Michael Tau — Extreme Music. From Silence To Noise And Everythi

Here’s a tome from Feral House with a title that promises… well, it promises a whole lot, and unsurprisingly can’t fully deliver; however, a flick through the contents pages shows a wide range of topics with numerous items of interest to noise and experimental music fans - though the exact question of who the book is precisely aimed at is perhaps the key issue here. Anyway, with nearly 400 pages of material, you - whoever is reading this - will find something of interest. That’s the positive overview, onto the nit-picking…

So, firstly, the title is misleading, mainly because of that word ‘extreme’ which is always a red flag to me; ‘Music at the Extremes,’ or ‘Music at the Fringes’ would have made more sense but instead the mysterious spectre of ‘Extreme Music’ is hoisted: I’ve never, thankfully, met anyone who’s said they’re into ‘extreme music,’ it’s something you maybe entertain when you’re 15, but once you’ve experienced a bit of the world you normally shake it off. A more sympathetic reading of the title is that the book is written from, and for, a thoroughly innocent, ‘mainstream’ perspective - and actually I think that’s largely true - but that would seem to work against its natural audience, and its presence on a publishing press that generally deals with underground cultures.

Scanning the contents pages, some immediate issues appear; for example, the initial sections deal with ‘Extreme Scenes,’ split down into ‘Loud,’ Quiet,’ Vulgar,’ ‘Fast,’ and ‘Found.’ The first two make sense, but the last three beg obvious absences; ‘Vulgar’ covers goregrind and pornogrind - what about (perhaps) a section on the extremes of religious music, cultic music, christian black metal; ‘Fast’ clearly asks for a section on slow music, though in fairness this is covered to some extent in a section on ‘Long’ music; and ‘Found’ music could have provoked a section on AI music. This is indeed nitpicking, but it highlights the odd ‘grab bag’ nature of the book, which goes on to cover: ’Short’ music; extreme records, in terms of large, small, shaped, and picture discs; music released on antiquated formats - floppy discs, dictaphone tapes, 8-tracks, etc; extreme packaging, including a ‘Disgusting’ section; ‘Silent,’ ’Damaged,’ and ‘Unplayable’ recordings; and a closing section on ‘The Digital Age’ covering various -wave musics, ringtones, and contemporary outsider musics. So, there’s a lot of ground covered, much of which is noise-adjacent, but because of the vast territory examined it’s often somewhat unsatisfying.

The ‘Loud’ section, which is the one of most interest here for me, examines both Noise and Harsh Noise Wall - though curiously not Power Electronics, a very obvious omission: again, there’s no sense of the book attempting to be authoritative. These pieces are good in that they feature some interesting and noteworthy voices - James Shearman and Julien Skrobek, for example - but less good due to a lack of depth or genuine immersion in the genres. For instance, ‘Japanoise’ is discussed without mentioning Incapacitants, and also seems to be identified with ‘debasement and excess,’ ignoring a more simple interest in sound, with roots in abstract experimental electronics, and psychedelic and prog rock, The Rita and Vomir are described as ‘feedback’ which is plain odd, and whilst discussion of HNW as a meditative music is there, the general tone is that it is loud and harsh, as well as associated with porn and gore imagery - again speaking to that outsider’s view. More seriously, some noise artists are misgendered and deadnamed…

