Quote of the day

"To many people now, noise isn’t necessarily an aggressive or alienating element; it sounds more like nature than nature does."

New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones wraps up a piece on noise bands with a general concluding statement that would also serve as a very neat specific description of Fuck Buttons. Labelling Animal Collective as noise seems rather perverse, at least in view of their recent output - but then this statement is equally true of them.

Of the other artists who are referenced in the article, I need to investigate HEALTH and Merzbow, but wasn't very keen on what little of Sightings I could find on Youtube and two encounters with Wolf Eyes were enough to put me off them. Black Dice are playing the Godspeed!-curated ATP in December, so it'll be interesting to see how they compare. 'Kokomo' I find enthralling and unsettling in equal measure - the Beach Boys song of the same name it ain't...

Incidentally, the article was brought to my attention by the Jagjaguwar blog, via which I also learned that Black Mountain have a new album out shortly and a tour date in Oxford on 4th September (needless to say, it's in the diary). I enjoyed the defence of the Besnard Lakes' smoke machine too...