Never Sorry - Live at Buddyfest XI
What the hell do I even say about this? It's already a little surreal to me for this to happen when it did as I just received my Waves Crashing Piano Chords shirt in the mail, and someone I know (Spookstina) just played with Breakdancing Ronald Reagan the other week. I also didn't realize it but apparently one of the other people involved in the altercation just performed at Average Weekend last month, which I attended (but sadly had to leave early because of a family emergency). Would never have expected those artists to collide, particularly in such a vulgar way. I'm not really sure how to approach talking about this incident, since there's clearly a lot of nuanced factors at play, and a lot of shit-slinging happening on all sides already. I might have my biases and personal takes in who I personally feel was "more" in the wrong, but I'm definitely able to see all sides of this conflict with some empathy and grace.
To me, this audio document is kind of a perfect examination of the divide growing between older and newer artists within noise who both wish to use it as an avenue to transgress and shock, but in very different ways and with very different expectations of what should and should not be allowed. Sean is definitely much more crass and emblematic of that confrontational, transgressive era of power electronics that thrived on getting under your skin and committing to a sort of musical kayfabe which allowed for artists to embody hateful and contradictory ideologies as a means to explore the base instincts of humanity, such as Con-Dom's examinations of racism and religious extemism, Genocide Organ and The Grey Wolves's theatrical autopsies of systems of oppression and cultural terrorism, and Whitehouse's vulgar, tasteless verbal batteries with lyrics that often read like transcripts of domestic abuse and journal entries of pedophilic fantasies.
Meanwhile newer noise artists, particularly those not from cisgender, heterosexual, and/or white backgrounds seem to find these types of examinations of inner darkness by connecting one's supposed autonomy to the systems of oppression that influence and guide our anger and fear unfulfilling and regressive, opting instead for overly-personal and confessional examinations of the physical self, sometimes through bodily mutilation, other times through uncomfortable verbal vents about self-hatred, dysphoria, detachment, dissociation, and so on. While there is plenty to criticize about the continued flirtations with fascism and extremist beliefs in noise and industrial's histories, I often find myself feeling that other, newer artists are just as capable of behaving and conducting themselves in very reactionary and close-minded ways, always ready to read the worst intentions from someone, always insistent on someone having to fit neatly into a binary view of the world. Someone is always The Victim, and someone is always The Oppressor.
As time goes on, I feel more and more disillusioned with noise as a "community" that can stand firm together on anything, and feel it has become just another musical "genre" comparable to punk, another wider movement that continues to be absorbed into the dominant culture, rather than the radical philosophy rooted in the rejection of order and the examination of the failures of civilized society that both originated as. This set to me is in some ways the final nail in the coffin, a declaration that noise is no longer about chaos and radical expression, but just another branch of the inescapable us-versus-them politics that permeate every corner of existence. Noise is not what it once was, and while there are plenty of artists in the newer generations I am deeply inspired by and have great admiration for, I do confess I fear for how homogenized noise will become in another decade or so. How can an artistic movement truly embody chaos, disorder, entropy, if it is expected to conform to the political sensibilities of an era?
Take these musings however you wish, but I just can't help but feel like within these eleven minutes, I heard noise as I've known it shudder out a final death rattle, and saw the light leave its eyes once and for all. Where do we go from here? What will rise from its ashes, and what function will it serve? Is noise now only something to reinforce and coddle my political and moral beliefs, my impulsive presuppositions about people and the world at large? Who can say. At least Sean's project is true to its name. Even in the aftermath of this absolute shitshow, he refuses to bend the knee and remains Never Sorry.