Because of issues with MyBlog’s file hosting and issues with how it stores data (just my guess at what the reason is), I can not host any files on this site, so I have chosen to host them at Archive.org and embed them here since I find it necessary to present what I am doing. Archive.org can be a little slow at times (especially in the UK), and sometimes has issues embedding here, but I found it to be the only way to get around not being able to do anything directly inside MyBlog, as frustrating as that is, so I am sorry if files are slow to load or buggy, but I could not find a better workaround.

This first week was an introduction to the unit from Milo and Annie, and I had already had a brief understanding of what is being expected of us from talking to the third years last year, so during the summer break, I was trying to remain active creatively to keep up the momentum going into this. A lot of the work that I was doing during the Summer, I feel, has the possibility to lead into a larger piece of work for this, so I want to list the most considerable of them.

https://silverdove.bandcamp.com/album/heart-of-grief

I had been working on this album over the summer as a means to explore the connection between English lo-fi drone works (primarily Culver & Witchblood, but also Smut, Karst, Jazzfinger, etc) with Harsh Noise Wall/Ambient Noise Wall, combining the deadened guitar drones with muddy static texturing to create a consistently bleak enveloping mood. For a “wall noise” album, it is considerably high effort, which I am glad was translated when getting feedback from others, and I feel like it is one of the most personally gratifying things I’ve made.

https://lagomorphrecs.bandcamp.com/album/fox-box

A friend of mine had started a label recently, where she releases all these high-effort, gorgeously packaged objects. I asked her about releasing something since she liked my music anyway, and pretty quickly, it became a task of releasing a box set. Originally, it was going to be a USB stick multimedia release, but it became 4 CDrs of music and 1 DVDr of some old jams I did in Wales for a few people, and it is all Drone Ambient, pretty long hummers, some Guitar, some Strings, Keyboards, Laptop, etc. I would consider all of it to be my best ambient material, and realistically, I should have held onto it a bit longer because I feel like it would have been nice to use it for this project and pour even more time into it (but would probably have cost me the fun presentation of the work). It has been a while after the official “release,” though, and people aren’t getting their copies, so I’m hoping that people get to hear it soon.

https://afomt.bandcamp.com/track/i-dont-need-you

I also had the pleasure of doing a split album with Zachary Ledsinger, who is someone whose work I have always found greatly inspiring within the ambient and “Wall Noise” spheres in which I exist. My track here, I think, is probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, a loop of a guitar phrase stretched out for as long as possible, inspired by Celer, Loren Connors, Taku Sugimoto, smothered with resonators and reverb, and improvised with to form a warm pillow made of stereo. 

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Something I’ve been meaning to do, mostly because of what I feel are “Academic” expectations, is to make my work more presentable/”serious”. I do feel like I am making “serious” work, mind you, I don’t release anything that I think is bad or mediocre, I just like to engage with the ridiculous and immature aesthetic that the esoteric “internet-ty” space that I occupy & am influenced by bolsters, I feel more motivated when the work is less formal. I don’t want to promise something that I don’t feel like I can/would want to deliver; I like making my music playful not only because I find it amusing, but also because this way it is more genuine, it removes pretence, I want to be honest, and this informality helps me achieve that. Immediacy is something important to me in that sense. 

I feel like sharing a maybe more comprehensive list of releases that I’ve done in the summer that I think are standouts, on my label Rearview Mountain, which is a netlabel I host off of my own site to remove the middle man from my music.

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https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/foxfuneral (Loop of a short Celer track that I want to live in, exercise in purification/refraction through resonant filters.)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/streetsofkenny (There has been a group squatting in an abandoned community center by my house, and they have been kind of turning it into that kind of space anyway, doing some artworks on the building and outside it. Coming back home, the area has gotten more sketchy. I wanted to make something dedicated to Kensington, where I grew up, so I made this drone ambient “cover” of Shack’s Streets of Kenny track as a kind of reflection of the past onto the present.)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/030725 (Jam with a childhood friend over 2 seconds of Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/guitarthismorning (Very tired guitar loop music. Really evocative feelings hopefully.)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/weakendssufferinggaze (New Duo with my friend Fili, heavy guitar brood.)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/inwardstatis (5-person “internet jam”, usually we play wall noise, but we got a new member and wanted to play some guitar, so it’s heavy drone stuff)

https://foxmusicawesome.neocities.org/albums/liveatcrewestation (Made at the train station on the way to London, I like capturing these important moments like this. Improvising with some piano chords on my laptop and with the environment. The cover is very ridiculous.)

(There is more that I haven’t mentioned, maybe to spare embarrassment)

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But, back onto making a more “serious” iteration of what I’m doing, I feel like it would be valuable to make work that breaks out of the space that I currently occupy and the habits I have developed because of that. I don’t feel like the sound has to be drastically different, as I am quite confident in what I am making, but feel like within a “sound art” space, I am self crippling with my aesthetics with both my “raw” sound ideal and messy visual style. I am not quite sure what form I want it to take quite yet, but I know that for at least one of the 2 projects, I want to make a “serious” iteration of something that I’m doing, whether it be the Wall Noise stuff, Harsh Noise stuff, Ambient Stuff, Drone Guitar Stuff, whatever. I am doing a lot of music anyway and never really stop, it would be nice to mull over something for a lot longer and as a result have it come out as something more impactful/final than what I usually do with releasing sessions of sound making.

