Whitehouse

Noah Baby Food

Well-known member
but you're right though, all that stuff is WELL funny...I love it. Whitehouse make me crack a big smile. I have apparently got a 'sick sense of humour' though.
 

MankyFiver

Well-known member
i so wanna like them but it just hasnt clicked yet, i just laugh at their song titles and always feel like i dont have the intellectual or perv energy to invest

but yes they looked beautiful when they were young
yum
 

hurricane run

Well-known member
Bennett djed at optimo years ago. played 'nice' records. not what i expected. sharply dressed.

whitehouse played live there not that long ago. went down a storm.
 

Noah Baby Food

Well-known member
he's a big fan of Italo Disco, and has no truck with the 'noise scene'. I like that. I like the clean-cut, nice clothes image too.
 

MankyFiver

Well-known member
he's a big fan of Italo Disco, and has no truck with the 'noise scene'. I like that. I like the clean-cut, nice clothes image too.

love the fact that he's an italo disco fan, be good for him to release a mix

but must admit i did not like the clothes they were wearing in the feature
 

tate

Brown Sugar
I love these guys. Saw them for the second time last week, at the Brudenell in Leeds. It was by far the loudest thing I've ever heard, very powerful indeed. The new stuff is good, uses a lot of African instruments and is kinda rhythmic - a definite departure from their early screechy feedback sound.
Bennett has a blog called "Afro Noise." On it he recently mentioned a track made by norman william long, a good friend of mine who is an extraordinary sound artist and with whom I've been collaborating and playing shows lately doing live electronics as a duo. Norm's also a fascinating turtablist and DJ, we've DJ'd the same venue off and on for a couple of years, anyway,

http://afronoise.blogspot.com/2007/06/audition-2.html
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
All that 'get down on your knees, worship my cock' etc S & M chat, minimal lyrics, is the old stuff...they've been off that for quite a while now. Recent stuff has been VERY lyrically dense, alluding to Scientology questioning, NLP and all sorts of stuff...there's a lot to take in, really.

personally I prefer straightforward SM to dense Scientological allusion ;)
 

Octopus?

Well-known member
I have been absolutely LOVING "Ascetics" and "Racket" recently. Such great and extremely listenable discs...while I appreciate what Peter Sotos' intent may have been, it seems that cutting loose from his obsessions (and no longer including 14 minute sound collages of tearful rape victims and sobbing mothers of pedophilia victims) has really tightened up their sound while infinitely expanding their horizons. The djembe mixed with jackhammer distortion on "Racket" is incredible and both these discs are hugely invigorating. This is pretty much how I imagined Whitehouse would sound after reading descriptions of them, so I'm very pleased that they now sound exactly like my imaginary teenage conception of them.

Anybody heard the "Extreme Noise From Africa" compilation? As far as I have heard, it's supposed to be William Bennett experimenting with the Afro-noise they've recently adapted under a number of pseudonyms and if it's anything like the last two discs, I'm completely sold. </GUSHING>
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I'm really surprised you don't like em given your taste gek, I just think they rock, it's kinda quite simple. Nothing shocks me so I'm not after that in them, I just like the tones they put together on record. Live they're very funny - Martin's right about the panto stuff. I loved it when they got together with Albini and did all that stuff, even down to the cover artwork which I never normally give a toss about, it was just rock.

Well fair enough. I actually liked some of their rhetoric in the Wire interview but find their lyrics nowadays just as banal but in a different way to before, a new flavour of banal perhaps... the afri-noise angle is cute, but I'm uncertain as to how well they actually execute it. I also think their outright dismissal of the rest of the noise scene is pure posturing nonsense. Indeed to reprise the Reynolds idea perhaps noise becomes interesting only when it takes for granted the idea of pleasing an audience, rather than in some real or imagined sense offending some "other". But the whole having cake/eating it seems to be pure po-mo- something which I'm sure they would deny... or it rests at the level of audience response which indeed makes them bizarre bedfellows of R Kelly to that extent (Trapped in the Closet etc)...

William Bennett also amusingly has a sideline in delivering relationship counselling (apparently).
 

tate

Brown Sugar
Indeed to reprise the Reynolds idea perhaps noise becomes interesting only when it takes for granted the idea of pleasing an audience, rather than in some real or imagined sense offending some "other".
You referred to this idea before and I was wondering where Simon says/writes this? I'm not doubting it, just curious. Personally, I don't know much at all about the meaning of "noise" in a UK context (and I've not seen the Wire issue with WH in it) but the suggestion that noise must "offend" doesn't really seem to square with music currently being made under the name "noise" in the northeast US

EDIT: thanks for the reference
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
No exactly I agree- (as regards the current noise scene). I'm trying to track down the Reynolds quote... but the basic idea is that part of the enjoyent of noise (and probably other genres like metal too I imagine) stems from the idea of the imagined displeasure of the other... Ah I've located it, or at least the reference to it (from Keith Moline's Noise round up in the Wire from January 2007)

In "Blissed Out"... Simon Reynolds made the pertinent point that the notion of noise music as being somehow subversive or disturbing was pretty ludicrous when one considered how few listeners would actually stick around to be disturbed...

Also if the idea of noise in its purest sense is the breakdown of signal, or signal you don't want to or indeed can't receive or interpret, then the idea of noise music itself becomes absurd. Its just noisy music based in abstract sound. "Noise" to a noise-fan might then be smooth jazz or the like... but perhaps then this might revive the notion of "noise" and the other- it is not that the audience receives it as noise, or that the non-noise-initiated would "stick around" for the displeasure of hearing it, but that to a large number of people it would be signal they couldn't understand as music. The enjoyment then could come not merely in part from the imagined horror of the other, but as a part of a radical (but slow and continuing) project to force the musical situation to take account of what previously had been deemed "unspeakable" or "noise" (to put it in a vaguely Badiouian context). This is of course to put to one side the innate aesthetic sensual qualities which can be enjoyed of good noise...
 
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labrat

hot on the heels of love
what's with the silent track on Birthdeath Experience?*

*Birthdeath Experience is the title of the track too
 

straight

wings cru
theyve done that on quite a few albums apparently, not sure which ones as ive only a couple of early ones. they go into it in that wire article that everyone loved earlier in the thread
 

martin

----
what's with the silent track on Birthdeath Experience?*

*Birthdeath Experience is the title of the track too

It's supposed to be a tribute to John Cage (but incorrectly attributed to Stockhausen on the original sleevenotes). It's called 'fucking around' and 'art'
 

john eden

male pale and stale
theyve done that on quite a few albums apparently, not sure which ones as ive only a couple of early ones. they go into it in that wire article that everyone loved earlier in the thread

"Politics" was another silent track, I think.
 
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