Overwhelming IRL sonic experiences

[droid]

Another evening on the hill. Still bright as you've arrived early to avoid the weather. You approach the peak from an unusual angle, scaling a steep bank, then winding up and around through clusters of quartzite spattered with green and perse lichen. The cloud descends as you rise and by the time you reach the summit a diffuse white mantle has shrouded the cairn. A comrade stands at the edge looking west. He beckons you over. 'Listen to the wind he says', wide eyed. You laugh, empty your ears, stare out into the white.

Sure enough, you hear it. A steady tenor breath, oscillating in some rhythm you can almost grasp, counterpoint contralto bursts coming straight up the cliff, scattered and softened by the fog, and an eerie fluted whistle swirling around, beneath, and above you. You stand for what seems like hours, hypnotised by the playful, temperate wildness of it, this intimate chamber music of the mountain performed under a deadening smudge of vapour by a generous wind that's travelled miles over wave, rock and field just to play this song.

You laugh again.

 

[catalog]

All the Shaka chat on the dub thread reminds me of an earth shattering sonic experience at subdub in Leeds a few years ago.

I was in the main room. Iration steppas faded out their tune and there was this HUGE sound from behind the crowd, on the other side of the room. Not a siren, more a steadily ratcheting up drum beat, but so loud that it felt like it would break.

And the lights swivelled onto the guest for the night, King Earthquake, all on his own behind a very small desk, sort of looked like a little mobile unit.

But somehow he was creating this incredible sound.

Crowd went mad.

And then he started on the mic and even that was thunderous. Classic stuff.

 

[thirdform]

this in Manchester




It's punishing enough on headphones, imagine what its like being pumped through a function one, thought I was going to die, cracking stuff.

 

[shakahislop]

my bloody valentine when i saw them a couple of years ago were something genuinely unique sonically. i've seen plenty of loud stuff but they were going for (and achieving) something different to big club soundsystems or metal gigs. i've got a lot more respect for them after that. couldn't take my earplugs out for that much of the time because it was incredibly loud and i'm a bit protective of my basic sensory abilities but there was a really unique physicality to what they were doing. bass yes but also these waves of higher frequencies coming towards your face, and with them the higher frequencies are really what's of interest i think.

car and bigger bombs are obviously quite an intense sonic and physical experience. i've been around a lot of those. there's a kind of shockwave thing that you feel as well as the sound of it (and the noise is much quieter than eg the iration steppas system, obviously depending on how close you are). and then silence straight after. hard to explain but i'm giving it a crack as probably not many people have had that experience.

The Bug and Shackleton in about 2007 is the best example i've got of that bass assault thing.

there's a place in NYC called Knockdown Center which has a really loud, probably quite expensive and genuinely horrible soundsystem. they whack it up and the high frequencies are skull-piercing, i hate it. that's probably not deliberate on their part but that one is unsurvivable without earplugs.

almost all the metal i like feels very silly on record, like a load of men playing with toy cars or something, they should no better, but then seeing it in the flesh it all makes sense and i wonder why anyone bothers making any other kind of music

 

[shakahislop]

mine. two. one non-musical, one semi-musical.

1) countless times in life: riding a bicycle underneath elevated tracks as a train goes by overhead, especially when you're going in the same direction and you ride under the train for several consecutive blocks. it's not necessarily the loudness - tho it is loud - but the totality of the sensory expense. live wire sonic energy vibrating down thru every inch of your skeleton, teeth rattling microtonally in their sockets, the heightened mind-body awareness of riding a bicycle fast through heavy track, the perfect illusion of an eternal now in which there is no future and no past, merely the current moment being experienced stretching out infinitely in both directions.

2) a basement hardcore show, ca. 2000ish: some more noiseish band ending their 20-minute set with like 10 minutes of squalling, overpowerlingly loud feedback. the crowd was 100% not into it. it was the first time I'd ever heard of something like that - like, you don't have to play songs? you can just make crazy noise with no discernible parameters? it blew my goddamn mind.

i have had #1 a million times in nyc, mostly in queens, and i am always convinced that a screw is going to come loose and shoot me in the head like a bullet. the combination of the noise and the fact that it means there's a million things going on, you can't hear the cars, the shit visibility cycling anywhere underneath those big green track supports, makes it intense like you say.