I have a few projects that I am working on alongside this that I could incorporate into the work, such as an anniversary release for my netlabel Rearview Mountain, which will be released as a 2xC120 Cassette, and so far is shaping up to have 20 tracks from different artists. Also finishing an album under my alias Silk Fingers, which is a Drone/Noise/Psych project inspired by Post-Nightcore, Harsh Noise, Sunroof!, Axolotl, it sounds like a glitterbomb and a headache, and I really enjoy making it. I am also planning on releasing another box set for my alias Silver Dove’s 5th year anniversary next February, trying to get other people’s input on what should be compiled since the discography for that project is ridiculously long, as well as planning a Silk Fingers collaboration with my friend Okosan, who does “Post-Nightcore” ambient/noise, and a Silk Fingers collaboration with my friend Durianhead, who is doing similar ecstatic glitter music but with more a “musical” tint because of his Berklee studies and Jazz and Autechre infactuations. What I am hoping doesn’t happen is that I have to put any of this on hold; I make a lot of music and want to be able to go between projects simultaneously, as that is a workflow that I enjoy the most, so I felt like all these initial projects are worth mentioning as they will be informing, coexisting with or maybe becoming one of the projects I want to use for this work. I still have a lot of time to think about this more, so we will see what happens naturally, I don’t want to force something and it to come out terrible.

I am quite slow at working on larger-scale things, especially when the idea is to balance two of them simultaneously (this project and the Research project), and for me to keep on top of my own artistic/personal endeavours. We did have a lecture last year, though, that was from Rory, Ecka, and Milo, in which Rory spoke about work (work as in Job work, not art), what it means to work in relation to making music/art, and that the two are interconnected, getting me to acknowledge that creation does not stop when you are away from the instrument, it is a product of lived experience, it is continuous, and bleeds into every aspect of life and incorporating that approach into both work and art is hugely beneficial to keeping that balance in my life.

The classes being fortnightly will be something I’d have to adjust to. I don’t really like the idea at all, and I found it hard to focus on this project when the only class we have this week is for the research project. The main ideas at the moment, though, are to do things that get me out of my comfort zone and kind of breach into a broader demographic, break out of esoteric space, to do something that I’m proud of that would ideally help make my portfolio more professionally minded. I would love to be able to work with sound professionally, so a portfolio that necessitates that (but is still made from work that I’ve enjoyed making) would be ideal. From past projects, I have found that I hate working on installation work; I am not very visually minded and prefer to focus entirely on sonics and mood, so some extension of my recorded work would probably be the most likely thing I’m interested in.

Something I’ve observed in Sound Art, especially, is the work’s reliance on sound’s effect on other stimuli, rather than just being sound, which I find both irritating, but also particular to the music I like, quite exciting regarding how titles or imagery can completely alter the perception of the work, especially with a lot of esoteric work’s abstract emotional quality, other stimuli can ground the work within a situation or aesthetic that sound can’t convey, utilising more stimuli to create a more significant moment. I say this just to elaborate on Sound Art’s connection to Fine Art, which is something I don’t really find interest in making, but enjoy consuming, and also to pick at something unavoidable with released work, coming back to an idea last week of formalising my presentation for the work. A majority of what I can express with sound can be enhanced through the surrounding aesthetic, including emptiness (thinking particularly about Francisco Lopez’s Untitled series, where the work is completely separated from external stimuli, and that giving the work a more scientific, clinical feel).

https://silkfingers.bandcamp.com/album/its-alright-now

This week I had a lot of trouble focusing on Uni work while this was gnawing at the back of my mind, so I got it out of the way the past week. It’s 3 rehearsals for sets that never happened during the summer that I was proud enough of to make into something else, more ridiculous sparkly puke that I’ve been stacking on for a couple of months, so I’m happy to throw it out into the void.

I have been kind of focused on the research project at the moment, since the deadlines for that are way sooner, and I’ve started a job recently where my time is not really respected and my requested hours have been ignored, so I am trying to ration my time as well as I can until I figure out another job or how to work around what I’m made to do. Because of the time away from the computer, though, the main idea in my head is to expand on the Fox Box from over the summer, since I found the format of just making these really long stretches of Ambient music at the end of the day for a few weeks to be greatly therapeutic on top of resulting in some of the best material I’ve ever done, greatly benefiting from the maintenance of a schedule and creating music about my life for self satisfaction and without pretense.

Ambient music would probably be the best genre to continue to work within since I have a great deal of affection for Ambient box sets as a format (particularly Celer’s, Memory Repetitions and You and I Will Never Change), and I feel like for a more “professionally minded” portfolio that the hyper cleanliness of the “playlist” ambient styles popular on streaming (Hakobune, Celer, new works of Masakatsu Takagi, etc) that I am a fan of, kind of tying this work also into my research project’s idea of Harsh Noise Wall being this “uber-music” where the monotony translates to extreme purification and taps into basic primal appeasement, I think of this style of loop driven, cushy, friendly Ambient Music to be another but definitely more approachable iteration of the same idea. Also, the Fox Box has been stuck in purgatory for the time being due to the label owner losing their job and having an accident recently (they are recovering quite well thankfully), meaning the copies are getting to people extremely slowly, so learning the means of creating and distributing the product myself would be a great learning experience I feel like, especially seeing how much interest there was in that project I know there would be a base support for another if I was to go about making it.

