I don’t know what took me so long to finally get around to listening to the MERZCAST (now Noisextra) the “noise” podcast hosted by Greh Holger of Chondritic Sound and Tara Connelly and Mike Connelly (Clay Rendering, Hair Police, marriage, etc.) It sorta fell off my radar after the “controversy” with Mr. Merzbow himself Masami Akita declaring his unhappiness with the podcast via Twitter for reasons I forget and do not care about right now. Something to do with him giving up pornography for birdwatching or something like that. Anyway, when I saw there was an episode with special guest Seymour Glass (Bananafish Magazine, Tedium House, BUFMS, Glands of External Secretion) I was very happy to finally check it out. The episode did not disappoint and it brought back wonderful memories of being 19 years old and trying to figure out what the fuck anyone in Bananafish was talking about. As soon as it was over I immediately scrolled back to episode #1 of Merzcast and started listening from the very beginning. What I really appreciate about the Merzcast/Noisextra crew and their guests is that not only are they huge fans of “noise”/”noise music” but they’re also creators, curators, and proselytizers of noise and can talk about it in terms that make sense to someone like myself who, while genuinely appreciative of noise, is far from an actual participant in the “scene” and really only pokes my head in now and then to see what’s good. I’m still making my way through the early Merzbow episodes and one thing I can say for sure is these guys are noise lifers in a way I’ve never been. I know a thing or two about noise, I know what I like, I know what I don’t like, but I don’t eat-sleep-breathe noise like these folks do, and people like me depend on people like them to hip us to what’s what.
Without trying to explain what I like and don’t like when it comes to noise and why, I will say that one corner of that world that has consistently made my ears happy the past decade or so is the one surrounding Gothenburg, Sweden and labels like Förlag För Fri Musik, Omlott, I Dischi Del Barone and record stores like Musiclovers and Discreet Music. Sweden has a rich history of experimental music, free jazz, punk and post-punk but it seems like the 2014 release of the debut album by Neutral, the duo of Dan Johansson (Sewer Election) and Sofie Herner (Leda), is what got people like myself talking about what was goin on over there. I can’t remember another record that (for lack of a better term) “crossed over” from the somewhat insular noise scene into the realm of post-punk and the like. This isn’t to say the LP is an “easy” listen either. It’s full of tension, despair, broken tapes, ominous vocals and even a few parts that wouldn’t be out of place on a black metal record. To my ears, this is what’s so appealing about Neutral, as well as Johansson and Herner’s other projects both solo and collaborative: It reminds me of discovering noise in the the 90’s when “noise” encompassed everything from Merzbow to Ramleh to Shadow Ring to Charalambides to Macronympha. Now I don’t have the Noisextra folks’ vocabulary and can’t tell what pedal or keyboard or emulator or whatever anybody’s using at any point on any record, but I can tell the difference between somebody fiddlin’ with a laptop and somebody making a guitar do things it wasn’t built to do and that’s what I’m hearing on a lot of these Swedish records. Now, I’m not 100% positive some of these folks aren’t using computer software to get some of the sounds they’re laying down, but if they are, they’re doing it in a way that sounds way more organic than a lot of what I’ve seen pass for “interesting” the past decade plus.
While Neutral combines harsh sounds with stark minimalism, conjuring the sort of tension you’ll often feel from noise in general, the Enhet För Fri Musik collective, which also includes Johansson and Herner as well as Matthias Andersson (who also records as Arv & Miljö and operates I Dischi Del Barone), Gustaf Dicksson (who records solo as Blod) and Hugo Randulv (Amateur Hour, Cortex A9, Skiftande Enheter), operates on the same plane but also incorporates free folk and (what sounds like) field recordings into the stew. There are moments on Enhet För Fri Musik recordings that wouldn’t sound out of place on the first few Shadow Ring records yet it doesn’t sound forced or referential at all. All of these collaborations and solo projects (many featuring Johansson) are able to have their own unique identities and sounds but also manage to echo the spirit of free music of the past without sounding as if they’re “going for” any particular “sound”. It just seems to happen organically. Even on her debut LP “Gitarrmusik-III-X”, Herner, under her solo moniker Leda, sounds as if she’s recording a tape for Broken Flag in 1983, unaware Gary and the boys even exist.
While the internet is telling me there’s a whole slew of 2020 releases on Förlag För Fri Musik and a few on Omlott and I Dischi Del Barone that I haven’t heard yet, the latest one I’ve managed to get my hands on (the pressing size on most of these records rarely exceeds 200 copies) is the 2018 LP “Dregs” by Capers AKA Erik Nystrand. On “Dregs” Nystrand is primarily using tape manipulation to create tense sounds of despair and isolation etc etc etc… Honestly: I’m not exactly sure how to go about describing a record like this without using the same 5-6 words and comparisons. The point is, just like his peers in Gothenburg, Nystrand manages to conjure the same moods and extreme feelings of great noise artists past without falling into the trap of whatever the harsh noise equivalent of a “bass drop” is. The sounds on the record are as organic as a lot of what I remember from the first time I heard extreme analog electronics in the 90’s. Individual comparisons aside: “Dregs” manages to stand on its own in a scene that (from my perspective) has become much more performative and reliant on just straight out giving people what they’re expecting.
While listening to the Noisextra crew joke about cliche noise “moves” is amusing, being a more casual fan I’d much rather spend my time with recordings where I have zero expectations going in and find myself making up the artists motivations and moods in my mind as I listen along. Busting into a triple cassette box wrapped in barbed wire called something like “The Taste of Incest” or whatever isn’t shocking or extreme, it’s tired and boring and leaves nothing to the imagination. Listening to free music and noise has always been about having an open mind and personal interpretation of the unexpected. As an art form it’s radically “incorrect” compared to what most people traditionally consider music. If there’s nothing there to make you think, if everything is explained to you ahead of time, and listening to it doesn’t take you somewhere you haven’t been before…it’s probably not worth listening to.
I wouldn’t say there’s a “Gothenburg sound” by any means (I feel dirty even typing that) but they certainly have an aesthetic that’s very apparent through their many releases (whether intentional or not) that ties them together and has kept my rapt attention the past 6+ years. I truly can’t remember feeling that way about any particular scene since I first opened a copy of Bananafish.
