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noisecore

Noisecore

United States ¡ 1980s
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Description

Noisecore is an ultra-chaotic, noise-saturated offshoot of hardcore punk and grindcore that pushes extremity to its limit.

It favors split-second song structures, explosive blast beats, feedback squall, and improvisation over melody, harmony, or traditional arrangement.

Releases often contain dozens or even hundreds of micro-tracks, recorded lo‑fi on cassette or 4‑track, emphasizing raw immediacy, distortion, and overload.

Vocals are typically screamed, barked, or reduced to texture; guitars and bass are mangled through high-gain pedals and feedback loops to form a nearly continuous wall of noise.

History
Origins (mid–late 1980s)

Noisecore emerged in the underground as a collision of hardcore punk’s speed and attitude, grindcore’s brevity and extremity, and the textural abrasion of noise and power electronics. Early exemplars like 7 Minutes of Nausea (Australia), Sore Throat (UK), The Gerogerigegege (Japan), and Anal Cunt (USA) stripped songs to impulsive bursts—often improvised—favoring distortion, feedback, and blast beats over conventional structure.

Tape-trading era and global spread (1990s)

During the 1990s, the style proliferated through international tape-trading networks, zines, and microlabels. Projects such as Deche-Charge (Canada), Meat Shits (USA), and Gore Beyond Necropsy (Japan) defined aesthetics of extreme lo‑fi recording, microscopic track lengths, and transgressive humor. The genre’s DIY ethos and cheap recording setups encouraged a worldwide, highly prolific cottage industry of splits, compilations, and rehearsal-room sessions.

2000s–present: Internet micro-scenes

With CD‑R culture, netlabels, and later Bandcamp/streaming, noisecore became even more decentralized and hyper-productive. Newer acts (e.g., Sete Star Sept, Gorgonized Dorks, Suppression) blended noise and grind with improvisation, live-on-the-floor tracking, and maximal clipping. While remaining niche, noisecore has influenced adjacent extremes—cybergrind, gorenoise, and certain noise-metal hybrids—by normalizing saturation, anti-structure, and volume-as-composition.

Aesthetics and ethos

Noisecore’s core principles are immediacy, overload, and irreverence. Performances often prioritize one-take spontaneity; fidelity is secondary to impact. Artwork and titles can be provocative or absurd, but the through line is an aggressive rejection of polish and musical hierarchy.

How to make a track in this genre
Instrumentation

Use a basic punk/grind setup: drums (fast, loud), guitar and bass (high-gain distortion), and a vocal mic. Add noise sources: feedback loops, contact mics, cheap cassette players, and harsh pedals (fuzz, distortion, ring mod, delay).

Rhythm and structure

Prioritize speed and brevity: blast beats, d‑beats, and frantic fills. Write micro-songs from 1–20 seconds, often recorded live in batches. Embrace abrupt start/stop cuts, hard mutes, and immediate transitions without verses or choruses.

Harmony and timbre

Treat pitch as texture. Use detuned power chords, chromatic rakes, pick scrapes, and atonal clusters. Push amps and pedals into clipping; layer feedback for a continuous noise floor. EQ is minimal—let the midrange aggression dominate.

Vocals and lyrics

Screams, yelps, grunts, and spoken bursts function as percussive noise. Lyrics can be absurdist, confrontational, or purely phonetic. Keep takes raw and single-pass; heavy mic proximity and saturation reinforce the texture.

Recording and production

Track live in one room to capture bleed and chaos. Record to cassette/4‑track or emulate with digital saturation, high input gain, and minimal editing. Avoid noise gates or heavy cleanup—let the hiss and clipping become part of the composition. Sequence dozens of short tracks with minimal gaps to maintain momentum.

