Semen of the Sun on Tapes Records. They then appeared on Troubleman Mix-Tape and were picked up by Troubleman, run by Unwound. Black Dice released their debut full-length in 2000, followed by a split with Erase Errata and Cold Hands in 2001. The following year Black Dice abandoned their rock leanings and embraced the electronics that had previously peppered their avant hardcore approach. They moved to the DFA label for their 2002 album, Beaches & Canyons. A vinyl-only collaboration with Wolf Eyes came out in 2003 on the Fusetron label. That same year, DFA also released the almost-dancefloor-friendly Cone Toaster 12″ and followed it in 2004 with an EP, Miles of Smiles, and another album, Creature Comforts. The next two albums, 2005’s Broken Ear Record and 2009’s Repo, were released on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label and for 2012’s Mr. Impossible, Black Dice switched to Domino imprint Ribbon Music. (Allmusic)

Boredoms

Boredoms are a psychedelic/ noise rock group from Osaka, Japan. The band was officially formed in 1986, although some date the band to bedroom tape experiments from 1982.
In a career spanning over 20 years the group has undergone multiple changes in line-up, sound and philosophy. Beginning as a dada ‘no-core’ noise-punk outfit, transmuting into psychedelic krautrockers, their more recent records have been largely based around repetitive minimalism, ambient music, and tribal drumming , most recently appearing in a radically stripped down set-up featuring three drummers with singer Eye making interesting noises over the top.

The Locust

Innovative, controversial, and frighteningly loud, the Southern California rock band the Locust has been called the future of hardcore punk by more than a few people. Critics and underground hardcore fans alike have argued for and against the band, citing in their debates the destructive tendencies of the Locust’s intensely loyal fan base, insane stage antics, seemingly nonsensical lyrics, and questionable taste in merchandise. Through it all, the Locust has maintained a confident distance, preferring to discuss the “self-political” subject matter of their lyrics and lifestyle, and more importantly, their love of playing music. (Allmusic)

Shit and Shine

Who are Shit and Shine? A bizarre London/Texas hybrid of weird shit currently causing a stir down London way that’s who. Having been lauded as the band of Sonar 2006, and following two sold out releases onRiot Season & Latitudes, Shit and Shine return with their debut album proper ‘Jealous Of Shit And Shine’. Taking a slightly more mature musical stance, ‘Jealous Of Shit And Shine’ is equal parts Strangulated Beatoffs, Butthole Surfers,Merzbow, Melvins and Boredoms – fusing sonic blasts and monster riffs into a hearty brew. (Last.fm)

Masonna

 

Extreme noise artist Masonna (Maso Yamazaki) has been active at the forefront of Japanese underground since 1987. Mixing noise and vocals, Masonna had released over ten recordings by the late ’90s, including Super Compact Disc and Ejaculation Generator on Japanese label Alchemy and Frequency LSD on Canada’s Alien8 Recordings. He also recorded Christine 23 Onna in collaboration with Fusao, a member of Angel in Heavy Syrup. The moniker Masonna is an acronym for Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé. (Allmusic)

 

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