Monday, March 17, 2008

He Makes Noise

I made a new friend recently. His name is Dallas. We were talking. The usual stuff people say when they meet new people. Where are you from, I asked? He is not from Dallas he said, but he is from America. What do you do, I asked? Dallas said, I make noise… I make noise… I, make, noise…


The words echoed in my mind. And there were one hundred cocky replies I could have come up with like, so does my Dad. Or, that’s what she said. Or better yet, so do I after Indian food. But rather than be the sarcastic prick I usually am, I decided to find out more about what Dallas meant. After all he looked like a pretty intelligent guy and not someone who would just throw that out there to fuck with my mind. It turns out Dallas is a DJ and he performs at random clubs in China. He has toured a bit around the US and Canada and if I am not mistaken he has even made noise for other film related projects in the US. But what is noise? Well we were fortunate enough to find out that he was playing that very night a secluded club in Guangzhou called The Loft.



Now The Loft is the kind of place you could never get to unless someone took you there, there are no directions written or otherwise that could possibly lead you to the right location. So a friend of mine knew the spot and we got there. I should add that I had been drinking all day so my memory is a bit skewed about what the interior of the place looked like. But it was located in an apartment and very cozy and laid back. They had a bar as well. So we chilled a while till Dallas came on. He set up his gear which was a bunch of small tape players, a lot of distortion pedals, some audio cassettes, and even what looked to me like some hard disk drives. He told me he only uses cassettes so I was excited to hear what noise actually sounds like.



It is hard to describe. It is like what you would hear in the back ground of an old Nine Inch Nails song. While Dallas held a mike to his mouth, he emitted strange sounds that he distorted and fed back into other recordings, and he combined these sound with other electronic fuzz he created touching wires on the contraptions that were laid out in front of him. The concept you have to admit is very intriguing. But how does it sound? It is not the kind of thing I liked listening to while kicking back and having a drink at a lounge. In fact some of my friends found it excruciating and wanted to leave. I on the other hand will admit that there are applications where I could see this working, mostly being combined into the sound track of a short film. It reminded me a bit of the opening title sequence for the movie Seven. They used a NIN song there actually. This Noise has actually inspired some film ideas for me. I think as uncomfortable as some of the Noise might sound, it does evoke an emotion or subconscious thought, on some level.I noticed on some of his tracks that there are even words playing softly in the back ground. It was listening to some new experimental Jazz on one level but strange on the other because I did not bring my fix of heroin with me. The stuff was seriously trippy. It might be fun to couple these sounds with images. And what I have in mind would probably be deemed as disturbing by most people but it could be a lot of fun. I am picturing a close up of blood. Very close where the whole screen is red. Then zooming out slowly with the Noise playing in the background to a face, the blood was from a nose bleed. The face is upright with the blood running sideways across the left cheek. The angle turns to show the face is not straight but actually pressed up against a cold white ceramic floor, a guy lying there with his eyes half open. A sharp contrast between the red of the blood, pale skin, cold white floor, and piercing blue eyes. They we cut to black and white where the image flutters, rolls across the screen as if the antenna is out of focus… If you are curious and would like to hear some Noise then check out The Greenmist MySpace. His name is Dallas. And he makes Noise…

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