Generational differences in the noise community

[Tinnitustimulus]

https://www.discogs.com/release/552592- ... -Mind-Body
I think Joe might have mentioned Usenet in his interview on WCN, but this comp was made up of Usenet members. Besides Macronympha, Trance and sort of Surgery Tomorrow most of its kind of just early 90s Wax Trax EBM industrial, but noise was certainly a presence there.

[Tinnitustimulus]

I always considered myself of a geographical generation that went to No Fun Fest as a young person. Extremely, extremely privileged to attend 4 of them from the age 17 to 20. Nothing really adds up to how central that fest was with the timing of most people being on the internet by then and now fests are really branched out into separate scenes and maybe not quite have the financing that thing had. The absolutely exhausting gluttony of the experience is something I can't quite relate to these days. Perhaps I'm older and jaded now, but I don't think it is that totally. For example, after watching Daniel Menche climb the PA and Macronympha causing riots and being a little bit of a part of them, I could not watch Sutcliffe Jugend no matter how hard to tried to stand there. I mentally and physically couldnt do it. Keiji Haino and Merzbow on the same day after like 8 hours of mostly unmissable stuff just about killed me. By the time Incapacitants came on the end of the next day I was laying down in the back, trying to be in the moment but too tuckered out. The scope was just about total it seemed to me.

And I remember in forums a common topic was what would you book for your own personal No Fun Fest. Everyone had their own dream fest. Do people have these ambitions now? Yes and no. I am past 35 and don't really want to experience now what I experienced then anyways, and maybe the Savage Weekends Summer Scums MAPS Hospital fests and Ende Tymes are that equivalent to young people, but most of these things are 21+ anyway.

[Joie de la Blumpy]

https://www.discogs.com/release/552592- ... -Mind-Body
I think Joe might have mentioned Usenet in his interview on WCN, but this comp was made up of Usenet members. Besides Macronympha, Trance and sort of Surgery Tomorrow most of its kind of just early 90s Wax Trax EBM industrial, but noise was certainly a presence there.

Mason Jones / Trance had a fairly early Usenet presence but if by Joe you mean Roemer definitely not. Dude was and perhaps always will be almost philosophically opposed on some level to the idear and more power to him if that were the case. This is possibly the first mention I personally recall of MSNP semi plugging their shit online.

[Tinnitustimulus]

Well maybe if you watched or maybe not Jason, it would have been Liz Fox using the University network. Maybe Joe didn't put it in himself but SOMEBODY did. The fascinating thing was this put together around 91-92. Grae.Com another weird industrial one.

[Joie de la Blumpy]

Well maybe if you watched or maybe not Jason, it would have been Liz Fox using the University network. Maybe Joe didn't put it in himself but SOMEBODY did. The fascinating thing was this put together around 91-92. Grae.Com another weird industrial one.

Oh wow, forgot all about that, but yeah technically some aspects of the label were sort of mediated. As in one memorable instance around the turd-in-tin fiasco (if you'd recall?). Good times.

Need to pull out that grae.com Macro split.

[FrenziedDestruction]

the investment to get into noise is simultaneously smaller and bigger then it was previously, which is to say that you can of course do all the online things with forums and social media and free programs like vcv rack but also that the classic noise pedals such as the jason lamb dod ones are getting more expensive as is equipment for dubbing and listening to tapes.

I disagree with this, DOD Grunge pedals can still be found for less than 100 euros. The Digitech models are 40-50 euros, and while not as good they're good enough to make noise with. Behringer has good clones of Boss pedals that work well with noise, not to mention the chinese knock offs that are dirt cheap. Behringer mixers are really cheap and even older mixers with great preamps for noise are relatively cheap and readily available online. Behringer has all those great clones of classic noise synths and they're all ridiculously cheap.

Tape decks in good working order can be purchased for a lot cheaper than what they cost when tapes weren't obsolete as a format. If you follow the online marketplaces you routinely see working decks for around 50 euros for sale. Serviced decks are 100 euros and up. Tapes can be ordered in bulk online, and there's multiple pro dub plants if you don't want to go DIY. All easy to use, just upload files and receive tapes by mail.

It's never been this easy to acquire music equipment, nor this cheap. I guess same goes for physical media, it's never been this easy and plants offer smaller pressings that weren't available before. Basically for a few hundred bucks you can get all you need to make noise, industrial or whatever. It just depends are you interested enough to learn how.

you know what maybe that section of my post should have just read "why dod pedals more now :("

i like the one behringer wasp clone i have, the only behringer pedal i have experience with is a olllddd stereo reverb and it pretty much turns everything that goes through it into mud but maybe the newer pedals and clones of things like the rat are better. i have that same green joyo pedal everyone has now and its dece, i have not tried the others but own a few of the saphue/chinese metal enclosure pedals which while not great do help to add some dynamics here and there which is good enough for 8$. re: tape decks my period of reference began in the early 2000s so i have no idea what a tape deck would have cost in the 80s/90s etc. cannot compare prices for produbbing either as a label released my only tape wayback when, i think i naturally assumed inflation and a decrease in supply would have caused the prices of getting produbs or tape decks to rise substantially like most things.

i still think someone ought to clone more of the jason lamb dod pedals though!

