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Bruce Russell (born 1960) is a New Zealand experimental musician and writer.
He is a founding member and guitarist of the noise rock trio The Dead C and the free noise combo A Handful of Dust (with Alastair Galbraith). He has released solo albums featuring guitar and tape manipulation, and has contributed articles to British music magazine The Wire.
He established the Xpressway record label, which was active from 1985 until the early 1990s, releasing mostly cassettes and a few records. Russell then founded the Corpus Hermeticum record label. Xpressway released only music by New Zealanders, usually song-based. Corpus Hermeticum releases, in contrast, may feature New Zealand or international artists, and they eschew song forms in favour of free-form, experimental, usually improvised sounds.
In summer of 2013, Bruce Russell's daughter Olive Russell uploaded a documentary of her father that she shot and edited herself called "27 Minutes with Mr. Noisy: A Documentary about Bruce Russell" to Vimeo.com.
During his time at the University of Otago, Bruce Russell was a member of that university's champion team in the television quiz University Challenge. [1]
During the South African Springbok rugby team's controversial 1981 tour of New Zealand, Russell received two police convictions as a student leader of protests against the tour. [2]
For a period Russell worked as an archivist in Radio New Zealand's Sound Archives. [3]
Russell climbed Mount Fuji for a retired librarians charity[ clarification needed ] in 1994.[ citation needed ]
Mount Smart Stadium is a multipurpose stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. It is the main home ground of the New Zealand Warriors of the National Rugby League, and occasionally hosts rugby union and international rugby league matches. Built within the quarried remnants of the Rarotonga / Mount Smart volcanic cone, it is located 10 kilometres south of the city centre, in the suburb of Penrose.
The Dead C are a New Zealand based music and art trio made up of members Bruce Russell, Michael Morley and Robbie Yeats. Russell plays electric guitar, Morley sings and plays electric guitar or laptop, and Yeats plays drums. They have been called one of the most interesting bands in the world by Thurston Moore, and have been cited as influences by Bardo Pond, Flying Saucer Attack, Labradford, and Pavement.
Flying Saucer Attack is an English space rock band formed in Bristol in 1992, led by songwriter David Pearce. Rachel Brook of Movietone was a member during the band's early incarnation; other musicians contributing to the group's recordings and live performances included Rocker, Matt Elliott and Sam Jones.
Alastair Galbraith is a New Zealand musician and sound artist from Dunedin.
Birchville Cat Motel is a one-man experimental music project formed by Campbell Kneale from Wellington, New Zealand. Although largely unrecognised by the mainstream press and public in his home country, Kneale has toured throughout Japan, America, Europe, and Australia. His first vinyl release was Jewelled Wings on the Freedom From label. Many of Kneale's rare and out of print recordings have been reissued recently on a 6cdr collection entitled Chaos Steel Skeletons.
Le Jazz Non is a compilation album of music from New Zealand's 'free-noise' movement. It was released in 1996 on the Corpus Hermeticum label. It was compiled by Bruce Russell in April 1996, and received funding assistance from the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. The album is packaged in a hard cardboard sleeve in line with other Corpus Hermeticum releases. It contains liner notes by New Zealand music journalist Nick Cain.
Xpressway was a record label founded by New Zealand musician Bruce Russell in Dunedin in 1988. Until it ceased in 1993, Xpressway released a variety of New Zealand musicians, primarily on cassette, but its catalogue included several 7-inch singles and one 12-inch EP.
A discography of Corpus Hermeticum.
Rosy Parlane, also known as Paul Douglas, is an electronic musician from New Zealand who currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He was in the New Zealand trio Thela, then went on a solo career, as well as co-founding the Sigma Editions record label. He also played in the bands Empirical, Parmentier, Pit Viper, Plains, Rosenberg, Sakada, Codhaven and Amazing Broccoli.
Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.
Table of the Elements an American avant-garde record label created and owned by Jeff Hunt. Begun in 1993, the label’s 150-plus releases form a significant contemporary chronicle of American experimental music.
Joyful Noise Recordings is an independent record label from Indianapolis, Indiana. The label was founded in 2003 in Bloomington, Indiana by Karl Hofstetter, who also played drums on many of the label's first releases. Joyful Noise maintains an active roster of over 30 bands playing various musical styles, though according to the label, each artist "in one way or another bridges the gap between pop and noise."
Yellow Swans are an American experimental music band from Portland, Oregon. The duo were renowned for their improvisational approach to noise music, creating a unique experience for each live performance. They described their music as "a constantly evolving mass of psychedelic noise that is both physically arresting and psychically liberating". The band consisted of Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman. The band announced their split in April 2008. A live show by Yellow Swans at the festival Oblivion Access was announced in 2023.
Roy Godfrey Phillips is a British musician. He was a member of The Soundtracks, The Saints and The Peddlers.
P16.D4 was a German electronic noise music collective, active primarily from 1980 to 1988. P16.D4 embraced tape cut-ups, musique concrète, endless recycling and transformation of previously published material, and many long-distance collaborations with like-minded artists such as DDAA, Vortex Campaign, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow. Their active participation in the international industrial tape scene yielded collaborative output such as their release Distruct, where bands such as Nurse with Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, and The Haters provided the source material. The longest-term collaboration was with the installation and conceptual artist Achim Wollscheid, who used P16.D4 sounds as the basis for LPs he recorded under the name SBOTHI. Ralf Wehowsky, the only constant member of the group, later released solo material under the alias RLW.
Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita, best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.
Alan Courtis is an Argentine musician, artist, composer and sound artist. He studied classical guitar, piano, theory and composition. He holds a degree in Communication Science from the University of Buenos Aires, where he currently runs an annual music workshop. He played electric guitar in diverse bands and in 1993 he co-founded the group Reynols. With this group he has released more than one hundred CDs and vinyls worldwide in labels like Trente Oiseaux, Digital Narcis, Drone Records, Locust, Sedimental, Beta-Lactam Ring Records, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, RRR, Audiobot Records, Roaratorio, JDK, Reverse, Matching Head, American Tapes, Last Visible Dog, Carbon Records, Mikroton, etc.
Kraus is a New Zealand experimental musician and composer. The New Zealand Listener called him "a national treasure" and "one of the most quietly important and interesting people making music in New Zealand". His music crosses the boundaries of electronic music, post-rock, no wave, space folk, noise pop, punk rock and martian stomp.
Futurians are a New Zealand sci-fi punk band formed in Dunedin in 2001. Foxy Digitalis magazine called them the "best punk band on the fucken planet."
Voice of America is a 1982 live collaborative album of improvised experimental music by Fred Frith, Bob Ostertag and Phil Minton. It was recorded live at PASS, New York City in January 1981, and the Actual Festival at the ICA, London in August 1981. The album was released on LP by Rift Records in 1982. RecRec Music reissued the album on CD in 1994.