As for the second project, the idea I have is directly related to the Silk Fingers release mentioned prior, I have only ever played live solo once, and it was under this name. It was a fantastic experience, even though it was for a handful of people; it left enough of an impression to have me billed on a date with Pain Chain, a touring Canadian Harsh Noise artist, which had to sadly get cancelled. But from planning for the gig, I wanted to try to cover a lot of bases of things I have loved experiencing in Live music while in London, taking the “hyper-psychedelic” sound of this project further with a makeshift maximal multichannel setup and utilisation of communal experience, I want the opportunity to do a realised iteration of this again, Live music and Noise are two of my main passions and I want to be able to create something that gets across my passion, relating the work to the issues I have with Multichannel from 2nd Year, the format’s benefits, and the hope of achieving the format’s ideal sensation through a makeshift, clumsy means.

I have started to get into a routine of accumulating bits and pieces from prior and building on top of them, finding some unfinished work that I find very important to myself and thinking about what can be done with them, keeping the work stream of consciousness to give room for both this project and the research project to coexist.

(Myblog seems to be very broken, so I am hosting the audio on Archive, hoping that it is more functional)

Particularly, I found this recording on my phone, which I think was from around Christmas last year, of a dictaphone keyboard drone. For some reason, my Dad came into the room while I was re-recording from the Micro-Cassette through my phone microphone and started taking medication while it was recording, which is especially poignant to me now that he is really not doing so great, it makes a somewhat throwaway drone that I made I’m assuming as soon as I got off the train as a kind of celebrative ritual (I like to play music any opportunity I get really) into something more personal, gives the sound more feeling and meaning. I tried adding to it, but it felt like it took away from the quality of the recording, so it has left me a little perplexed about what to do with it. (Below is a clip).

I recorded some loops to work out a basis for a sound for the album, the best being a string loop I made inside FL studio, which is a pretty obviously Celer-inspired piece with a lush loop falling out of phase with itself slowly without really any activity, a sound to wallow in, really, stretched out for quite a while until I got sick of it. (Below is a clip)

I would like to add some field recordings over the top, or to re-record the loop within a space for the final version, just so that, for this project, I feel like I have taken on more involvement than what I would usually do as a means of tackling routine and artistic comfort, as well as incorporating other interests, particularly the “raw” dogma I obsess over, where sound is given a space to live within and the recording becomes a document of that sound existing within that space…

I am making things, but at the moment, it is making things for self-satisfaction; it doesn’t seem like there’s a cohesive concept, and I’m trying to just work without fretting too much over it, an idea will emerge with more work, I feel, and it would work best to be inquisitive to work that I am making rather than to spend too much time pre-empting it, I don’t find that I can work like that, spontanaety is a key aspect to what I make, I like making music as if I am purging something, which I guess in this case where the work is supposed to be thematic and research based is coming to seem like a bit of a double edged sword; I can make things quite prolifically but only for myself, and the influences are only what I am indulging in anyway, which is always a lot of other people’s music.

Outside of University, I have got back in touch with some friends from College who are studying in ICMP, working on the rap collective they have going back in Liverpool called Staypeckish, which has completely exploded because of the popularity of Esdeekid. Luc got back in touch to see if I could play synth for a live event they are doing back home in December, which is exciting, as well as us making a track in one of their studios that sounds like a scuffed Fennesz/Oval endeavour that he’s cramming in the middle of his rap album, which I find pretty amusing. Something I like about doing this kind of work is this kind of getting Noise outside of its restrictive space; it is good to play in spaces full of people fanatical about hard sound, but for a demographic of people unfamiliar it reveals a more universal appeasement that brings into the conversation that Noise is not just something esoteric, drawing parallels betwen Noise and the Guitar solo, also demonstrated is Noise and the Car Show or Motor Rally (as touched on with The Rita’s Lake Shark HN #21, which is recordings of these shows). It was my favourite thing about College that I got to just play Noise and Ambient over tunes and get a stronger reaction than I was getting within a purely Noise context, using the crutches of music to deliver hard stuff without being alienating. It is something that I am going to have happening alongside this project, so I thought that the idea was worth mentioning, and I am thinking about how it relates to my project, making something that touches on this more base appeal.

This week’s lecture from Jose was particularly hands-on, which I was very happy about. Sometimes, I disengage from classes if I am not particularly interested in the topic or don’t feel as involved as I’d like to be, so involving everyone in a performance where we thoughtfully engage with a set of instruments to build up a loop is exciting (especially since that is a lot of my practice in Noise anyway, slowly adding to junk loops and building a space out of flimsy bits and pieces). It also engages with something I mentioned in a previous entry about the utilisation/exploitation of the communal aspect of performance, engaging the audience as a member of the performing group and including the audience in the result, which is something that The Haters had done in the 80s in a way that I find beautiful, engaging the entire audience as the Band in various ways, either through encouragement or without knowledge (through amplified surfaces). It is to me the opposite of noise’s reputation for “transgression”, it is inclusion, it is an acknowledgement and celebration of sound.

Anyway, Jose also mentioned that I was expected to have had 1 to 1 sessions with him, which I was not aware of and the realisation has been pretty worrying, so we are going to set up a session next week so that I can get up to speed with what is expected of me and he can understand where I am at the moment. As for the project, I’ve gone through the project proposal form to try and articulate my ideas in the expected format while on the Coach to and from Liverpool to visit family (as well as doing some work on my research project). Doing it was kind of humbling as I have realised that I am way further behind than I should be, mostly just due to trying to get this research task done first, as the deadline for the first draft is a lot sooner and it’s more difficult to feel the pressure of this with that ongoing. I don’t feel like I can function as well when expected to juggle multiple large tasks simultaneously, so most of what I’ve been putting out over the past few weeks is Wall Noise stuff under Burning Air, which is dedicated to an esoteric subgenre of an already esoteric subgenre called DNW, which is an abstraction of Wall Noise to pure bass focus (as you can probably tell I’m having trouble focusing on actually important things.)

