Biography
Alan Bloor, originally from Windsor, Ontario, was involved in several bands in the early 80s, including a hardcore punk band called Binge of Violence. After Binge of Violence's breakup, Bloor pursued a career as a solo musician, studying jazz bass, as well as classical and flamenco guitar. In the late 1980s he began performing noise backgrounds at poetry readings in Detroit, Michigan. While performing, Bloor experimented with his bass guitar by placing metal objects on the strings to alter the timbre of the instrument (a technique often called prepared guitar).
Since that time, Bloor has delved heavily into experimentation with found objects as sound sources, including fan blades, typewriters, scrap metal and car springs. He has also supplied musical scores for performers Andrew Hammerson (ex DV-8) and Jake Brown, from the UK and Montreal respectively.
Since the beginning of 1995, Bloor has been performing solo as Knurl in Canada, the U.S, and abroad. Bloor has explored a less harsh side of noise music in his acclaimed ambient music project called Pholde.
The Unicorns were a Canadian rock band formed in the year 2000 by Nicholas Thorburn of British Columbia and Alden Penner of Quebec. J'aime Tambeur joined in December 2003. The band announced their split in late 2004, before reuniting for a short run of shows in 2014.
Rick White is a Canadian musician and singer-songwriter. Born in Moncton, New Brunswick, he was a member of indie bands Eric's Trip, Elevator, Perplexus, and The Unintended. White first played music, in a band called "Bloodstain", in 1984, before starting his own band "in 1986", called "T.C.I.B", which later transitioned into the band name, "The Underdogs", which lasted from the summer of 1987, until June 1988. By the summer of 1989, The Underdogs had broken up, and Rick had joined another band, "The Forest", which lasted from the 1989, until June 1990, with a one-off recording session happening in December, 1990. Prior to Eric's Trip, and while in Eric's Trip, White also recorded two solo-produced albums, one in March 1990, and another in August 1991, but both were not released until 2022. Known for lo-fi recording, he has also recorded and produced music for The Sadies, Orange Glass, Joel Plaskett, One Hundred Dollars, Dog Day, HotKid and his former Eric's Trip bandmate Julie Doiron.
Zaraza is a Canadian experimental/industrial funeral doom band from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Michael Sheridan is an Australian guitarist. Having played and recorded with an array of artists his versatility in original music spans the styles of rock, jazz/punk, industrial, metal, and sonic art including glitch & noise. He has released solo works such as Scaleshack,Digital Jamming and collaborations with Nicholas Littlemore and associates. He has been a member of several bands since 1975 including No (1987–1989) with Ollie Olsen and Marie Hoy, which were described as "One of Australias most compelling stage acts incorporating speed metal, hip hop and electro funk". In 1989 he followed Olsen to join Max Q with Michael Hutchence of INXS on vocals. He runs the label Zenith Wa Recordshttps://zenithwarecords.bandcamp.com/
Akifumi Nakajima, better known by his stage name Aube, was a Japanese noise musician. He released many CDs, LPs and cassettes, and was regarded as one of the most important noise musicians of his time. He did not like to term his work "music," preferring the term "design": "I don't think of myself as a musician or an artist. I'm a designer. I therefore consider my sound works to be designs as well".
Big City Orchestra is a long-running art/anti-art group based generally in California. They have an ever rotating cast of musician and nonmusician members. They were formed in 1979 as the house band for a network of artist residences in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.
Lovesliescrushing is an American ambient and shoegaze band from East Lansing, Michigan, United States, formed in 1991. The two primary members of the band are Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Duimstra (vocals).
The A Band are a British musical collective formed in Nottingham in the late 1980s. In 2005, The Wire compared the band's importance to that of AMM and SME, and noted their lack of musical training.
Neil Campbell is a British musician, notable for his vast catalogue and his many collaborations. In 2005, The Wire declared that he, Richard Youngs and Matthew Bower had "provided the map co-ordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the 80s and 90s". Pitchfork media have referred to him as "one of the most important experimental musicians of the last 20 years".
Panta Rhei were a Hungarian rock band, known for their progressive rock recordings and adaptations of classical music, for which they created synthesizers, such as the Muzix81 system. The band name refers to the philosophy of Heraclitus.
My Dad Is Dead was a recording project of musician Mark Edwards. The project began in Cleveland, Ohio in 1984. My Dad Is Dead has released twelve full-length albums before it officially ended in 2011. A new group called Secular Joy was formed later that year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Country Teasers were an art punk band formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1993.
Rick Tomlinson is an English, Bolton based musician, best known for one of his projects, Voice of the Seven Woods, with Chris Walmsley and Pete Hedley. Tomlinson is most commonly associated with the Manchester alternative music scene, and is regularly associated with the B-Music collective; a Manchester based DJ, music and arts collaboration that includes DJ Andy Votel, Super Furry Animals's frontman Gruff Rhys and various other DJs and artists.
Nadja is a Canadian duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff. Nadja began in 2003 as a solo project for Baker to explore the heavier and noisier side of his experimental ambient music performed mainly on the electric guitar. In 2005 Buckareff joined in order to make the project more than just a studio endeavour and to allow Nadja to perform live.
Yellow Swans were 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.
Voice of Eye is a Taos, New Mexico based experimental ambient music duo whose members are Bonnie McNaim and Jim Wilson. Formed in 1989 in Houston, Texas, their sound is one that blends electronic soundscapes, dark ambient, drone, and world music, particularly with Middle Eastern overtones, and tends to evoke an atmospheric or shamanistic quality. Many of the instruments used are home-made or heavily modified. Using this "odd palette of instrumentation," their music has been described as "largely indescribable, but totally inviting."
Howard Stelzer is a composer of electronic music, whose work is made primarily from sounds generated by cassette tapes and tape players. From 1997 until 2012, he ran the independent record label Intransitive Recordings.
Emeralds was an American electronic music trio founded in 2006 by members John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt and Mark McGuire. The band was based in Cleveland, Ohio and Portland, Oregon, United States.
Colour Me Wednesday are an English indie pop/pop punk band from West London, England, built around sisters Jen and Harriet Doveton. The band are noted for their melodic guitar pop, politicised lyrics and DIY punk method, including producing their own recordings, artwork and promotional videos.
Sissy Spacek is an American noise band founded in 1999 in Los Angeles, California, United States, and currently consisting of official members John Wiese and Charlie Mumma, along with several collaborators both past and present. Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2001, they have released a considerable catalogue encompassing genres which include harsh noise, noisecore, grindcore, free improvisation and musique concrete. Early releases consisted of collages of previously recorded demos and live performances with heavy use of cut-up editing. Many works have been released or re-released on Wiese's own label, Helicopter.
