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

I've never heard of a single one of these bands.

pedantry:
"rock bands excluded" and yet we have mouthus, sightings, magik markers, hair police, air conditioning, fat day, etc?
puzzling omissions:
smegma;
TLASILA (well, smith & co despite some esteemed company here would likely puke at being included with such a merry list);
splotch (oh no, but splotch were a rock band nnng - malfunction);
greg kelley/nmperign;
the living trash;
the skaters;
cock e.s.p.;
bran(...)pos;
zeek sheck;
graveyards.

never understand the wolf eyes love. i just get fremdschämen any time i hear them.

hate coming over as boreder than, but even back then "noise" was only "punk" in the sense it was a minor journalistic confection only supposedly melting minds as yet unmelted

This is:

Yellow Swans v Double Leopards v Wolf Eyes

Gonna vote Yellow Swans.

puzzling omissions:
smegma;
TLASILA (well, smith & co despite some esteemed company here would likely puke at being included with such a merry list);
splotch (oh no, but splotch were a rock band nnng - malfunction);
greg kelley/nmperign;
the living trash;
the skaters;
cock e.s.p.;
bran(...)pos;
zeek sheck;
graveyards.

can't speak for Whiney but I've heard of every band in the OP and about half of the ones you've listed so that may be a clue to your puzzle

presume that the idea was to compile bands who came to a sort of prominence in the stated timeframe, whereas TLASILA, Cock ESP, Zeek Sheck all predate that I'd say

i always associated greg kelley with jon abbey-esque EAI ppl.

But skaters definitely are a glaring omission, as are cock esp, and to live and shave in LA. Smegma may fall into that "legacy" category along with Borbetomagus and ... uh, Caroliner?

also Total Shutdown should be on this list, if you would have included Burmese (save for being a rock band), and whoever said USAisamonster, them too.

saw Skaters live three times, they were great but VERY QUIET by noise standards

also MIA - Hototogisu = 50% American

Michel van der Aa ‏@vanderaanet 8 minutes ago

London tube, noisier than a SunO))) concert

I'm not exactly familiar with the Noise genre. Animal Collective is considered Noise? This does not bode well for me wanting to discover the best underground stuff. Although I've been to a couple random Noise rock shows (in this era) and I liked them. They were heavy hitters that would come out and play in downtown Athens around Halloween. Standing two feet away from a thrashing band that didn't need a stage was pretty cool. I think I still have the wig one of the band members was wearing.

Animal Collective ca. 2000-2003 was most def noize

cock esp should've been on

smegma is like a whole different trip, old hippies

Yeah, I think the "coming into prominence circa 1998-2005" or whatever the timeline was is the key.

Personally, I consider this more as a time/place/scene thing more than a specific genre, so it makes no sense to exclude someone like USAisaMonster (just my opinion). Similarly Sightings/Lightning Bolt/Magik Markers/Fat Day what have you. A band like XBXRX I only saw play with noise/weirdo bands from this scene, but I mean sure they weren't a "noise" band. They were really fun live though. Could get really tedious going down this road, so gonna stop.

The bands that have held up the best for me from the original list are: Magik Markers / Sightings / Burning Star Core.

yep. my pedantry is needless as always.
sightings / BXC for me too.
or maybe mouthus or fat day.
i'll get a nosebleed if i try & decide which.

it's cool massaman, i'd imagine that most ppl posting here like having their memories jogged and talking about these bands and scene.

I try to think about what exactly killed this scene, i think it was the last real organic punk movement based on actually touring, making connections, sleeping on floors until it just became ivy league brats sending MP3s to websites run by millionaires

This 2006 Thurston Moore Nightmare Before Christmas seemed like the peak of something - don't think i'll ever enjoy a better line-up:

http://www.atpfestival.com/events/nightmare2006/lineup

Yeah, he really did nail a moment with that. Kind of closes the book on the whole thing, really. Wish I went.

Voted Neon Hunk. They had a really enjoyable whimsical quality the time I saw them live, and I think their album was one of the best Load releases of this era.

This was a tough choice; I considered picking Hair Police, Sightings, or Burning Star Core. Gang Wizard, Nautical Almanac, and Friends Forever were also so great. Wolf Eyes too, of course, although I suspect they'll take this poll in a walk.

One of the bigger groups I associate with this scene that isn't on this poll is Pink and Brown.

I have such a vague memory of going to No Fun Fest in 2006 that I can't actually swear I was there. But I think so... There was an upstairs and a downstairs, right?

I try to think about what exactly killed this scene, i think it was the last real organic punk movement based on actually touring, making connections, sleeping on floors until it just became ivy league brats sending MP3s to websites run by millionaires

― posts baloney - whine iverson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, September 23, 2015 3:44 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

Yeah Pink and Brown/Burmese/Total Shutdown/XBXRX/USAisaMonster were too "rock band" for the poll, but all 100% belong in this thread

I try to think about what exactly killed this scene, i think it was the last real organic punk movement based on actually touring, making connections, sleeping on floors until it just became ivy league brats sending MP3s to websites run by millionaires

― posts baloney - whine iverson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, September 23, 2015 3:44 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ums and whiney otm

I try to think about what exactly killed this scene, i think it was the last real organic punk movement based on actually touring, making connections, sleeping on floors until it just became ivy league brats sending MP3s to websites run by millionaires

― posts baloney - whine iverson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, September 23, 2015 3:44 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, ca. 2004 -> 2006 there was def a trend of many noise-rock bands on the fringe of this going the Daydream Nation route and getting decidedly more "pop" to various degrees of success, including Animal Collective, Lightning Bolt, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, the Mae Shi, Japanther, the Hella record on Ipecac, um, p4rts + l4b0r

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

Matador wouldn't release the video because hal Ashby had lawyers

https://vimeo.com/12280161