Questions for fans of Drone / Noise music

wascal · 2015-03-05T16:15:27.000Z

I’ve never really delved into this kind of music apart from a couple of Fennesz albums and catching Hecker live once at a festival by mistake.

Still, every now and then I buy Wire magazine here in the UK and read glowing reviews for these kinds of LP’s, then when I have a listen its literally like a wall of fuzz or one note for 7 minutes.

I noticed on the Science lab entries that there seems to be quite a few people who lean towards this stuff so thought I’d do a bit of research.

How did you get into it and at what age?
How can you tell whats good and whats bad?
When do you listen to it and for how long?
Are there drone ‘hits’? Like all time classics?

more questions to follow

the_dreammer · 2015-03-05T17:48:28.000Z

only a select few in the world, can make drones that “tell a story”
ever evolving flow of sounds stemming from 1 sound… that I can enjoy.
(sorry no examples… but I did hear a few in my lifetime.

in my universe, i can find better drones and stuff as background noises in ambient or glitchmusic…

that’s basicly why i use drones… instead of long pads… same difrence…
either have chords in the background… or a drone in the rootnote of my song… filler…

but as a music-genre as is… sorry… i think it sucks ass (atleast the vast majority of stuff i heard)

jeffe · 2015-03-05T20:23:25.000Z

""wascal"":

How did you get into it and at what age?

How can you tell whats good and whats bad?

When do you listen to it and for how long?

Are there drone ‘hits’? Like all time classics?

more questions to follow

First band when I was 13. We just wanted to be louder and more abrasive than anyone else. We also had kind of a garage vibe at times though (go figure) and we were a three piece standard guit/bass/drums/stuff we didn’t know how to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdeo7Q2E5cE
(I’m saying I can’t/won’t answer that)
Usually at home - for as long as it takes. Never in the car.
Really depends on yer definition - but as far as noise goes Sonic youth often get cred for some ‘hits’ (holier than thou types scoff away at this point). As far as drone - maybe SAWII at times? Maybe not droney enough for you. I once saw an Indian classical music piece that was basically an hour long drone and that sort of turned me onto it before I really dove into it myself.
No none of these suggestions are very underground or pure, but then you did ask for ‘hits’, which sort of implies accessibility.

When I was real deep into it, the stuff we would make was because we stumbled on a good sound and we just hit record while we tweaked it. I’m not talking about a synth patch i’m talking about mountains of mis-connected / feedbacking gear.

I once had the cops called on me while I was playing a piece we did. It was not too loud but had a shitty neighbor. When the cop got there he said he couldn’t do anything because he couldn’t ‘hear any music’. ;]
I also had a friend who would put on a specific (high) frequency in the complex we were living at all night. This place could actually put on and pack out a straight up drone type show I’m talking no room to move and earplugs at the door type stuff everybody paying cover to get in.

Yer making me nostalgic.

GovernorSilver · 2015-03-05T20:27:27.000Z

""wascal"":

I’ve never really delved into this kind of music apart from a couple of Fennesz albums and catching Hecker live once at a festival by mistake.

Still, every now and then I buy Wire magazine here in the UK and read glowing reviews for these kinds of LP’s, then when I have a listen its literally like a wall of fuzz or one note for 7 minutes.

I noticed on the Science lab entries that there seems to be quite a few people who lean towards this stuff so thought I’d do a bit of research.

How did you get into it and at what age?

How can you tell whats good and whats bad?

When do you listen to it and for how long?

Are there drone ‘hits’? Like all time classics?

more questions to follow

I listened to the No Pussyfooting album by Eno and Robert Fripp. I was in college at the time. You won’t believe this, but I was not on drugs and I wasn’t even into drinking yet.
Gut feeling. Sorry. I think most people can sense though if something is bullshit or if it was done with sincere effort.
Several time a week. Until the track finishes.
Aforementioned album:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_JWVKAdrm0

Eliane Radigue is the Godmother of Drone. This is the first track from her classic work Trilogie de la Mort:

jeffe · 2015-03-05T20:33:12.000Z

As far as drone ‘hits’ go as well, Pauline Oliveros’s Tuning Meditation can be a really powerful thing to experience.

avantronica · 2015-03-05T23:26:49.000Z

I think this is an intriguing question, because i’m almost inclined to come at it from the opposite direction. Linear evolving structures seem normal as an aesthetic idea, and at the other end, but the same end of the posted question the idea of chaos and random seems normal and right to me. Don’t get me wrong, i love great tunes, beats and all sorts of music from alt-traditional to experimental and conceptual. Some of my favourite artists have little baring on my own output, but enormous influence on my cultural and emotional nourishment.