For the box set, I’ve only a few bits to show. As previously mentioned, I did some Guitar loops this week that sound quite nice, on top of the String loop from last week I did a jam with my friend Luc who plays piano, that I want to incorporate because of the varied instrumentation (on this recording, he plays piano, I play synth and sing) that I can add to with more layers in VCV rack. Stylistically, that track is coming along like a track I did for the Fox Box called Faux Comfort, which was made with adding Quantised Resonatorsa nd Harmonic Oscillators to a recording of me playing guitar in a game called Webfishing, which has a weirdly fully functional guitar mode, so I would like to bring that strategy to the realms of a “real” recording (also the recording we got of the session was pretty lo-fi so the extra material will subsidise that a little).

I kind of need to get the research project together as soon as possible for the time being, as I can feel the stress kind of mounting quickly on top of everything else happening surrounding my life, the main thing I can do to have these projects coexist in this time frame though is to cut out the other stuff, for some reason I have been having so much trouble focusing on Uni work that I have started another Wall Noise project and already put out like 5 things, such a headache. There feels like a barrier between me and this thing where there wasn’t one doing the Fox Box, that all came about so smoothly, I think because of there not being much of a need for it to be anything more than it was it was far more stream of consciousness, much like this other stuff I have been doing that is somewhat distracting me from working on this. Either I need to rethink what this project will be to push past this creative block or soldier through with it. I still feel like demonstrating my practices in Noise and Ambient for my two projects shows a good range of coverage, I’m just having a rough time conceptualising it as much more than sound I make because I enjoy making it, especially when it’s becoming more like a chore, and I am unconsciously avoiding doing it.

I finally got a 1 to 1 done with Jose, albeit while in a pretty horrible state of not having slept and just having got off of a Coach. The 1 to 1 kind of helped making my ideas into something with more of a goal, Jose suggesting that the Ambient Box Set could be multichannel, could have a cinematic sound to make my portfolio more desirable for an employer, he did think that having one project to be recorded work, the other to be live performance based was a good dynamic to show a multifaceted discipline. It seems like something I’m lacking strongly is context, I am confident in what I make but it should be grounded in research for the marking scheme, which to me is something I can’t really force, like if my work is thematic I find it hard to articulate that theme in language, which is why it is done through sound and not writing, if that makes sense. I feel like everything I do is extremely personal, so I just need to figure out a way to articulate what I am expressing and find work that engages with something similar as a reference (as well as make the work into something). Most of the session was spent just generally taking about Noise, what it does, its aesthetics, etc, which is fine and I did enjoy it, and I found it particularly helpful after talking about Noise literature for references, and I got some recommendations for work that I was not aware of, but these feel only really apt for Project 2, which kind of stressed me out more regarding the first project. 

But I feel like the main issue I’m facing that is making me focus on literally everything else other than this is that I feel like I have to do it, which I guess is taking away some of the appeal that making music usually has to me and creating this kind of impenetrable wall between me and this. It’s pretty awful, but the 1 to 1 really helped feeling reignited in making stuff, so as soon as I finished I got in the library and bashed out an extended Drone Ambient cut of The Cardigans – Favourite Game, looping the bridge, refracting it with resonant filters, harmonised resonators, delays, reverbs, harmonic oscillators, those kind of purifying sine-ish sounds. I feel like it does something attractive for me, the aesthetic of song covers has always been a fixture to me, giving a reference point of what the sound was and where it has been taken as well as riffing on the idea of the “eternal hook” aspect that Celer has to me (also somewhat referencing the Celer track Merita which I hallucinate this Cardigans song over the top of whenever I hear it). I did this because I wanted to do it, it kind of goes against my idea for the Box Set, as it is literally something that I would do under the Fox alias, but it can become something else. This idea isn’t final yet.

Roger Batty of Musiquemachine (which is probably the only site from the “golden age” of HNW still reviewing work) gave my heart of grief album that I mentioned in my first entry a pretty glowing review recently, which I really appreciate as he rarely rates anything above a 3/5 kudos (“one of the most impressive and atmospheric releases I’ve heard from the progressive side of the wall noise in a long time“, so lovely!).

I have always loved his writing style when approaching this music, describing sound with mostly onomatopoeic and material-based language, focusing purely sonically rather than aesthetically or with a desire for emotional content, even when my work has interjected some. Because of the research project, I am listening to and engaging with a lot of work to do with Wall Noise within a more ephemeral context, so much that it is making me want to do nothing but live in that world, and it is making me see further parallels to ideas previously touched upon in this blog, the idea of Wall Noise and Drone Ambient feeding the same itch, just at different levels of social knowledge. Both occupy the same space, which got me thinking about what I am doing with the combination of the two in some of my albums on this ephemeral level that I am exploring within my research. At the moment, it feels like the only way to progress this project is to marry the ambient work I am creating with this Wall Noise fixation in a literal way, make work that does both, occupies both spaces and expresses this homogeniety.

A bit late like but I feel like I have kind of reshaped the entire project in a way that feels a lot more articulate (and motivating), mostly because of intensively accumulating all my own and others thought on Wall Noise and sifting through blogs and kind of disparate bits of literature and magazines for the research project, which is about Wall Noise in a more ephemeral abstract sense, I’m very much in that zone right now of being completely absorbed in it (which I am always, but now especially).

