Cultural Noise: Noise as a Musical Metaphor for Contemporary Aesthetics in Popular Culture

Heinrich Deisl

Lecture text presented at the Conference »Fourth Biennial Conference on Twentieth-century Music«, University Sussex, Dept. of Music, August 2005

Sonic injections to the braincells about deviant musics by the London-based writer and critic Alexei Monroe, best known for his books about Laibach/NSK.

In 1989, on their way to Ponto-Corvo, the radical advertists group Didi&Noël, driving a car at 6:34 AM, were arrested by the C.I.W. To this present day we still don’t really know the motivations of their trip, but it’s been said a secret meeting involving Che Guevara, Karl Lagerfeld and Carlos was to take place there. After about six years of research, the music critic from »Die Zeitung-Zeitung« (who wishes to remain anonymous) has hijacked some of their daily correspondence. A book shall be published next year which is temporarily entitled »Your Fuckin Kampf, Not Mein!« – Good Luck.

»So what are you looking for exactly, something easy, some new stuff?«, says the salesman to our client, lost in between two freshly arrived piles of the new »Groove or […]

Here comes the times of a difficult exercise. I started to listen to these three albums altogether, I mean switching tracks like: # 7 of this followed by # 1 […]

First of all let me take this opportunity to tell the label one thing: Why,with such great compilations of fantastic or special tracks, do we need to get such an […]

Somewhere I have a tape of Gulda and Cecil Taylor as a duet. I wonder if that got on a record. Cecil Taylor like Derek has this precious thing in […]

After a day of reviews it can happen that you just want to switch on the TV and watch EuroSport-channel, in search for some people actually DOING something as opposed […]

I can’t help, it’s so obvious that until I’ve done it for good I’ll have it in mind turning so here is that stupid joke: the thing with THE THING […]

Yes Ringo, well done again. Choose Love is his forever new album, the one before the next one, and most of the time the previous one we all sort of […]

Zawinul live at Zawinul’s. His syndicate being since over 30 years and even before it was called such, the golden school of world musicians and other undiscovered talents from Africa. […]

Talking Revival? Dig swing and Broadway Repertoire? Like Guitar á la good old daddy striking the strings up and down? Here you are, her Majesty is served twice. Pizzarelli Junior […]

Stamped on the CD itself, but twice as big as the credits of the album is a little warning: »FBI anti-piracy warning statement«. A sign of the times? Beware of […]

Produced and Mixed by Pop Chubby says the orange flashy sticker on the cover. What is not said is that Camilleri is a R&B, Blues guitar player and Vocalist from […]

Rare and Indus grooves in sampled and electronic music. Not much really to say here as the general feeling is rather functional and atmosphere music. It often happens that in […]

Listening to nowadays film soundtracks can often makes you go back to yesterday’s ones also. Not that there’s been so much progress in the function of music in films or […]

Kane sings for the girls though you can’t precisely say it’s a boys band. It’s just a trio taking a walk on the sea-side and then flying a B-52 back […]

Why would I review these three albums altogether? Because I felt pretty quickly, while playing these, that one comment on the first would apply even better to the next album […]

I’ve thought of a dozen ways to open this review but the best one is for me to shut up and listen to the fantastic opening of this double album […]

I originally wrote, about 2 weeks ago, a much longer review of these two albums as one same problem, question, direction and text. It started like that: »Claude Simon died […]

Plain is what the Lithuanian Arturas Bumsteinas brought in with »Live@Rixc« at his guest performance at Riga’s Media Art Centre. Ambient Drones and glitchy samples, generated on a notebook. What makes this document distinguishable from anything else? Bumsteinas capability to create soundtrack-like soundscapes in a continuous track. This wide build-up of a tension, transporting threatening…

Luc Ferrari possessed a sparkling sense of humor and quality of focus or presentness that, for anyone lucky enough to have enjoyed his company, will be impossible to forget. In this lifetime, you might meet a handful of individuals whose work really speaks to you. Really sparks you…

Saxophone, organ and drums. »Like Back In The Days« is indeed a proper expression and a clear intention for this album. Everything takes you back to the great organ combos, […]

Seven years did pass by since Tanita Tikarams last album. These days the new album Sentimental (V2/Edel) is released – time to talk to Tanita about songwriting and ideal working situations.

Would she not come out the same month as Duran Duran’s Re-take-off, I’d probably re-route you all to Amy Whinehouse’s »Frank« debut album as »the« thing you need to hear. […]

»Octoscope Music« (Loewenhertz 012/Extraplatte) by HANNES ENZLBERGER is a live recording of a pretty particular band. Well, just looking at three trumpets, two drums and a double bass is something that can remind you of Herb Robertson or earlier Tim Berne associations. The music is as much shaped and designed as played live I should…

In the past, I haven’t particularly been excited at all by Onkyo Music (sort of a post Fluxus musical movement that takes place in Tokyo around the club Off Site and that has been linked to the like of Polwechsel, Radu Malfatti and other »reductionists«, since). But this time I decided I ought to give…

Good Lord, they gave me the complete series on DVD!

I love surprises. I expected just a late duo album and here I find a serie of radio broadcasts presented by Marian Mc Partland herself. Everyting’s the old fashioned way […]

Unlike many sound experiments, this one is listenable, even enjoyable. Keeps the attention for what happens next. The first impression I got was that it is a recording of sounds […]