I’m a bit more perplexed about the notion of creating predetermined or arranged music, that feels alien to me, particularly from an improvising perspective. So the question naturally makes me think of no-pussyfooting and evening star as a starting point, but those are drone-like relative to highly organised music imho, it’s a matter of perspective, or timelines, in the same way it is for looking at planet evolution, some things look dynamic up close but static long term and some seem static but on other scales are very active.

So to put something on the table, i thought i’d pitch in for Phill Niblock. He works with tiny tiny grains of sound and evolves his works on a glacial scale. Live he is quite a presence despite the low metabolism act because the music enters you, one time he made the audience adopt blindfolds. It’s loud and very visceral. I also recall buying a double cd from the Touch founder at a festival once and i played it all through on a long drive on an empty motorway and it was one of the most resonant and transcendent experiences i recall, i was transfixed by the imperceptibly slow evolution of this piece, it was art, it’s not fucking about. If you’re part of the post-mtv generation it may be tricky to see it through, but that’s the only way to begin to get something from it.

Try Steve Reich’s Drumming (NOT drone btw), all of it, start to finish, it is cleansing by the end, almost meditative. Anyway, this link below is typical of Niblock i guess from that period and i think it is closer to an actual drone, but again, it’s not really, depending on perspective/scale. The youtube artefacts are particularly horrible on this one, most definitely not nice, imagine the disruption to a Rothko(artist, not band, try them too) if it were put through a naff jpg algorithm, destroys it up close. Fwiw, i’m more drawn to the less ‘pure’ , more textural and chaotic ‘linear’ evolving music, just thought this would be a useful waypoint, Philip Jeck is a latter hero also eno and fripp, and even GAS for me ticks a similar box in terms of how the music evolves

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

pselodux · 2015-03-05T23:51:08.000Z

""wascal"":

How did you get into it and at what age?

How can you tell whats good and whats bad?

When do you listen to it and for how long?

Are there drone ‘hits’? Like all time classics?

I can’t really remember when I started liking it. I think it stems from playing gigs in my late teens. The experimental electronic scene in my home city (Perth, Australia) was pretty small, so any gigs would be pretty diverse, ranging from IDM to breakcore/hardcore and yeah, noise/drone stuff. I didn’t really understand it at the time but I started making jokey noise tracks that people in the breakcore scene seemed to love (until they found out it was a joke). From there I started combining noise with ambient music, just for my own experiments but eventually getting into the texture of it, and then I realised others like Fennesz, Pita and the Heckers were doing similar stuff and I started appreciating it a bit more seriously. I’m still not really into the super extreme distorted stuff, only because it just doesn’t sound as interesting texturally.
Yeah, see above. To me it’s all about texture, and I’m a sucker for a nice sustained chord. Merzbow never really excited me, for example, only because I find his textures pretty boring… though I can imagine it’d be pretty great live. I think that’s the key, noise/drone should be experienced live, or at least very loud, imo (or as loud as you can tolerate in headphones).
Probably once a week or so, at least. Maybe for an hour or two, depending on if I want to listen to a few albums in a row, or if I’m at a live gig. I play in a synthpunk/psych noise duo so our jams probably factor into that as well.
Not sure about hits/classics, but I really love Pita’s album ‘Get Down’. It’s got a bit more structure/rhythm than usual noise albums. As for drone, I dunno, maybe get some Sunn O))) albums? And yeah, as others have mentioned, Fripp’s guitar loop stuff is really great.

rozzbud · 2015-03-06T01:11:16.000Z

not a specialist but

1.velvet/john cale then pan sonic/vainio/fennesz then skullflower, burning star core (so early years and much later)

2.music doesn’t work like that for me. It’s either good or bad to my ears. But if you take tony conrad, eliane radigue or mika vainio for instance, you hear a work on “time&space installation”. Psychoacoustics can be a textural, almost narrative paradigm. So Sunno doesn’t make it for me and i don’t understand the whole guitar through an endless eventide reverb trend. It’s just boring.

I’ll contradict myself i like melvins doing drone, and also Stars of the lid.

3.honestly i avoid drone records, it became an absurd record shop genre when it’s just a compositionnal tool. I prefer noise/minimalism as a label. It’s like experimental cinema, structural cinema. I used to think it was the shit but in the end formalism becomes formulatic.

For classics, radigue, tony conrad live is a cool experience. Coil has classics. Kranky records is known for “classic” post-rockish drone. Harvey milk is a good drone-doom metal band if you’re into it. William Basinski is highly regarded. Thomas Köner has incredible records. Haven’t really dug further but Eleh seems recommandable. Mariane Amacher is also important in the academic field.

rozzbud · 2015-03-06T01:38:56.000Z

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

So you could explain me wtf is progressive house when minilogue and martin garrix belong to the same genre?

avantronica · 2015-03-06T10:12:48.000Z

""rozzbud"":

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

So you could explain me wtf is progressive house when minilogue and martin garrix belong to the same genre?

