Last week I caught Bastard Noise play in Bushwick. It was an awesome, awesome show. I met up with some buddies from NJ, and I even made a new friend who, it turns out, lives around the corner from me.
Bastard Noise's set was awesome, needless to say. It was really nice seeing them perform live. There are a lot of people out there who don't recognize experimental/electronic music, especially Noise Music, simply because there are no familiar compositional aspects for them to relate to. Meaning, if there are no "songs" (with lyrics, a chorus, and a bridge) than it must not be real music.
Yeah, sorry about that Tchaikovsky.
That's why Bastard Noise is such a good gateway drug to the world of noise music. Not only have these guys cut their teeth with legendary hardcore band Man Is The Bastard, but BN continues to utilize lyrics and vocals and stuff. While certainly not used in a conventional sense, the vocals provide the perfect point of relation in order to begin understanding what BN is really about. And if you can begin to understand what BN is about, you can begin to understand a lot of things.
So, in spite of the fact that there are no set song structures comparable to pop songs, after years of listening to BN, one becomes familiar with certain sounds that they use on a regular basis. All of these sounds are provided by the home-built gear that they have used since the inception of the project. Hearing these sounds being played loud was almost a religious experience for me. It was an amazing site.
I often get the feeling that a lot of bands operate more and more in pastiche. We've all begun to loose our sense of what reality really is like. We've become characters from movies, and our musicians have become cover/tribute bands. Even in noise music. Especially in noise music.
Bastard Noise is the antidote to all of this (contrary to what RZA claims).
Below are photos I took of the NSLU: No Skull Left Unturned ltd ed CD-R set that BN was shilling on tour. It includes recordings of Bastard Noise (feat. a collab with K2 even!), Amps for Christ, Unicorn, and more. Listed as being from "The Bastard Noise Family", the package also includes stickers, patches, a bookmark, and four different booklets - one with an old re-printed zine, one with interviews with Eric Wood during his BN days and his MITB days, schematics for their gear, and info on all the recordings.