 

[shakahislop]

The Bug's Pressure night that DannyL and I went to last year.

Brought out all those influences so well- SWANS, Shaka, Iration Steppas, Loop and the Butthole Surfers. Pounding psychedelic dubwise noise.

What's interesting is that it has to be overwhelming and GOOD. These days if I see something super loud and overwhelming and it's shit I just put earplugs in, or step outside.

loud and shit is such a shitty combination

 

[Clinamenic]

I saw Merzbow at this Red Bull Drone Activity festival on Goose Island in Chicago a few years back. It was the first time at was at a live music event where I felt my whole body reverberating for hours on end, and the first one where I had to where ear plugs. Red Bull gave out free ones.

 

[Leo]

mentioned this earlier in this thread, probably around 1988, lee renaldo opening for swans at cbgb, when he'd just put out his first solo record "from here to eternity". it was him and I think another guy, crouched down on stage fiddling with his various guitar distortion pedals and boxes for about a half hour. just noisy squall, loud as fuck but after about 10 minutes became mesmerizing. crowd was not into it at first, they wanted sonic youth v2, but ended up giving them a pretty big round of applause when it was over.

ironically, swans that night were the least loud I'd even seen them, early gigs where Michael Gira came on stage at the start on his own playing acoustic guitar.

also remember a husker du gig at Maxwell's (capacity 200) where they were so loud it was just a sheet of white noise, couldn't even really tell what song they were playing.

another fond Maxwell's memory: the replacements playing so loud that paint chips were flaking off the old tin ceiling.

I too invested in ear plugs after a certain point, should have done it earlier.

 

[DLaurent]

I saw My Bloody Valentine once. The noise section of You Made Me Realise was funny to watch all the security wonder what's going on as I don't think they expected it. And another one that made me chuckle, being in a rough area of West Brom doing a job... a couple of lads had a suped up Audi and were racing down the street outside the house I was at... one of them exclaimed about the car, "It's a tool!". Made me jump.

 

[shakahislop]

It wasn't overwhelming, but a tune on my speakers coming to a close and suddenly hearing the birds cycling on a quite quiet Avenue A at 7.30 this morning was a nice sonic experience. They came out of nowhere.

 

[shakahislop]

I saw Merzbow at this Red Bull Drone Activity festival on Goose Island in Chicago a few years back. It was the first time at was at a live music event where I felt my whole body reverberating for hours on end, and the first one where I had to where ear plugs. Red Bull gave out free ones.
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Merzbow is top of the list of 'things I haven't seen but want to'

 

[shakahislop]

I saw Sunn once, in thier prime (2006ish), and to be honest I found it pretty boring

 

[Leo]

I saw Sunn once, in thier prime (2006ish), and to be honest I found it pretty boring

I don't think I've ever heard them, not sure why not. on one hand, they seem like they'd be cool but something about them just doesn't grab me.

 

[shakahislop]

I don't think I've ever heard them, not sure why not. on one hand, they seem like they'd be cool but something about them just doesn't grab me.

I mean they were alright. But I found the bass wall a bit boring after a while. Would give it another crack if they played near me again though.

That was at Dour 2007 in Belgium, where my mate made me leave Autechre halfway through, who I never saw again, I missed prime-era Wiley, who I didn't see until 2016 and he was all kinds of gash, missed Beenie Man, missed Merzbow, missed Michel Gira,

 

[Murphy]

West Indian Cavaliers end of summer bash at the Marcus Garvey centre

The sound of nothing but the whipping wind in northern Canada

Kenny Ken and Randall at Awol

 

[luka]

ive never had a remotely overwhelming sonic experience but im a more resiliant character than most of you and correspondingly less easily overwhelmed.

 

[don]

i watched demonlover while in the very front row of the theater

 

[line b]

very cool don

 

[forclosure]

obvious one and its a specific one that's dwindled from their hayday but that specific soundscape that comes with being surrounded by arcade machines/game consoles

There's a warehouse spot down Manor house that does fighting games tings near there but even when Trocadero was about, 2p machines house of the dead cabinets, the DDR cabinets at full volume and then wedged off in the corner the one guy playing one of those multicabs that have all the bait early 80s games on it

 

[wektor]

myself playing some digidrone last night
my head started pulsating halfway through and it was a really weird feeling overall