Image via publicist.
“What the fuck is noise?” asks sound artist and theorist Mattin at the start of his essay “Theses on Noise,” laid out plainly in 11 parts on May 25, 2006. “Precisely because of its indeterminacy, noise is the most sensuous activity / practice. To try to fix it or make it a genre is as fucked up as believing in democracy.”
Mattin will participate in two workshops and a discussion this week at UNSOUND, an annual experimental music festival in Krakow, Poland that The FADER will be covering this year. The weeklong event is always themed, and the announcement of this year’s theme, NOISE, begins with Mattin’s question. The rest of the announcement — written by UNSOUND’s curator/director, Mat Schulz — weaves multiple answers to the question into details of the festival’s 2024 edition. None of them are complete, but each of them is illuminating. “Noise is… an effect of the human condition,” one of them reads. “You can shut your eyes, but you cannot close your ears.
UNSOUND 2024’s lineup is a dream for noise lovers the world across, featuring 20-odd artists The FADER has already covered glowingly. Among these: Actress, Amirtha Kidambi, Bill Callahan, The Body, Chuquimamani-Condori, DJ Anderson do Paraiso, Evian Christ, evilgiane, FUJI||||||||||TA, Heavee, Ka Baird, Kali Malone, Kode9, Laurel Halo, Lord Spikeheart, Mica Levi, ML Buch, Nídia, Rainy Miller, and Raven Chacon. Other standouts include noise titans Keiji Haino, Yellow Swans, and Sunn O))’s Stephen O’Malley, who is unlisted but will join Malone (his wife) during her set.
Supporting this panoply of international talent is a local roster recruited via open call. “You can send us ear-shredding work, sure,” curator/director Mat Shulz explained, “but we’re particularly interested in less literal, perhaps more playful interpretations of NOISE, somehow subverting the word.”
In advance of the festival, we asked the artists of UNSOUND 2024 to respond to the Mattin’s abstract inquiry — “What the fuck is noise?” — however they saw fit.
Bill Callahan
Noise is just two or more songs playing at the same time. It is efficient this way.
Once you know how to let your brain parse out each song from the conglomerate known as noise, you can appreciate the songs within.
Aleksander Wnuk
Noise begins with the microscopic fluctuation of the body, within the very flesh, or even in the suggestion of it. It does not end in the most severe raging convulsion.
FUJI|||||||||||TA
It can be said that there is no “Noise” in this world.
but, at the same time, it can also be said that all sounds become “Noise.”
It depends on what sound you want to focus on.
When you want to hear the sound of your refrigerator’s motor as clearly as possible, any music playing from the speakers in that room will become Noise.
In other words, there is no distinction in the sound itself.
2K88
Noise is everywhere. Even in the quietest place on Earth, we can always hear some kind of hum. Its constant presence makes us not notice it, but we feel safe with it, unless it invades our comfort zone, becoming unpleasant or intense — then, emotions arise. Even the most crystal-clear sound gains a unique structure and character in the context of surrounding sounds. That’s why noise is always present in my music. It is my tool, my romance with imperfection.