The sense of shallow depth is repeated during the discussion of ambient music, where Tau bizarrely doesn’t mention Pete Namlook or Aphex Twin, two figures of impossible importance for the genre, but does name check Boards of Canada… These omissions, in the noise and ambient sections where I have a fair grasp of the histories, make me suspicious of the sections where I know little. However, this lack of knowledge means that a fair amount of the book becomes a whistle stop tour of fun facts, for example, the fastest extratone music is apparently 639,532 BPM, on ‘Fréquences Outrancières,’ a 2001 collaboration between Einrich and Lawrencium. The biggest record, despite being unplayed, was a huge 4,884-inch disc installed on top of an arena in Inglewood, California, in 2014: ’The size of four and a half football fields, it was a massive replica of the Eagles’ Hotel California LP, and actually rotated at a linear velocity of seventeen miles per hour.’ It’s smallest counterpart is a tiny 18mm lathe record - ’seven-tenths of an inch!’ - that rather sweetly featured a heartbeat and was used in a marriage proposal. We discover that one of the earliest picture discs was actually commissioned by Adolf Hitler, in 1934, and for a more impressive experience learn about Red Raven Records who started putting out zoetrope discs in 1956: ‘Red Raven discs were printed with a series of animation frames and sold with a mirrored ornament, which sat in the middle of the record as it played. As the turntable would spin, the mirror would show a brief, repeating animation using a zoetrope effect’ - though, to complain again, Tau doesn’t mention the Star Wars soundtrack holographic vinyl. One gratifying aspect of the book is the frequent appearance of deserving underground figures, Michael Ridge, for example, crops up regularly, and there’s also words to be read about Peter King, a key figure for noise/etc folk of a certain age. King ran a lathe cutting company in New Zealand, way before this was a fashionable venture, and produced countless noisy discs for small projects; I have several myself and they’re very treasured. Surprisingly we learn that he even cut a disc for the Beastie Boys…  

We also learn about smelly records and disgusting records - though if I’m honest I’m pretty blasé about receiving artwork with blood or other bodily fluids on it; again, there’s that question of who the book is written for. From a more fun angle, we read that ‘in 2008, Mercury Records put out a special, limited-to-300 edition of Gonzales’ ‘Working Together’ on records made entirely of chocolate - meaning they could be played or eaten. Because of chocolate’s meltability, these discs must be kept at a cool temperature and can only be played a few times before they break down.’ This wasn’t an innovation though, as in 1903, ‘Germany’s Stollwerck Chocolate company produced a series of tiny chocolate records, sold with a miniature gramophone designed to play them’ - if you can read that without desperately desiring one, I salute you. Running with that theme, Tau tells us about Tooth Tunes, a line of electric toothbrushes sold by Tiger Electronics in 2007: ‘Listed at $9.99 USD apiece, they promised a musical experience while you brushed your teeth. Each brush issued a pattern of vibrations that is transmitted from brush head to tooth to mandible to inner ear. The brusher’s cochlea would then interpret the vibrations as sound, so instead of the usual mechanical hum of a standard electric toothbrush, they would be treated to two-minute increments of pop songs like the Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started,” the Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun,”66 and even a song specifically recorded for Tooth Tunes by Devo, “Brush It.”’ Terrifying, but clearly desirable.

‘Extreme Music. From Silence To Noise And Everything In Between’ covers way too much terrain and material for me to do it justice in a short review - but that’s also Tau’s dilemma. The book is engaging and constantly interesting, but also somewhat unsatisfying, due to a lack of depth; for instance, as someone who likes a fair bit of noise, the HNW section was as frustrating as it was interesting, if nothing else I felt there was so much missing and unsaid, and I think this is the major flaw of the book in general. It feels like a grab bag of tangentially related materials, like Tau has run through a shopping mall and nabbed a few items from each shop, then written about them - but the resulting text doesn’t faithfully convey each individual shop or the mall as a whole. This is not a serious issue, as each section might inspire the reader to further investigate that particular sub-genre/etc, and me pedantically listing hundreds of things the book might have missed helps no one, but this lack of genuine depth does perhaps reduce it to something akin to a coffee table book. As mentioned several times, I’m unsure as to precisely who the book is aimed at. Sometimes writing on peripheral musics - or art - adopts a slightly sensationalist ‘ooh aren’t these people weird/funny/idiots/crazy’ tone, and whilst Tau doesn’t do that, I think thats worth keeping in mind as a general, broad indication of the tone; to be clear there’s no sense of mocking from Tau, but the book is very much written from an outsiders perspective on phenomena perceived as unusual or odd. Tau’s writing style reflects this too, sometimes coming across with the passivity and naivety of local news journalism, and there is generally a lack of analysis; the introduction and conclusion are…not great, and as with the White Nationalist Skinhead Movement book also published by Feral House, you have to question editorial standards. However, perhaps I’m being too harsh here, all things considered the book is a fun read, and certainly works on that level - it’s crammed full of amusing stories and items, and I would challenge anyone to walk away from it without something; I just feel it might frustrate some readers as much as interest them.