[Music Is My Boyfriend] "No" Subject
Hello folks. I'm off to the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in about 15
minutes, so normal service should resume next Monday or thereabouts (I
doubt you'll even notice, hahaha). For some content to keep you going,
have a short article I wrote on No Wave for the Cherwell student paper
in Oxford, which may or may not have been published, I don't know.
"Yes it sounds like a joke. Yes it sounds like something the NME would
make up (incidentally does anyone remember their laughable attempt at
“no name” some years back?). No, you’ve almost certainly never heard of
it. But No Wave was an influential, pioneering and often challenging
music and art scene that briefly thrived in New York in the late 70s
and early 80s.
Although not strictly a coherent genre in itself the No Wave bands
formed a loose collection that sort to distance themselves from the
emergent new wave scene. Drawing on a range of diverse influence,
including funk, jazz and all things avant garde, the music itself is
often extremely dissonant and seems to favour rhythm and texture over
actual melody. The musicians, many of them artists as well, embraced
the “do it yourself” attitude of punk, with added nihilist tendencies.
No Wave’s mission statement is undoubtedly the Brian Eno produced “No
New York”, which features tracks by scene stalwarts James Chance and
the Contortions, DNA, Mars and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. Of these the
Contortions are by far the best, their signature song “Contort
Yourself” being an essential introductory track, whereas Teenage Jesus
are definitely best avoided at first.
However, perhaps a better introduction to the varied sounds of the
scene, and one that’s somewhat easier to get hold of, is the “New York
Noise” compilation, which includes tracks by the almost criminally
funky Konk, the magnificent Bush Tetras and the sublime ESG.
Inevitably the influence of No Wave far surpassed the extremely limited
popularity it enjoyed during its lifetime. Theoretical Girls, and
especially their experimental guitarist Glenn Branca, were greatly
influential on Sonic Youth and indeed both Lee Ranaldo and Thurston
Moore played with Branca on his solo recordings. Sonic Youth’s
“Confusion is Sex” is the best realisation of their early No Wave
tendencies and Glenn Branca’s “Lesson No. 1” is one of the most
beautiful and interesting compositions of the period, and relatively
easy on the ears to boot. Other modern bands influenced by the No Wave
scene, and all worth checking out, include Liars (particularly “Drum’s
Not Dead”), Les Georges Leningrad and Erase Errata.
So if you like your music to be challenging and inventive, often
difficult but ultimately rewarding, then you could do much worse than
checking out this remarkable period in post-punk music history.
Sometimes it is better just to say “No”."
Horatio x
minutes, so normal service should resume next Monday or thereabouts (I
doubt you'll even notice, hahaha). For some content to keep you going,
have a short article I wrote on No Wave for the Cherwell student paper
in Oxford, which may or may not have been published, I don't know.
"Yes it sounds like a joke. Yes it sounds like something the NME would
make up (incidentally does anyone remember their laughable attempt at
“no name” some years back?). No, you’ve almost certainly never heard of
it. But No Wave was an influential, pioneering and often challenging
music and art scene that briefly thrived in New York in the late 70s
and early 80s.
Although not strictly a coherent genre in itself the No Wave bands
formed a loose collection that sort to distance themselves from the
emergent new wave scene. Drawing on a range of diverse influence,
including funk, jazz and all things avant garde, the music itself is
often extremely dissonant and seems to favour rhythm and texture over
actual melody. The musicians, many of them artists as well, embraced
the “do it yourself” attitude of punk, with added nihilist tendencies.
No Wave’s mission statement is undoubtedly the Brian Eno produced “No
New York”, which features tracks by scene stalwarts James Chance and
the Contortions, DNA, Mars and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. Of these the
Contortions are by far the best, their signature song “Contort
Yourself” being an essential introductory track, whereas Teenage Jesus
are definitely best avoided at first.
However, perhaps a better introduction to the varied sounds of the
scene, and one that’s somewhat easier to get hold of, is the “New York
Noise” compilation, which includes tracks by the almost criminally
funky Konk, the magnificent Bush Tetras and the sublime ESG.
Inevitably the influence of No Wave far surpassed the extremely limited
popularity it enjoyed during its lifetime. Theoretical Girls, and
especially their experimental guitarist Glenn Branca, were greatly
influential on Sonic Youth and indeed both Lee Ranaldo and Thurston
Moore played with Branca on his solo recordings. Sonic Youth’s
“Confusion is Sex” is the best realisation of their early No Wave
tendencies and Glenn Branca’s “Lesson No. 1” is one of the most
beautiful and interesting compositions of the period, and relatively
easy on the ears to boot. Other modern bands influenced by the No Wave
scene, and all worth checking out, include Liars (particularly “Drum’s
Not Dead”), Les Georges Leningrad and Erase Errata.
So if you like your music to be challenging and inventive, often
difficult but ultimately rewarding, then you could do much worse than
checking out this remarkable period in post-punk music history.
Sometimes it is better just to say “No”."
Horatio x