Music Review: HEALTH - DISCO

I love noise music. Part of the reason I love noise music is because I can see myself creating it in the privacy of my own home with a laptop, some pots and pans, and the flushing of my toilet through some sort of wicked filter. It really brings the creative process home, often literally, and allows everyday wannabes to create sound that may, in some far corner of the world, sell records.

Of course, noise music takes endurance and it takes creativity. One can’t just simply slice noise together and create something that will interest people. Merzbow, Japan’s noise master, couldn’t just fart in a cup and sell it (well, maybe he could). The noise has to follow some sort of structure and articulate itself somehow in some kind of form. Or does it?

Some noise has more structure than others and some simply flops around and fizzles out. Japan’s Boredoms, for instance, can be gruelling. There is no questioning the sheer energy of their music, as a previous glimpse of Super Roots 9 showed me. The composition in the midst of the noise somehow drew the whole thing together in a very profound way and, as such, exceeded my own experimentation with flushing the toilet.

With the awesomely-named HEALTH, noise is a controlled art form. Their self-titled debut swept through the headspaces of indie rock kids and pretentious rock critics like some sort of ear-splitting windstorm with beats. Truth be told, the record was excellent but it left me hungry for more.

Enter DISCO, the remix album to end all remix albums. Well, maybe.

Remixing noise music can be interesting at the best of times and can be a lame excuse to toss a beat or a scratch in front of a meowing cat at the worst of times. With DISCO, HEALTH has dispatched a slew of remixologists and beatologists to work through the noisiest of the noise found on their debut. The result is a convincing stew of beats, sounds, flickers, blips, bleeps, and snurfs.

Article Author: Jordan Richardson

Jordan Richardson is a Canadian freelance writer and ne'er-do-well. He writes stuff here and here.

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