Also, as a driving force for this is that something I made for my friend’s label Yggdrasl System when she started it has got weirdly blown up (as far as these super niche spaces go), which has got me thinking about accessibility within these esoteric genres, and to shape this work into something where the approachability is the goal, and wanting to marry these long humming ambient works with stagnant chunks of Ambient Noise Wall, which I believe would have as broad of an appeal as ASMR or Ambient if it where to break out of the underground circles it stems and feeds from.

To be brief, since I am exploring the concept more historically and ephemerally in my Research Project, Ambient Noise Wall is an inversion of the maximalist ideal of Harsh Noise Wall, which is a purification of Harsh Noise into a stagnant chunk of constant crunching textures. Ambient Noise Wall is a distillation of this idea into softer sounds of a similarly stagnant variety, creating room for sparseness and delicacy and reframing the framework of Harsh Noise Wall into something that is more delicate and relaxing. The idea can be best demonstrated through listening, so I will attach the two Audio Manifestos of the genres.

The ANW style has been progressively expanded upon as new artists come and go from the scene, in particular, artists like Julien Strobek (as Ghost), Sven Kay (Absent Erratum), Sergey Pakhomov, Shum and many more have taken unique approaches that bridge Ambient Noise Wall into a more literal meaning of the term, being an Ambient Infused Noise Wall, fusing the soft textures with soft drones. This has led to a lot of the newer guard (including myself) to adapt the possibilities that the marriage of the two creates within both ANW and HNW realms, and to expand further on the capabilities that the marriage of extremely loud and extremely soft music can have.

I am very excited by this premise of bringing these concepts to my work, so excited that I made 3 base “walls” in VCV rack this week (my interface is pretty unusable at the moment, so I can’t really do much with analogue equipment). I’m not sure if it is particularly worth picking apart each effect of every module in every patch, but I will give a brief overview of this first patch. The main aspect I wanted to experiment with is something I have been doing with the previously mentioned Burning Air releases, which is to have this module called Elastika – which emulates the physics of marbles in a glass bowl, with plain spectral noise inputs, which generates an interesting volatile stereo shuffling effect (it can be used with other sound sources obviously, but this is my favourite use of it). The module allows for really bizarrely in-depth shaping within its 4 parameters, and can cause some tonal sounds when the frequency is low (I imagine it like particles rather than tonal frequency, the lower the frequency of particles the more space between hits and more rolling around the glass) that develops a subtle droning. A lot of this patch is variations on this idea, using the module to distribute crackles within the stereo space and shaping that effect with filters and reverbs. The patch at the bottom is a technique I use a lot, which is to feed a noise source into the cutoff amount, which generates a crackling that has a more vinyl surface sound that has less digital silence between clicks and more variation of crackling “notes” that the modules like Dust or Crackle in VCV have. I use reverbs with very small space amounts as a further way of physical shaping, using the sound as a kind of amp simulator or to emulate the sensation of rain hitting glass. The main goal for the sound is to fill the space as a kind of blanketing sound, filling the space with sound characteristics that I find pleasing, and I want the ambient work to emerge from it. I don’t want to leave space for it like is done with “proper” mixing, as I want the drones to come from the wall, because to me, Wall Noise is about interaction. There’s a Valvan album that I think of a lot while making work called Ecosystem Of Sound, which I think through both its sound and title conveys this intermingling and spectral warfare of layers as a sound ideal for Wall Noise, as well as getting at this idea of “wall-craft” as manufacturing an environment from static, creating a space that doesn’t exist from primitive material.

Thinking about what that means as well, applying the HNW manifesto to ANW in this way, HNW represents a voluntary retreat from the world, and the sound’s purpose is to remove all stimuli, absorb the listener in “cellular nothing”, and form a barrier between the listener and the rest of the world. Both HNW and ANW are escapism; ANW just feels more like repurposing the nihilistic aesthetics of HNW into a more pastoral reclusivity, inverting the genre while maintaining its roots. There is an artist I particularly love (who has sadly quit the “scene”, and we don’t keep in touch anymore) called Kafka Semyavin, who took a very unique approach to ANW’s incorporation of field recordings, unknowingly adapting the reclusive attitude of Wall Noise to Field Recording by taking sound sources from low view videos online and using them as the basis for work, which I feel like is more depressive and aesthetically appropriate for the genre to refer the work back to isolation and “permanently online” activity, to make work from spaces that you’ve never been.

Kafka Semyavin in particular I have found to have blended Ambient and ANW in the most tasteful way with their release Until I Say It’s Over, as well as having one of the most Album-like structures I have heard in Wall Noise with the Ambient and Wall sections maintaining a consistent mood, where the juxtaposition makes sense and the sounds flow into eachother without one overbearing the other. I remember when we made our first collaboration a few years ago, and he was batting away most of my additions at one point. There was an understanding of what was needed, what was too much and when the drone elements took away from the Noise and Field Recordings, acknowledging when the additions were enhancements rather than distractions from the main wall. 

Another album I have a particular fondness of the structure for is Atlantikwall by Paniek, which uses the Wall Noise Boxset format as a means of representing the breaching of the Atlantic wall, showing a great flow of Walls all building from each other, eating each other and whittling themselves down until the last 15 minutes or so of gorgeous Ambient music. To me, this album is one of the high points of HNW, but not as accessible as the goal of my work strives for, it feels like it was made to surprise people like me who spend a huge majority of their time absorbed in this stuff with something that uses the conventions of the genre to divert them in an emotionally gratifying way.