Perhaps, even though i know nothing of either artist, i couldn’t begin to describe/spot ‘progressive house’ … Is it 20minute pieces in 13/16 time
For me the genre thing is not so important, i like sound, i like the way artists use sound, i know what i like, probably stuff which sits outside of easy classification. Genres become important if you want to research stuff or follow discussions

wascal · 2015-03-06T10:53:10.000Z

Some great replies here so far and lots of music to seek out and absorb - cheers

I love that ‘never in the car’ rule Jeffe! I remember driving home late one sunday with ‘Mogwai - Like Herod’ on the stereo and nearly crashed when the massve wall of sound kicked in after near silence for a minute

Its interesting that some of you came from a more My Bloody Valentine side of things and some from ‘electronic feedback networks’ and kind of meet in the middle with the common goal being to make a huge earth shattering racket.

wascal · 2015-03-06T10:57:07.000Z

""rozzbud"":

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

So you could explain me wtf is progressive house when minilogue and martin garrix belong to the same genre?

The most basic definition is house music that starts in one place and ends in another (compared to just looping the same thing for 5 mins like DJ Sneak etc).

wascal · 2015-03-06T11:01:03.000Z

""avantronica"":

:Perhaps, even though i know nothing of either artist, i couldn’t begin to describe/spot ‘progressive house’ … Is it 20minute pieces in 13/16 time

I just imagined a Guy Gerber remix of Rush - 2112 overture and threw up a little bit of sick in my mouth

Barfunkel · 2015-03-06T11:08:55.000Z

""avantronica"":

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

Do it! I can post some tracks from the genres I’m mostly familiar with.

darenager · 2015-03-06T11:29:03.000Z

""wascal"":

I’ve never really delved into this kind of music apart from a couple of Fennesz albums and catching Hecker live once at a festival by mistake.

Still, every now and then I buy Wire magazine here in the UK and read glowing reviews for these kinds of LP’s, then when I have a listen its literally like a wall of fuzz or one note for 7 minutes.

How did you get into it and at what age?

How can you tell whats good and whats bad?

When do you listen to it and for how long?

Are there drone ‘hits’? Like all time classics?

more questions to follow

I understand you when it comes to “not getting it” 10 years ago I was pretty much the same, but for me I would use a comparison of like when you had your first beer or first cigarette etc - first time you tried it you did not understand what all the fuss was about right?
A couple of my own observations:

Just like any other genre of music, there is a lot of variety/styles of drone, the hardest part like with any other kind of music is finding the stuff you like.
Just like any other style of music there are lots of people making it who are not very proficient, this makes point 1 even more difficult!
To do it well takes immense skill and restraint, I find it much more difficult to make a good drone track than an ass shaker. It often involves a lot of pre-planning further in advance so that the piece moves throughout its duration at a glacial pace, but move it must or it becomes static, literally.
It is not a music you can ever appreciate on just a casual or skim listen, you have to commit to it, the listening environment is absolutely essential (for me) especially if trying to get into it for the first time.
It is (for me) functionally very different from any other kind of music, the closest relative stylistically is ambient.
Once you “get it” you can often listen to it without “actively” listening, it becomes a reflex or rather more subliminal.
It works best (again for me) when it is much longer than the average piece of music, typically 20 plus minutes.
I think it is certainly worth trying to get into it, once you get it the benefits are sometimes quite strange, altered states and shifted perceptions - and this coming from a new age skeptic/non-hippy. Sometimes if it connects with you it can make you laugh or feel a different emotion, it can be both a mirror or an amplifier of feelings.
Noise and drone are not always the same thing, I myself am more of fan of pure drone or drone techno, but not really into the noise stuff, I can appreciate it for what it is but it does not have the same effect, totally different in fact. But sadly they often get lumped together, further complicating point 1!
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here and answer your questions.

I got into it about 10 years ago when researching the effects of music on the brain.
In the same way that you decide your preference with anything else, by exploring and discovery.
I often listen to it at night, sometimes all night whilst I sleep, or sometimes whilst I am working, when other music might be too distracting or attention grabbing.
Erm, probably but I have no interest in that, I like what I like.
As for some listening suggestions, try these:
http://ambientsleepingpill.com/ -an online station which plays a lot of drone
Hammock - http://shop.hammockmusic.com
Kwajbasket - https://kwajbasket.bandcamp.com
Nobuto Suda -https://soundcloud.com/nobutosuda1101
Those are a few drone/ambient artists who I enjoy.
A couple of related things from me:
Celestial Objects | Daren Ager - drone techno
De La Sol | Daren Ager - ambient/drone
TL:DR That is all just my opinion though, others will no doubt differ or conflict

avantronica · 2015-03-06T14:26:02.000Z

""Barfunkel"":

avantronica:

I need to do a thread to get pointers to seminal tracks from the various sub-genres of dance music tbh

Do it! I can post some tracks from the genres I’m mostly familiar with.

