Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City and formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke was also a member of the band from 1999 to 2005, and Mark Ibold was a member from 2006 to 2011.
Glenn Branca was an American avant-garde composer, guitarist, and creator of unique musical instruments. Known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series, he was a driving force behind the genres of no wave, totalism and noise rock. Branca received a 2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a member of the rock band Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moore was ranked 34th in Rolling Stone's 2004 edition of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Dive is a Belgian electronic body music project formed in 1990 by Dirk Ivens. Dive's "audio trademark" is the experimental sound of abused drum machines, pulsating through crackling distortion on almost every song.
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions. He has lived in France since 1987.
Grifters is an indie rock/alternative rock band based in Memphis who have released albums on Darla Records, Doink, Sonic Noise, Shangri-La Records, and Sub Pop Records. The band released five studio albums from 1992 to 1997. In the years following 1997, the band had breaks in activity with some members pursuing other musical projects and with the band sporadically touring in the years after. However, in recent years they have continued to tour on a consistent basis and have stated interest in recording new material. The band has released and reissued some of their material on Bandcamp.
Swirlies is an American indie rock band formed in Boston in 1990. Since their first records in the early 1990s, the band has released studio and home recordings that blend shoegaze and twee pop with electronica and lo-fi music.
Zeni Geva is a Japanese noise rock band featuring singer and guitarist KK Null and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Formed in Tokyo in 1987, the group's name translates roughly as "money violence".
Jad Fair is an American singer, guitarist, graphic artist, and founding member of lo-fi alternative rock group Half Japanese.
Christopher Richard Watson is an English musician and sound recordist specialising in natural history. He was a founding member of the musical group Cabaret Voltaire, and Watson's work as a wildlife sound recordist has covered television documentaries and experimental musical collaborations.
My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA) is an Italian musical duo and outsider audiovisual artist consisting of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, formed in Torino, Italy, in late 1997. The band releases avant garde / experimental music in a form of improvisation that MCIAA themselves define 'instantaneous composition'.
Noisegate was a group of artists dedicated to the exploration of sound as an artistic medium, based in Oakland, California, United States. Constantly recording, touring, and collaborating with other experimental artists and filmmakers, they became a staple of the Bay Area experimental music and sound-art scenes between 1995 and 2002.
Orphx is a Canadian music duo made up of Rich Oddie and Christina Sealey who perform techno, industrial and experimental music. They have performed worldwide and have numerous releases on CD, vinyl and cassette through independent music labels such as Sonic Groove, Hands Productions, Hymen Records, and Hospital Productions.
To Live and Shave in L.A. (TLASILA) is an experimental music collective founded in 1993 by avant-garde composer/producer Tom Smith and Miami Beach musician/producer Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra. They were soon joined by oscillator player Ben Wolcott; this lineup created the majority of the early releases in TLASILA's extensive discography.
Bad Moon Rising is the second studio album by American rock band Sonic Youth, released on March 29, 1985, by Blast First and Homestead Records. The album is loosely themed around the dark side of America, including references to obsession, insanity, Charles Manson, heavy metal, Satanism, and early European settlers' encounters with Native Americans.
Noise Festival, started in 2001, is an annual experimental music festival that takes place in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The festival is organized by DRMK, a "Collective for the Development of Youth Culture", as would be translated from the name in Slovene.
Balázs Pándi is a Hungarian drummer and journalist. He has worked and toured with various acts from all around the world including Venetian Snares, Otto von Schirach, To Live and Shave in L.A., The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and Zu. He also played drums for the Blood of Heroes project.
Full of Hell & Merzbow is a collaborative studio album between the American grindcore band Full of Hell and the Japanese noise artist Merzbow. The album was released on November 24, 2014 through Profound Lore Records. The CD version of the album was also packaged with a five-song, 35-minute bonus disc titled Sister Fawn that was described as an "extension" of Full of Hell & Merzbow; it was later released in a digital format as well.
OvO is an Italian noise rock duo formed by Stefania Pedretti and Bruno Dorella in 2000 in Ravenna, Italy. The two initially planned for the band to be totally improvisation-based with an open lineup. After encouragement from members of their local music scene to become a band and tour, they decided to do so in order to play with Cock ESP, an extreme noise band from Minneapolis. Since, the pair have released eight full-length albums on a variety of international record labels including Load Records, Dio Drone, Bar La Muerte, and Supernatural Cat, among others. The origin of the band's name, OvO, stems from using a piece of the Italian word "nuovo", or new, which creates a palindrome. Decibel Magazine summarizes OvO's 2016 album, Creatura, as "making rhythmic, layered, sludgy noise" and a "David Lynch dance party". The duo has toured extensively across the world, playing over 1000 shows in varied locations including Europe, Asia, North America, and Mexico.