[Bubble-Congeries]

I liked DOD *before* I had any idea who Jason Lamb was! *indignant nerd screeching*

I wound up stockpiling DOD pedals from Yahoo Japan just to avoid paying speculator's prices in the US while trying to buy back a lot of old pedals I'd sold before realizing what a shitshow JHS and the like have turned the used gear market into. But even that market seems to have dried up because used prices have gotten a lot higher with local Japanese sellers as well. :[

[Joie de la Blumpy]

In November 1993, Iwasaki and his brothers partnered with Harman International Industries in a $55 million promotional deal that broke records for a celebrity endorsement (equivalent to $130,603,408 in 2021). The first Harman International Industries campaign, which ran in the US from 1993 to 1994 and launched its "New DODharshtronix" theme, included tour sponsorship, public relations events, and in-store displays. Iwasaki helped to create the advertisement, and suggested using his song "Portuguese Man-Of-War", with revised lyrics, as its jingle.

[Scream & Writhe]

In November 1993, Iwasaki and his brothers partnered with Harman International Industries in a $55 million promotional deal that broke records for a celebrity endorsement (equivalent to $130,603,408 in 2021). The first Harman International Industries campaign, which ran in the US from 1993 to 1994 and launched its "New DODharshtronix" theme, included tour sponsorship, public relations events, and in-store displays. Iwasaki helped to create the advertisement, and suggested using his song "Portuguese Man-Of-War", with revised lyrics, as its jingle.

Reads like Ballard's The Secret History of World War 3.

[SafetyPropaganda]

Sorry, but if you can't be bothered to search out the bountiful amounts of information available to you unless it's posted on fucking Bandcamp or social media then you can't be all that interested in this music. There is no bridge that needs to be gapped, if you want to be a part of something then put effort in. You want to know how I discovered this shit? Because I'd read an interview with a musician who mentioned Masonna or Merzbow or whatever. Then you type those names into a search engine. Then you learn more. If you're sitting around on instagram waiting for some legend to explain an entire history of an art form to you then you're just being lazy.

Howdy friends.

This topic has been on my mind for a while and seemingly on the minds of others given that it's been a talking point on multiple episodes of the WCN podcast, but I thought it was time to have a larger discussion on the differences and disconnections between generations in the noise scene. It's quite apparent that there are significant differences in how people interact with others in the scene and with the music itself depending on their age and relative experience/time spent in the scene.

It would appear to me as though a majority of the people active in the broader scene globally are in the late 20s to 40s range, and largely are familiar with the standards of how things work. Maybe that is the case, or maybe that's simply the demographic that is represented the most vocally. I don't really know, is this actually the case? Do you feel like your perspective in the noise scene is represented?

I, for reference, am 24 and have been into noise for almost 4 years at this point, but I mostly lived in an area where there was no scene, and it has taken me a long fucking time to figure out what's going on, and I'm still not there. Lately I've been trying harder to participate more, partially thanks to moving to a city that actually has a noise scene, and I've also been binging all of the WCN episodes to try and learn as much as I can. But still I get this feeling of being disconnected. Experience level plays a part for sure, but I suspect more and more that it's kind of an age thing. Broadly speaking, it seems to me like a 30 year old and a 40 year old would have more in common than a 20 year old and a 30 year old nowadays, which I believe is a symptom of the increasing technological advancements and the role it plays in our lives.

The way I grew up and the relationship I have with technology is so much different then someone 5 years older than me, yet also very different than someone 5 years younger, and I think that kind of thing significantly impacts how we approach communication, both online and irl. Like I don't think forums are really much of younger person thing because it feels sort of antiquated compared to more streamlined platforms like social media. Obviously social media has a lot of very negative effects on people and whatever, but for the younger generation, it's something we grew up with and has pretty much been established as an integral part of existing online for us. It's kind of hard to escape the idea that if it doesn't exist on social media than it doesn't exist when that sort of thinking has been engrained in us from a young age. Sure, not all younger people think that way, and many interact in other parts of the internet and whatnot, but it seems like the disconnect between that line of thinking and the more generally millennial noise scene has had severe repercussions on younger blood accessing the scene.

As with anything, there's a learning curve, and for noise, it seems like the curve gets steeper the younger you are, and it's got me wondering what we can do to help with that. I think Oskar has done an especially outstanding job in disseminating noise knowledge to a broader audience, a younger audience even. For a younger person like myself, the WCN podcast has helped tremendously in my understanding of conventions and history, and even has touched on this subject we're talking about. But it seems like the conversation about the future of noise is always from an older, granted more experienced perspective, making the dialogue a bit one sided. Like is the future of noise in the hands of the older folks or the younger ones? There's obviously no future if there's no new young people to carry it forward, and I'm trying to do my part in learning and participating, but all of this has also shown me that the established noise conventions are heavily rooted in old technology, which from my perspective can be a bit alienating. I'd like to avoid getting into the topic of gatekeeping, but there is inevitably that aspect of what I'm talking about: barrier to entry. If technology keeps advancing, and noise doesn't change, the barrier to entry gets higher and higher, especially for younger folks. Is this good? Is it bad?

