Best Underground American Noise Act of the Noise-Punk Era (ca. 1998-2005)

with the apotheosis being the existence of No Age?

haha I was gonna mention No Age, and last night the band I was trying to think of that was from LA, had Ezra Buchla in it for a while, but then went more pop, was ... Mae Shi.

also non-retro, also immune to being licensed and used in marketing/ad industry

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, September 23, 2015 2:43 PM (4 minutes ago)

didn't Captain Ahab get money somehow from the Snakes on a Plane thing?

wonder if Wolf Eyes gut some bux for that time they were on The Office

Since this is turning into post-2006 LETS MONETIZE THIS discussion, I think Cold Cave in the Radio Shack commercial is probably the best example

http://scaryideas.com/content/15143

All of which is hilarious since the Locust somehow had a small industry of selling 5 different colored versions of the same record to dorks, and branded belt buckles and (**alleged, must credit Jessica Hopper**) coke mirrors and they didn't have to have Red Bull help them!

anyway, this movement was the last time i believed or cared about anything that wasn't kanye west or death grips, peace out

really appreciate this thread and the contextualization of a scene I took for granted at the time (aside from USAisamonnster, who used to play shows in our basement and were/are awesome guys)

Hah hah, yeah massaman, I was singling myself out for pedantry as much as anyoneelse. Just hard for me to be objective about much from this scene/era, as it was very important to me at the time. I literally heard about almost all of these bands through friends, other bands, maga(zines), or seeing them in person. Very few from online stuff at all. Last gasp of that kind of thing for me.

It lasted for a pretty long time and got more press than it maybe should have, considering the nature of the music, but it deserved it. Not sure what killed it other than that it probably needed to die in some way. It wasn't destined to go any farther than Wolf Eyes signing to Sub Pop and jamming with Anthony Braxton I don't think.

I used to make fun circa 2003 or so of the "Providence haircut", which was a weird thing where a bunch of bands coming through Charlottesville all had the Brian Chippendale hairdo involving the look where it appeared that someone attacked you in your sleep with a pair of clippers. It caught on more than you would have thought ....

we used to refer to that as "rocking the grouphome look"

16 Bitch Pile Up - girls. boring, sorry.
Air Conditioning - sightings wannabes
Burning Star Core - boring
Can't - pretty good
Dead Machines - good band especially the heavily echoed horn parts
Double Leopards - good band usually, sometimes not 'on'
Excepter - good band
Fat Day - punk rock, annoying
Fat Worm of Error - eh
Forcefield - good band
Friends Forever - fiery pumpkins
Gang Wizard - black bean and placenta oldschool A+ free rock
Hair Police - never a fan but they tried
Hive Mind - brrrrrzzzzzzz
John Weise - very valley
Kites - comic books sometimes funny, interesting melodic sensibility, very weird person
Landed - best of all time
Magik Markers - great live band, great people, but they are a rock n roll band
Mammal - originators of today's thump thump technoize
Metalux - never really my thing
Mindflayer - great band, lots of fun live, feedback is good
Monotract/Carlos Giffoni - eh, not my thing i guess
Mouthus - really good band.
Nautical Almanac - visionary american outsiders; true freak flag flyers
Neon Hunk - bad
Noise Nomads - fun, keepin it real to this day
Prurient - too macho
Rusted Shut - rock band. bad.
Sick Llama - never really listened to this stuff
Sightings - great.
Wolf Eyes - trip metal. amtapes/hanson classic for all time
Yellow Swans

oops
yellow swans - lots of records. pretty okay usually.

no newton no cred

D yel swans - drone bros

Hair Police for me, no contest

then Yellow Swans

this thread rules

Feel like I missed out on a lot of this except for Double Leopards, Magik Markers, and Gang Wizard.

POX or C90 please!

Never really warmed up to Mouthus or Yellow Swans. Shows I saw (just a couple by each) weren't particularly memorable, so I didn't delve super far into the records. I know a lot of folks whose taste line up with mine pretty well really liked them, so maybe I just saw some bad sets etc. Kind of a problem with a lot of bands like this in that you could catch them on a bad night and it wouldn't translate at all.

The thing that Fat Day did that I loved was the use of the weird home-made synth helmets and shit that they wore and would play between songs. It was weird and fun in a pretty cool/unique way to me, and it set up the explosion into short blasts of rock well.

And yeah, Nautical Almanac the legitimate weirdest in a genuinely on-their-own-planet kind of way most of the times I saw them. Liked them best when they stuck to the cracked home-made electronics.

Very surprised by the lack of love for Yellow Swans. One of the most lasting groups on this last for me, especially their last couple records, absolute stone killers. They got better and better live as they went along too. Not sure what "killed" this scene but it was mega important to me in college, doing a radio show, going to shows at The Smell and Il Coral (anyone?) I think there have been some interesting connections/evolutions from a lot of the players here...Wolf Eyes is still super-viable to me, at least live. Captain Ahab is in Clipping., Pete Swanson went noise-techno (pretty good!). I think a lot of these people just had kids/real jobs and retreated from the scene, as you do.

