While Merzbow’s noise is accessible as a topic of discussion owing at least in part to its controversial, confrontational nature, Ryoji Ikeda’s dataplex [iTunes link] — an ultra-precise, intricately layered, minimalist audio experience — turns back any easy, let alone ready-made, discourse. In its own way it parallels Masami Akita’s efforts generally: the [...]

Noise — true and unadulterated noise — is not the chaos from which order emerges, it is the great annihilator that devours all order. The television, the radio, the movie, the CD; the text, the word, the letters; emotions, senses, thought; in the end, noise consumes them all, consumes everything but itself. Noise is [...]

Edward Droste’s Grizzly Bear seems to have sprung almost fully formed from the lo-fi bedroom studio scene into the world of well polished lo-fi wonders. On Yellow House, the music of Droste’s band — including members Christopher Bear (the last name is coincidental), Daniel Rossen, and Chris Taylor — induces shivers of [...]