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No wave was a transient avant-garde music and visual art scene of the late 1970s in downtown New York City. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance and atonality in addition to non-rock genres like free jazz and disco while often reflecting an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic worldview.
DNA was an American no wave band formed in 1977 by guitarist Arto Lindsay and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, and later joined by drummer Ikue Mori and bassist Tim Wright. They were associated with the late 1970s New York no wave scene, and were featured on the 1978 compilation No New York.
James Chance, also known as James White, is an American saxophonist, keyboard player, songwriter and singer.
James Chance and the Contortions was a musical group led by saxophonist and vocalist James Chance, formed in 1977. They were a central act of New York City's downtown no wave music scene in the late 1970s, and were featured on the influential compilation No New York (1978).
Bush Tetras are an American post-punk band from New York City, formed in 1979. They are best known for the 1980 song "Too Many Creeps", which exemplified the band's sound of "jagged rhythms, slicing guitars, and sniping vocals". Although they did not achieve mainstream success, the Bush Tetras were influential and popular in the Manhattan club scene and college radio in the early 1980s. New York's post-punk revival of the 2000s was accompanied by a resurgence of interest in the genre, with the Tetras' influence heard in many of that scene's bands.
Dance-punk is a post-punk subgenre that emerged in the late 1970s, and is closely associated with the disco, post-disco and new wave movements.
Vivienne Dick is an Irish feminist experimental and documentary filmmaker. Her early films helped define the No Wave scene. According to The Irish Times, Dick is "one of the most important film-makers Ireland has produced".
No wave cinema was an underground filmmaking movement that flourished on the Lower East Side of New York City from about 1976 to 1985. Sponsored by the artists group Collaborative Projects, no wave cinema was a stripped-down style of guerrilla filmmaking that emphasized dark edgy mood and unrehearsed immediacy above many other artistic concerns – similar to the parallel no wave music movement in its raw and rapid style.
Punk visual art is artwork associated with the punk subculture and the No wave movement. It often graces punk rock album covers, flyers for punk concerts and punk zines. It is sometimes showcased in art galleries and exhibition spaces. Indeed, the punk aesthetic was a dominant strand from 1982 to 1986 in the many art galleries of the East Village of Manhattan.
Theoretical Girls were a New York-based no wave band formed by Glenn Branca and Jeff Lohn that existed from 1977 to 1981. Theoretical Girls played only about 20 shows. It released one single, which had some attention in England where it sold a few thousand copies. The band was never signed by a record company, but is well regarded as an early leading no wave group that mixed classical modern ideas of composition with punk rock. This experimental music was mostly supported by the New York art world and minimal art music audience.
Punk jazz is a music genre that describes the amalgamation of elements of jazz with the instrumentation or conceptual heritage of punk rock. John Zorn's band Naked City, James Chance and the Contortions, Lounge Lizards, Universal Congress Of, and Laughing Clowns are notable examples of punk jazz artists.
Noise Fest was an influential festival of no wave noise music performances curated by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at the New York City art space White Columns in June 1981. Sonic Youth made their first live appearances at this show.
Tier 3 was an influential but short-lived 300-capacity no wave art nightclub in New York. Founded by Hilary Jaeger in 1979, Tier 3 was a major venue in the city's underground music and counterculture post-punk art scene, along with the Mudd Club. Live performances showcased punk rock, no wave, ska, noise music, free jazz, new wave and experimental music. The club was located at 225 West Broadway in the TriBeCa neighborhood of lower Manhattan.
Stick Men were a punk rock/no wave band from Philadelphia. Fronted by guitarist/painter/sculptor Peter L. Baker and keyboardist B.A.L. Stack, the earliest Stick Men lineup formed in 1977 and went through various member changes before settling on the group that would tour and record together in the early 1980s, featuring Chuck Mattern Jr. on vocals, saxophone, trumpet and electronics, Bill Bradfield on bass guitar, and Jim Meneses on drums/percussion. In 1982 the band released their debut LP This is the Master Brew, followed by the EP Get on Board the Stick Men in 1983.
Scott B and Beth B were among the best-known New York No Wave underground film makers of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Eric Mitchell is a French born writer, director and actor who moved to downtown New York City in the early 1970s. He has acted in many No Wave films such as Permanent Vacation (1980) by Jim Jarmusch, but is best known for his own films that are usually writing and directed by him: Kidnapped, Red Italy, Underground U.S.A. and The Way It Is or Eurydice in the Avenues, starring Steve Buscemi, Vincent Gallo, Mark Boone Junior and Rockets Redglare. Mitchell worked out of New York City's sordid East Village area in conjunction with Colab and other performance artists and noise musicians. There he created a series of scruffy, deeply personal, short Super 8mm and 16mm films in which he combined darkly sinister images to explore the manner in which the individual is constrained by society.
James Allan Curtis, known professionally as Diego Cortez, was an American filmmaker and art curator closely associated with the no wave period in New York City. Cortez was the co-founder of the Mudd Club, and he curated the influential post-punk art show New York/New Wave, which brought the then aspiring artist Jean-Michel Basquiat to fame.
Boris Policeband was a no wave noise music performer who used dissonant violin, police radio transmissions, and voice. Boris Pearlman was a classically trained violist from New York City.
Youth in Asia was a short-lived American no wave conceptual art noise music band from New York City that was formed in 1978 by Frank Schroder (bass), Taro Suzuki, Steven Harvey and Stephan Wischerth (drums).
Nancy Arlen was a cast polyester resin sculptor and drummer for the no wave band Mars.
References
- Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, Princeton University Press, 2006
- Masters, Marc. No Wave, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007,pp. 175–178