Rusted Shut is the Crazy Horse of noise. i sat next to them at the bar, they seemed like they've seen too much. Band I would least like to fuck w/of any on this list.

are you running for garrison keillor of ilx or something, matt?

You know who is probably the most consistently amazing band of this class, if not the most consistently amazing band of our generation, is Black Dice

Here the three biggest scene round-ups that I remember

Ben Sisario, SPIN, 2004: http://www.spin.com/2004/12/art-noise/

Brandon Stosuy, Village Voice, 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20050317000015/http://villagevoice.com/music/0511,stosuy,62088,22.html

Young Whiney, CMJ, 2002:
https://books.google.com/books?id=LyoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA1&ots=b-iNWXPcui&dq=cmj%20come%20on%20feel%20the%20noise%20rock&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false

hahah when i saw that article was from 2002, my first thought, was, it's about that Oops the Tour thing, and yes, i was otm

i was always deejbent that I was first on the ball with that but the other two pieces got way more play, but I didn't really know how the internet and timing and all that worked in 2002

lol @ deejbent, i was gonna say, i don't want to do "a suzy" and play gossip-maven here

Oops Tour was my Woodstock

who was Sha Na Na?

Quintron obv

I saw the Tampa show with Rah Bras, and the Brooklyn show with Avey/Panda iirc

It's kinda annoying that the only bands mentioned in those articles that are from the West Coast were the Locust and Erase Errata (i am a major fan of the latter). It's the standard alt-journalism thing though: the premise is that they are surveying "the underground" but then they only pick a certain part of it and just ignore the rest, and don't even do the boilerplate "vibrant scenes also exist in these other places i am not going to write about"

what bands would you have included in this thread from the West Coast & etc?

which west coast noise band would win in a fight?

Well, also, the real ground zero WAS Providence, Rhode Island, which ultimately became a filter to/from brooklyn and baltimore, there's no way around that

I think it's great that they got so much attention. Nice people! Very industrious.

Providence would be nothing without GX Jupitter-Larsen.

hahah and he's from the West Coast! (nb do not make pirate jokes to GX's face)

ha that was the point I was trying to make!

also, uh, that other '70s Cali industrial noise guy who we don't need to talk about

haha

16 Bitch Pile Up -- seen them do awesome sets, seen them do ok sets
Air Conditioning -- no idea
Burning Star Core -- might just have seen him play solo? kinda a drone bro iirc.
Can't -- i think the first time i saw her, it was a wtf of the best kind, in that i actually can remember it
Dead Machines -- don't remember
Double Leopards -- i think they were overrated? not sure if i ever saw them tbh
Excepter -- only heard tracks from albums
Fat Day -- no idea
Fat Worm of Error -- saw them 3/4 times? awesome most of the time
Forcefield -- no idea
Friends Forever -- hahaha memorable show, band had lots of incarnations iirc
Gang Wizard -- really good? iirc, might not rc
Hair Police -- i do not rc
Hive Mind -- nice guy, ok
John Weise -- prefer Sissy Spacek, had at least one friend who had a major crush on the dude
Kites -- don't remember
Landed -- no clue
Magik Markers -- dude stole my towel, not sure how many people at the show actually liked them, or just showed up because they were supposed to like them or to hang with friends
Mammal -- no idea
Metalux -- only saw MV Carbon solo; really good iirc
Mindflayer -- don't remember
Monotract/Carlos Giffoni -- opening act was way better
Mouthus -- really good, but might not rc
Nautical Almanac -- fine
Neon Hunk -- don't remember
Noise Nomads -- no referrer, can't tell
Prurient -- don't remember
Rusted Shut -- no idea if i ever saw/booked them; too lazy to research
Sick Llama -- no idea
Sightings -- i actually never saw them
Wolf Eyes -- did not see any shows w/them w/dilloway; i saw them play in brooklyn w/Richard Pinhas of Heldon and have probably posted the hilarious story related to that on several threads already
Yellow Swans -- saw/booked these guys so many times; saw each of them solo in the past couple years. really nice guys. a bit too dronebro for me, but solid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVOZeT2W6Bo

^ another west coast legend

xp i have not smoked weed since 1997

worth mentioning-
needlegun
dj dog dick
narwhalz (of sound)
teeth mountain
grasslung
wzt hearts

that stuff all comes later

Wham City era

i think this "era" extends to 2007, based on releases, tours, audiences

Sarahell, just curious what qualifies something as "dronebro" stuff for you? Not in a defensive way or what have you, but honestly just wondering what fits the tag vs. other stuff.

I mean, if it is simply dudes who used drones in a standard way, I get it hah hah.