I believe I have done something similar (I think before hearing Atlantikwall mind you) with one of my albums from 2023 called missing you, which was made when I was using my Silver Dove alias as a Wall Noise Diary and releasing work every Tuesday, which I did for 2 years before starting University. The work was directly caused by one of my close friends and someone extremely passionate about the scene, who was confirmed to have taken his own life around that time, so the work was organic and devotional in that way and not premeditated. It is retrospectively related to ANW, and experiences of listening, perceptions of life and pseudo-spiritual/religious experiences, and it is all based around resonating sparse clicks within digital empty space, building them into a melody, making a melody completely absorb everything else slowly within the 4th hour and then killing it off as if it never happened. It is something I think that is not accessible because of the patience required, as well as the possible knowledge of surrounding work within the genre to get the point (it is riffing on albums like Missing Girls – I, Sergey Pakhamov – Colors of Emptiness, nnaai – polveremormora, etc, and using the format as a means of building musicality). But it is discovering the closeness of ANW to Ambient and articulating it in a patient way, increasing the sustain of hits until it can become “music”, which is something I am passionate about, the classification of things as “non-music” being completely redundant, everything is down to intent, and everything is inches off of each other.

After that complete tangent, the method of this second patch is far more eclectic than the prior one, using similar techniques but with more experiments with taking modules I already like further.

A couple interesting things of note other than the techniques used in the prior patch, is the use of the flanger to add some subtle feedback (but with a rate low enough to not be rhythmic), the use of supercell for randomised stereo dispersion (with modulation from the Super Slow LFO, which allows you to have LFOs that last up to Months!). Another thing I tried is using the Macro Oscillator 2 to generate subtle plastic bass taps (it is unplugged here, but it was on during the session). The resulting sound reminds me of being lost ashore, making me think of Toilers of the Sea or of Donald Crowhurst’s endless voyage. There’s a lot of automation resulting from volatile modules and some feedback interaction (the whole mix is being sent back through Bonsai, which’s noise gate generates a lovely shuffling texture, which adds to the overall timbre).

I tried focusing this one on the stereo space a lot, taking influence from the very natural soundscape of Unser Verhängnis’ album Peace Is A Lasting Legacy When The Earth Is A Silent Grave, which is an album that I think has a very evocative and convincing post-apocalyptic soundscape whilst still remaining fixed within the falsehood of the static texturing realm. I tried mixing the Ambient track I did last week with this and it sounds really beautiful when the track is pushed way back, it gives the track a really solemn mood related to the imagined feeling of the space, projecting my own feelings onto it. I think retrospectively that it does feel a lot like what I know of Donald Crowhurst’s last race, silently leaving without a trace and leaving everything behind. I feel like I should see if I can watch a documentary so that I can include a sound bite between this track and the first one, possibly during the track or as an outro as well to give a further nod to Eugene Critchley & N0123Noise’s DNW format, as well as exercising a pretty long-standing interest in his story.

The most bizarre-sounding of the three so far, more exploration of Elastika, using it for stereo shuffling and wet organic trampling. I tried using Nucleus as well, which is another module by the same people that is supposed to distribute a sound source into particles, which you can then alter the density and speed of (similar to Elastika but a lot less wranglable for me). I got it to generate this kind of air resonance akin to an engine room, which is smothered with some really active, volatile Elastika layers (I really like the stereo on this one). I tried extending the technique of making the macro oscillator this subtle tapping layer, by adding a stereo delay with randomisation, making these mid-layer pops and hiss. I really like how the sound is evocative of this industrial space while having a weird wetness and occasional glitches. I sent it to a couple of friends to bounce some imagery off related to it, and my favourite was “ambient that sounds like an abandoned subterranean engine room.” Already, I’m not sure if the work is going to be “accessible” as a “Wall Noise For Dummies” work, but I think that it will maintain a broader appeal than just being for the probably couple of hundred people who care about this stuff.

As for Context, I want to keep my references separate to my research project, as both this and my research project are about Wall Noise, I don’t want all my references to be genre specific, I want to be more broad and thematic. So far I’m thinking about exploring Donald Crowhurst’s story and extrapolating from the prior mentioned albums, exploding their structures and using the technique mentioned in a Guest Lecture from Lynnée Denise prior about Album based Research, researching based on acknowledging how things sound, where they are from, who’s playing on the album, when was it recorded, what was happening at that time, etc (calling it DJ Scholarship, emphasising the role of a DJ as an Archivist), which is something I feel like I do already, I have dedicated a ridiculous amount of time listening to this style of music, so elaborating on the styles adjacent to and stemming from Wall Noise would be beneficial.

I had to cancel the 1 to 1 this week as my Dad had to go to the hospital, I had to go to Liverpool for the week so I could see him when he was let out (which took longer than any of us would have liked it to). He seems like he is doing a lot better, thankfully, it is just obviously pretty scary having anything serious happen at his age, and the thought has been stressing out me and my family quite considerably because of already existing health problems being compounded by all of this.

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I have been mostly stacking on top of this first wall I did last week, adding the previously shown dictaphone Casio recording as an intro and underneath the wall to add emotional content to it, which works a lot, I think. I added an extra layer of droning with a VCV rack resonator patch, while using the speaker for it to vibrate some metal objects, adding some organic elements to the wall sound on top of the Drone. The fire alarm went off around 10 minutes into recording, so right now I’m using a stretched version as a placeholder until I am able to use the Foley room again.

