[Guest Column] Nestor Matthews // Fascination with the Noisy

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Things you might want to read about stuff you probably won’t want to hear -an attempted exploration into a fascination with the noisy, atonal and arhythmic.

Hello, my name is Nestor and I spend most of my time playing drums in a band called Sky Larkin. The rest of my days are more often than not spent cultivating a burgeoning obsession with the collection, consumption and production of alternative music, and I use the word alternative in its purest sense; alternative attitudes towards the rules of rhythm, structure, melody and dynamics that oversee the majority of mainstream western music today.

In an attempt to sound less mad and/or new age, I thought I’d attempt to highlight some of the bands, artists and movements that best convey what I find so fascinating.

Something that is notably consistent throughout all of sludgy U.S stalwarts Harvey Milk’s complete works is a brooding patience of epic, almost masochistic proportions; the ability to hold off the impending apocalyptic groan of detuned guitars and that guttural howl until we as listeners and, at times, possibly the band themselves can hardly bear it. I imagine that the temptation to simply blast everyone with everything they’ve got (and Harvey Milk have got a lot) has been a constant itching presence in the back of their minds. Perhaps as a result of this, you can practically hear the resolve against such indulgences strengthen from album to album, culminating in the lethargic and nauseatingly shifting majesty of Harvey Milk’s latest offering, A Small Turn Of Human Kindness. Rhythms so sparse and melodies so obtuse barely hang together across seven onerous tracks that teeter on the edge of sensical; biding their time until we’ve all but given up hope. Only then does the drifting racket lurch into triumphant cascades of harmony and sheer power that, for me, instantly make the long and arduous journey seem utterly worthwhile.

HARVEY MILK – ‘I’ve Got A Love’

If Harvey Milk are to be considered patient men, then Machinefabriek is patience personified. Machinefabriek’s sound is organic both in its unexplainably nostalgic samples and in its cautious, stuttering evolution. Haunting, encumbering and at first seemingly aimless; multiple listens of Machinefabriek’s work belie truly staggering amounts of consideration and control. To sculpt something so emotive and complete in itself using what are essentially shadows of sound, echoes of noises that were never heard, without resorting to poetic padding (as I just did) or pointless meandering requires utmost self-criticism, determination and ability. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Now, to achieve this once is certainly impressive, but over the last few years Machinefabriek has released countless EPs and experiments, sometimes upwards of one a month, that consistently mutate and warp, splintering off into whole new food chains of ideas, humming with potential and a life of their own. So many minimal artists almost immediately trip themselves up, getting caught in a vicious electronic circle. Machinefabriek’s work gives me the impression that he’s only just waking up.

MACHINEFABRIEK – ‘Dauw’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AkGNHkrtnc

From the subtle and sublime to the crude, primal and skull crushingly loud. After reading and remembering the name (how could you not?) in some arcane journal, I found a few battered Shit and Shine CDs in Seattle last year, though they are actually based in London. Due to lack of appropriate equipment at the time I couldn’t indulge until I touched down back in the UK, though I’m not sure any passage of time could have prepared me (or my speakers) for the aural and almost physical assault that spewed forth as soon as I pressed play… Shit and Shine are a collective helmed by Craig Clouse of heavy-weight sludgers Todd which instantly labels them, in some people’s minds, as ‘side-project’ and therefore irrelevant, unimportant and immature. Immature or not, Shit and Shine revel in boiling up the most bile-drenched, venomous and selfish pandemonium they can. Employing an ever changing army of blind-drunk drummers, musically deaf guitarists and psychotic vocalists Shit and Shine give birth to this throbbing, unnameable and unspeakable entity that somehow excretes an oxymoronic sense of tranquility amid the all consuming chaos. It could be that prolonged exposure to such relentless carnage dulls the senses like some kind of slow sonic torture, but that doesn’t explain the compulsion to press on to the end, to survive. I think the easiest way to describe and comprehend Shine and Shine is to compare it to the force of nature known as the tornado. You can only watch as chunks of a world you recognise are torn up and flung around you while you stand, helpless and paradoxically at peace, in the eye of the storm attempting to imagine what scenes await you when the chaos finally subsides. Basically, it’s a bit fucking hard.

Shit and Shine