SCIENCE FICTION MUSIC REVIEW: “Black Stabbath Volume 1” (2009)

One of the cooler aspects of this job is that occasionally people send stuff across my desk that I’d never have heard of, let alone seen in a million years if I was acting on my own. Some of this stuff is super-neat, some of it is just drek, and some of it defies easy categorization. “Black Stabbath, Volume 1” would be an example of this. The product of one man, and not so much music as it is an attempt to just generate interesting, deliberately-non-musical noise, it’s actually a lot of fun. “Why would anyone want to just make noise,” you ask? Well, why not? As the artist himself states,

>>>I understand that most people have no direct experience with out-and-out noise, at least presented in a context usually reserved for traditional musical performance. That’s because most people, if not happy or well-adjusted, are too busy with rewarding careers and hobbies, perhaps spending time with friends and family, to notice this crap even exists. And even if they’re unlucky enough to run across it, they don’t pursue it or anything — no, the reasonable response to encountering noise is to shrug and go off and spend your free time doing things that are relaxing and pleasant.

But an audience for noise does exist, as well as what might be a surprising number of prolific performers and artists who make the stuff. People go to noise concerts, buy noise CDs and records. Nobody in their right mind ever need be able to make these distinctions, but noise actually varies pretty widely in texture, dynamics, volume and overall presentation. Much like with veganism, aficionados chiefly value it for the opportunity it gives to one-up fellow nerds with useless, arcane knowledge and the dedicated pursuit of unpleasantness. Frequently, though, noise enthusiasts pretend otherwise, making up a bunch of theoretical arty hoo-hah to smokescreen the fact their devotion is more a symptom of emotional problems than reflective of a refined aesthetic sensibility or highly developed intellectual capacity.

I have to admit, though, that I personally love me some noise. When I was a kid, I’d hold up my heavy, black Panasonic cassette tape player to the tinny speaker of my small black-and-white TV during Godzilla movies and record the sounds of destruction and mayhem. I’d lie on my bed for hours, eyes glazed over in happiness, playing back the tapes and listening to the explosions and shrieks and roars. As an adult, the occasional noise concert serves as an amusing novelty, and, in private, some of that stuff can be useful to effect a kind of instant satori, deployed to override the mental circuits and scour the forebrain of thought-based clutter — a refreshing, controlled way to blast that pesky ego for a few minutes without the need for all that terrible Buddhism.<<<

And you know what? Even if I’m not sure if he’s talking about a legitimate underground scene, or if he’s just making crap up to make life seem more interesting than it generally is, *I* Totally Get It. I totally understand what he’s going for, and it makes a certain kind of sense. We’ve all been there, overloaded by life, bordering on psychic ennui, and then we unwisely turn on the radio and find ourselves pushed past the brink by Dexy’s Midnight Runners