I also added a layer of sandpaper, which adds a more dirty crackling texture, using a toy karaoke mic, one of the mics feeding back, so that the crackles give more exaggerated pops and add some further improvisatory rigidity to the otherwise fixed “wall”. The technique refers back to some early experiments with HNW I did as a kid, referencing The Haters’ Drunk On Decay, Death Defying Sickness, and other work utilising amplified erosion (as well as some performances on the DVD The Haters Live!, which features some slow destruction of microphones). I have used the technique to encourage more subtle results, especially well on shame I think, eroding small bits of metal, so this is expanding further on an already tried technique.

The sound had to be pitched down so that it wouldn’t be irritating in the mix. I think it adds a lot, I like it when the depth of the sound has a mix of fidelities; it adds an artist’s presence that I feel like adds to the comfort of the work, creates an intimacy. So far, because of the dictaphone recording not being so long, the track is split into two sections (I don’t want to loop it), so to subside the murkiness of the first section, I added some bright guitar loops over the top of the second section to have the ecstatic gorgeous capability of the two contrasting elements come through, giving the work a narrative of tension and release which I think is an appropriate opener. My audio interface, which I have had for probably 5 years now is finally giving up, making some horrible interference noise passively even without any input, so I had to cut the high end from my recordings, which also sections the drones into their own space spectrally, which has some sonic benefit. Thematically, I don’t feel comfortable making this about my Dad, if it wasn’t for Uni, I would feel more comfortable making it more personal, but I feel like the fact that I have to articulate the concept rather than present the work as it exists kind of irks me.

I really like the state that the first track is in, what it means I feel like will come to me with more work on the other 2 for the disc as a whole experience. For the first submission for the work, we have to present a prototype project for the first project, so with my work being a Box set release, I want the first hand in to present the first disc of my work, with the cover art complete already, really, due to having creative friends who are enthusiastic about my Silver Dove project.

Further extrapolating from the imagery I had of the lonely voyage and reflections of Donald Crowhurst on my second track, I decided to watch a short BBC documentary on Crowhurst to find any information or samples that could be useful to realise that atmosphere.

“With isolation there is no stimulus coming into the brain, which gives the imagination free reign.” (Weirdly HNW related quote.)

I found some other documentaries, but they are much more dramatic and lesser because of that, I like the more “scholarly” approach of this one, interviewing experts in the fields of navigation and psychology to piece together a motivation and timeline for the disappearance. I also found that there’s a biopic movie, which I find the existence of very depressing, I really hate that stuff. The documentary put me onto the fact that there are 10 hours of Crowhurst talking out there that I should seek out. Thinking about his story within a sonic realm might help to conceptually piece the work together. I don’t want to be fully wholistically devotional to his story, mind you, I want to use the story as a theme within the work to extrapolate from and find commonalities between it and other interests and experiences.

But with these two tracks, I feel as if the overall theme is riffing on the voluntary isolation ideal that Wall Noise is built upon, projecting my own personal experience with homesickness and disillusionment from the outside world, using Wall Noise as a means of controlling my auditory space, cocooning myself. The work is not coming along very friendly at the moment, it’s sounding pretty miserable, but in an elegant way I think, which I guess is the mood right now even if I’m not aware of it.

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To further bolster my work with more context, I want to further research ASMR and ANW’s relation in order to be able to articulate the genre’s similarities to the much more well-regarded and understood ASMR phenomena. To my understanding, ASMR is the suspension of small, intimate sounds that create a pleasing reaction for the listener, which is also what ANW is to me. I want to see how my perspective can alter with more information regarding the subject, as ASMR is much more well-studied and would prove an invaluable source for understanding what I am doing if I can bridge between the two.

https://isismagazine.org.uk/2013/05/asmr-loneliness-and-healing-on-youtube

“everyone has the mechanism [to experience ASMR] to some greater or lesser degree, and some culmination of this mechanism and their personality can develop to a discrete sensation rather than an unnoticed blip.”

https://breakpoint.org/triggering-the-tingles-asmr-is-a-poor-substitute-for-human-presence

• “Back in the 1950s, a curious psychologist sought an answer to these questions. He installed electrodes in the pleasure centers of rats’ brains and gave them a lever to zap themselves. Not only did they like it, they became addicted, pressing the lever thousands of times a day and neglecting to eat, drink, or sleep until they died.”
• “According to Kriss, the tingles don’t necessarily result from the noise, nor are they overtly sexual. Rather, the presence (or simulated presence) of another person, the sounds of their movement and voice, are what “seems important.” ASMR requires an “emotional element,” which leaves the viewer feeling “safe, and warm, and loved.” 
• “There is something deeply dystopian about “untold millions of people who spend a good chunk of their free time every day sitting by themselves in a dark room in front of a screen, blissing out to a series of clicking sounds … [or to] someone who does not know your name, and who would not notice if you died tomorrow, pretending to nurture you. This could only exist in a deeply lonely, deeply broken world.”
• “However, in the end, we will be left lonelier than we were when we found them appealing in the first place. That should probably trigger chills, not tingles.” 