Done
be my guest …

Dance Music 101 General Discussion

Okay, off the back of this thread and a general desire to get up to speed on classifications for the sake of curiosity and for research avenues, i’d like some curated input on the seminal sub-genres of Dance Music, and if it’s not too wide a net, Electronic Music. To keep it narrower, there’s no need to venture into the experimental realms as this is its own genre i guess. I have a broad taste in sound, but i always come to ‘dance’ music from other directions and influences and genres, so the i…

hereiamhere75 · 2015-03-06T15:44:48.000Z

i grew up on a far outside farm and i was pretty young when i was fascinated by sounds from planes or motorcycles making sounds that you might call “drone”
later i played (electric) guitar in a band and recognized that the guitar makes “drone” sounds of it´s own.
in my mid 20s i traveled to india and learned about instruments like the tanpura or shruti boxes…
the first time i heard of “drone-music” as a genre was when a friend of mine came along and gave me 3 CDs of Sunn O)))
(i still have them - that guy killed himself)
i think that´s a matter of taste. obviously many people don´t like that at all. for me it´s good when it keeps my mind busy long enough until i come into a different state of mind…
to be honest i´m most fascinated by sounds where air and space is involved…

3.i listen to it only sometimes. in this moment i listen to “birchville cat motel - kissing dragon” but only because you mentioned drone music

my all time classic is a big old propeller machine of the german army flying by my parents farm in bavaria, some miles away, a lot of frequencies echoed by mountains…a lot of bass, frequency shifting, modulations, etc… perfect drone.
somewhere on my old minidiscs there must be a recording of a motorcycle, recorded in a forest, the street like 500 meters away… you remembered me that i´ve got to find that recording, because that would be a classic too

hereiamhere75 · 2015-03-06T16:21:46.000Z

i forgot to mention that i do drone music myself from time to time.
(sorry, i´ve got no recordings, i do that just for fun…)
one typical setup would be: a “simple looping device” a guitar and/or a mic, a simple mixing desk, a distortion pedal, spring reverb, bit crusher, etc…connect that somehow, create a drone kind of loop and then start to create feedbacks with the mixing desk and play around with all the knobs…
tried doing that kind of music with the OctaTrack too but i prefer doing it without it

rozzbud · 2015-03-06T19:50:23.000Z

like others said, if you consider environmental noises and sounds you’ll be more likely to grasp drone music. Also if you like artists like rothko or james turell, and others who work on perception. I also agree on the principle of time extension, you also find this in structural cinema.

alfred · 2015-03-08T03:32:48.000Z

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961)]i got into “drone” around when fennesz ‘endless summer’ came out in 2001. that album was like a revelation to me. i was more into noise rock / post rock / post hardcore before that, but never much into “shoegaze”. 'endless summer" opened my eyes to what electronic music can be. techno has degenerated into club culture and i hated it with a passion. four to the floor rubbish, lame retro synth sounds and snobbish idiots… fennesz music to me was the opposite of all that. it was introspective, almost contemplative without being like shitty new age escapist meditation music, but more of a reflection on modern technology and the digital age. nowadays the glitch/ambient sound aestetic is something you hear in every supermarket and every TV jingle, but back then it was quite radical.

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961)]the bad “drone” stuff to me is what you hear on 90% of the drone/ambient bandcamp pages: endless boring synthpads with a shimmer reverb applied and all settings maxed out on it. no transients, no arrangements nothing that is distinguishible, just a wash of reverb that every idiot can put together in 5min. what also makes fennesz/hecker masters of their craft is that they perform their music live on a regular basis. their music doesn’t emerge from an ITB vacuum just to sit on a hard drive.

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961)]i hardly ever listen to much new ambient/dronemusic these days, but it still has a place in my heart.

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961)]you can trace “drone” music back to scelsi/dumitrescu/eno or even to the prehistoric age if you want. basically any music that consists of sustained sounds is “drone” music. it seems to be rediscovered by a young generation every ten years over and over again and everyone always thinks it is the latest s***. “drone” is such an annoying music marketing buzzword at the moment. But it really has ALWAYS been there and at times it was much better then it is now.
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961)]sure there’s plenty of classics. also check out charlemagne palestine or ligeti. but scelsi is definitely one of my favourites. i also see “drone” more rooted in the spectralist composers than in the minimalists. minimalism like reich/glass is much more rhythmic uptempo music that is composed of repetitive short phrases. it is in fact quite the opposite of “drone”.