Workflow tips
•   Rehearse transitions and cues (hand signals) for coordinated stop/start chaos. •   Print effects while tracking to commit to noisy textures. •   Use spontaneous improvisation alongside a few pre-planned blasts to balance immediacy and intent.
Main artists
Influenced by
Hardcore Punk
Hardcore punk is a faster, louder, and more abrasive offshoot of late-1970s punk rock. Songs are typically short (often under two minutes), propelled by rapid tempos, aggressive down‑stroked guitar riffs, and shouted or barked vocals. The style prioritizes raw energy over technical ornamentation: power‑chord harmony, minimal guitar solos, and tightly locked rhythm sections dominate. Lyrically, hardcore punk is intensely direct—often political, anti‑authoritarian, and socially critical—reflecting a DIY ethic that values independent labels, self‑organized shows, and community‑run spaces. The genre coalesced in U.S. scenes such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston, and soon spread internationally. Its velocity, attitude, and grassroots infrastructure profoundly shaped underground music and paved the way for numerous metal, punk, and alternative subgenres.
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme fusion of hardcore punk and metal characterized by blisteringly fast tempos, blast-beat drumming, heavily distorted guitars, and harsh, screamed or growled vocals. Songs are often extremely short—sometimes mere seconds—favoring intensity over conventional structure. The style ranges from politically charged and socially conscious lyrics to grotesque, gore-soaked imagery (especially in substyles like goregrind). Production can be raw and abrasive or tightly modern, but the aesthetic consistently emphasizes sonic extremity, density, and cathartic impact.
Noise
Noise is an experimental music genre that uses non-traditional sound sources, distortion, feedback, and extreme dynamics as primary musical materials. Instead of emphasizing melody, harmony, or conventional rhythm, it focuses on texture, density, timbre, and the physical presence of sound. Practitioners sculpt saturated walls of sound, piercing feedback, metallic clatter, contact-mic scrapes, tape hiss, and electronic interference into works that can be confrontational or meditative. Performances often highlight process and immediacy—improvisation, body movement, and site-specific acoustics—while recordings can range from lo-fi cassette overload to meticulously layered studio constructions. Though rooted in early avant-garde ideas, the genre coalesced as a distinct practice in the late 1970s and 1980s, especially through Japan’s ‘Japanoise’ scene, and subsequently influenced numerous styles across industrial, punk-adjacent, and experimental electronic music.
Harsh Noise
Harsh noise is an extreme form of noise music characterized by dense, high-volume, full-spectrum distortion that largely rejects melody, harmony, and conventional rhythm. It focuses on texture, saturation, and the psychoacoustic impact of sound. Rather than songs, works are often evolving blocks of feedback, amplified object sounds, and overloaded electronics, shaped into walls, bursts, or streams of sonic pressure. The aesthetic foregrounds physical intensity, unpredictability, and timbral complexity, often presented at ear-splitting sound-pressure levels. Although related to industrial and power electronics, harsh noise minimizes the role of beat and voice, emphasizing raw noise generation and continuous timbral sculpting. The scene is deeply DIY, thriving on small-run tapes, CDrs, and underground performance spaces.
Free Improvisation
Free improvisation is a practice of spontaneous music-making that avoids fixed idioms, stylistic templates, and pre-agreed structures. Musicians prioritize listening, interaction, and the exploration of sound itself—timbre, texture, dynamics, and silence—over conventional melody, harmony, or pulse. Guitarist Derek Bailey popularized the notion of "non-idiomatic improvisation," describing a music that deliberately resists falling into recognizable genre habits. While often overlapping with free jazz and contemporary classical experimentalism, free improvisation is not confined to either. It welcomes any instrument or sound source—acoustic, electronic, or everyday objects—and frequently uses extended techniques, feedback, and unconventional performance gestures. Performances can range from whisper-quiet, pointillistic interplay to ferocious, high-energy noise, with the ensemble shaping form in real time through attention and constraint.
D-Beat
D-beat is a ferociously fast, raw form of punk named after the relentless drum pattern popularized by the UK band Discharge. The style is defined by a charging 4/4 beat with alternating kick and snare on the eighth notes, overdriven guitars playing terse power-chord riffs, and hoarse, shouted vocals. Lyrically, D-beat is stark, urgent, and political: anti-war, anti-authoritarian, and apocalyptic in tone. Songs are short, direct, and impact-focused—often 1–2 minutes—capturing a feeling of perpetual forward motion. Production tends to be gritty and live, foregrounding intensity over polish.
Punk
Punk is a fast, abrasive, and minimalist form of rock music built around short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and confrontational, anti-establishment lyrics. It emphasizes DIY ethics, raw energy, and immediacy over virtuosity, often featuring distorted guitars, shouted or sneered vocals, and simple, catchy melodies. Typical songs run 1–3 minutes, sit around 140–200 BPM, use power chords and basic progressions (often I–IV–V), and favor live, unpolished production. Beyond sound, punk is a cultural movement encompassing zines, independent labels, political activism, and a fashion vocabulary of ripped clothes, leather, and safety pins.
Power Electronics
Power electronics is an extreme, confrontational branch of post-industrial noise built around high-gain oscillator tones, mixer feedback, and screamed or declaimed vocals. It prioritizes texture, loudness, and psychological intensity over conventional rhythm, melody, or harmony. Developed to push beyond the boundaries of early industrial music, the style often employs simple but punishing signal chains—oscillators into distortion and filtering—alongside tape manipulation, contact mics, and live feedback loops. Lyrical content tends to be provocative, examining power, control, and taboo subjects as critique or transgression. The result is a stark, minimal, and abrasive sound designed to unsettle and overwhelm.
No Wave
No wave is a late-1970s New York City movement that rejected rock’s conventional songcraft and the slick optimism of new wave in favor of abrasive textures, atonality, and confrontational performance. It fuses the energy of punk with the dissonance of the avant‑garde and free jazz, often favoring texture and rhythm over melody and harmony. The style typically features jagged guitars, skronking saxophones, primitive or motoric drums, and shouted, spoken, or yelped vocals. Songs may be extremely short and violent or long and hypnotically repetitive, with an emphasis on raw timbre, noise, and physical impact rather than hooks or virtuosity.
Broadband Noise
Broadband noise is a strain of noise music that centers on wide-spectrum, non-tonal sound masses that occupy most or all of the audible frequency range. Instead of melody or rhythm, it foregrounds texture, spectral density, and perceived loudness. Artists generate full-band energy using white/pink/brown noise sources, mixer and amplifier feedback, radio static, and heavily saturated effects chains. The aesthetic goal is continuous, immersive sonic pressure in which discrete events are masked by a dense, evolving field of sound. While it intersects with harsh noise, broadband noise is defined by its broad spectral spread and saturating presence, prioritizing timbral contour, dynamics, and textural change over structure in the traditional musical sense.
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