I assume a lot of you 30's and older grew up with an understanding of tapes and were exposed to a lot of diy culture, but when I grew up I didn't even know how to burn a CD, and I still don't. Alas, I learned how to use tape recorders and shit like that, but a teenager nowadays probably knows even less, and with the rising prices of tapes and equipment they're probably less likely than ever to go out of their way to learn about that stuff. So is that teenager just not going to get to be a part of the noise scene? It's not exactly their fault that they are coming out of the gate so poorly equipped to enter a scene such as this, and I think that's a huge consideration that gets overlooked by the older noise folk.

I bring all of this up not to shit on anyone, but so we can talk about these differences that maybe you didn't think about. So what are some things in the noise scene that you think could be changed to be more accommodating to a wider variety of ages, especially the younger generation? Does the noise scene even need to be more accommodating?

As controversial as social media and bandcamp are, I personally think it's pretty much the only way that younger people can even discover noise, especially because even just the way that younger people have learned to interact with the internet is very different than the way you older heads probably learned interact with the internet. Like when I was getting into noise, I thought that the way you had to do it was post a bunch of shit on bandcamp and heavily advertise it, because that was the model set before me by many others that I saw online. So why is the way I was exposed to worse than the way you were exposed to back in the day before the reign of bandcamp and instagram? Like it or not, it's just different times, so how can we better work to bridge the gap? Like I get wanting to make new people bend to the old ways, but at what point do the old ways have to bend to the new people? It's gotta be a give and take, you know? What do you think?

Sorry this is a long one, but I just love noise and I'm the most stoked I've ever been about it, and this stuff has been weighing on my mind heavily over the past couple of weeks. I'd encourage any other younger people to chime in with their experiences, because I surely can't be the only one who has noticed and thought about this phenomenon. And for older folks, what do you think? Do you feel disconnected from those younger than you in the scene? I know I already feel disconnected from those younger than me and I'm only 24. Overall I just want people to be more conscientious of where others are coming from when participating in the scene that way we can improve it for everyone, regardless of age.

Anyways thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[Joie de la Blumpy]

In November 1993, Iwasaki and his brothers partnered with Harman International Industries in a $55 million promotional deal that broke records for a celebrity endorsement (equivalent to $130,603,408 in 2021). The first Harman International Industries campaign, which ran in the US from 1993 to 1994 and launched its "New DODharshtronix" theme, included tour sponsorship, public relations events, and in-store displays. Iwasaki helped to create the advertisement, and suggested using his song "Portuguese Man-Of-War", with revised lyrics, as its jingle.

Reads like Ballard's The Secret History of World War 3.

Speaking of which, bit o trivia for ya.
Pretty accomplished rapper was Shohei Iwasaki.
He wrote lyrical bombs like Hiroshima in '73.
He wrote rhymes like Shakespeare when he wrote Anne Frank's Diary.
Which is about the civil war of 1812 in Germany.
He was like the Spanish Inquisition when they killed Jesus.
And Abe Lincoln's suicide was the theme for his thesis.
Like Moses he could focus when he split the Red Sea.
Like he did in 1950 with the Chinese army.

[DOG]

It would appear to me as though a majority of the people active in the broader scene globally are in the late 20s to 40s range, and largely are familiar with the standards of how things work. Maybe that is the case, or maybe that's simply the demographic that is represented the most vocally.

I suspect younger people make their own microscenes with little to no connection with the rest of the noise world, releasing and communicating exclusively online. It wouldn't surprise me if some netlabels are centered around Discord servers and that's where everything happens, invisible to anyone who isn't a member. Some people might also be more broadly involved in different scenes, like someone who's in the vaporwave scene (whose demographic appears to be more gen z and young millennial) having a noise project on the side.

Like I don't think forums are really much of younger person thing because it feels sort of antiquated compared to more streamlined platforms like social media. Obviously social media has a lot of very negative effects on people and whatever, but for the younger generation, it's something we grew up with and has pretty much been established as an integral part of existing online for us. It's kind of hard to escape the idea that if it doesn't exist on social media than it doesn't exist when that sort of thinking has been engrained in us from a young age.

There's a certain "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality in noise and certain older means of communication remain the most efficient. I think it's a mistake to view social media as more accessible for the younger generation because it's fundamentally bad at retaining information over time. Facebook and Instagram are good for chatting in the DMs and getting updates from artists and distros, but absolutely terrible for discussion; I've never seen a noise Facebook group or a subreddit that didn't devolve into an endless stream of no-context links and people not saying a word to each other. If there was a good comment thread a few years ago in an Instagram post, how are you going to look for it? The odds are stacked against you. An old forum thread is conveniently searchable and as readable today as it was when it was posted.

So what are some things in the noise scene that you think could be changed to be more accommodating to a wider variety of ages, especially the younger generation? Does the noise scene even need to be more accommodating?

It's easier than ever to learn about noise. You can browse Wikipedia, use Discogs or (god forbid) RateYourMusic, you can pirate everything, you can read forums, listen to podcasts, read a book. If you can't use the internet to your benefit in 2023 it's a skill issue.