I like this Christian magazine’s perspective on ASMR the most. There are some prescriptions to ASMR that I like that apply to ANW, emphasis on phoniness and substitution, the parallel between this addictive ASMR trigger and the Rat experiment is something I love the most. I remember a striking quote from A View From Nihil, “To be honest I don’t even want to think about life without HNW. It just seems to fill some deeply rooted need and I know that a lot of wall makers out there feel the same.”(https://www.musiquemachine.com/articles/articles_template.php?id=178). The pleasure achieved from addictive pleasing sound consumes your life in this way, the curation of your own “wall”, meaning you can tailor these feigned stimuli for yourself and cocoon yourself inside them. I know for a fact I was like this during Quarantine, I was listening to/recording Wall Noise from the second I woke up to the second I fell asleep, and I felt as if it was enriching my life because at this time I was restricted from the presence of other people and going outside, so the construction of the experience of doing these things was particularly exciting even if I wasn’t aware that that was what I was doing.

Further working on this second track, I have been thinking about a Guest Lecture from first year from a Sound Designer (the name escapes me), referring to her work on a desert scene, where she discussed how the sound was approached much more from how the space feels rather than how it actually sounds. To me, that is what I am doing here: I am projecting my feelings within these imagined spaces using ambient music as interjection, which got me thinking of something I could add to the second track. 

The idea I had was to use loops and some techniques I have used in the past, inspired mostly by Mania and Finnish Noise stylings, is to use overdubbed clean metal sounds to construct this imagined monotonous mechanical churn of a boat, further elaborating on the influence of Crowhurst’s voyage on the track, which I think adds a nice layer of activity underneath the monotonous sound blanket, as well as giving the work some of the overambitious scope with minimal equipment, which I feel like is a staple for Noise, building a boat out of a bit of metal, a guitar string, some bottlecaps and a Screwdriver.

I did some more looking regarding Crowhurst’s story and found another documentary containing readings of his Journal (I am not particularly fond of the cadence, but I feel like I can work with it). I found the last entry particularly striking, as well as some mentions of divine beings and connections with higher powers, combining the playing of the “game” with living entirely and adding a religious tint (weirdly enough the Cardigans track the ambient part is based off here feels more ironic than I intended). I added the sample to my track, using the whole rest of the documentary as a subtle texture with asymmetric distortion in FL, which enhances sound into crackles, so that the sample doesn’t appear; it moreso emerges from the wall. I also used Fruity Granuliser to add an extra layer, compiling sections of empty space from the documentary to add subtle watery layers and building from the documentary’s imagined space, and incorporating it into mine.

I tried adding a Harsh layer as well, but didn’t find that it fit at all, I really enjoy the blanket sound but I’m not sure if others will enjoy the complete lack of motion, so maybe it needs to be worked on more to be more inviting with standard progression, similar to the first track, I think (maybe some crackling action on the top end I am thinking can appear). 

I started working with the third track a little too, incorporating another guitar drone and adding a field recording I made a couple months ago (titled Blood On The Tracks after the Bob Dylan album for some reason) after watching the Youtube documentary Down The Bottleneck, part of falling down a rabbit hole of learning about the long dead Opie & Anthony radio show, which was a Shock-Jock radio show infamous for going great lengths to produce incredibly distasteful, mean spirited Radio. To put it short, the story made me completely disgusted with alcohol, gave me that pit in my stomach feeling, and I somewhat overdramatically recorded myself cutting open and draining 2 4 packs of beer with the idea being to use the recording for something (or as a reminder of that moment, I’m pretty dramatic). I don’t know if it would be appropriate to sample a Lady Di call, or make it expressly clear that that was an impetus to creating the track, but that at least was the thing that set me off, as I have had struggles with alcohol, it really struck me.

I guess extrapolating further from the overarching theme of isolation, alcoholism has been a similar escapism from feeling to ANW, Caller Lady Di, in particular, is perplexing because of her constant lying and bending of the truth, denial and seeking of attention 9she would call in with no knowledge of what the show even was) without taking anything said on board, leading to eventual early-onset dementia and isolation from her and the rest of her family. I don’t want to project myself onto someone as if what I have experienced is comparable; I am just articulating what is out there and how it has had an effect on me. The sound of this track is already really lonely; the bass skitters more than on other tracks, coming out as hushed breaths. I wanted to continue this projection of emotional content onto these spaces, so I further combined what I am doing with Luc’s live set on my Minilogue with this work, recording some minimal ambient to accompany the already existent breathy drone created from the Nucleus Module.

The first layer of synth is a slow expanding heavy delay & reverb sine-based loop to create space within the mix, aiming for a Celer-type lushness smothered by the main wall, the second is a more Pluck-oriented swell loop expansion with some ping pong delay added after to put it more within the space, making it make more sense within the mix. These two are added on top of a stretched guitar loop, which is heavily reverbed into pure sines. The sound of these drones, combined with the slowed field recording, feels really miserable. The guitar loop also appears on the outro for the second track in a more present iteration, as to help with the flow of the album, and as it stands, I am very happy with the first disc so far; it feels cohesive and expressive as to what I feel like I want to convey. I want to return to it next week to listen while I finish off my project proposal and work on my presentation, but as it stands, I am very happy with it and think it is some of my best work.

I also had a 1-to-1 with Jose this week. I sent him my draft of the proposal, which I admittedly hadn’t worked much on, and he gave me some valuable sources for further research into this connection between Noise and ASMR, Noise and Catharsis and Sound and Meditation. He gave me some great studies to explore for the research side of this project, which I would like to try incorporate into some further discs of this work, but right now I’m happy with what this does, gives me chills thinking about things. For future discs I want to explore more of a stripped-back sound and obvious ASMR conventions, referential to the article denouncing the art form in the prior entry, riffing on the idea of artificial intimacy and seeing what effect I can get from that concept.