John Wiese – Teenage Hallucination: 1992-1999 (Troniks) 2005
I was asked the other day what is noise and why do I like it. I was fucking stumped to tell you the truth. If I had my time again I would have said that he pleasure that I get from noise is in those thrills of the unexpected, that transcendent isolationism you get when you hear it through headphones and the sheer power of it all. But alas I was not that quick and I responded with something like “It’s great”, which you know, is lame. But I tell you this rather boring anecdote because although I’m not keen to over intellectualise my love of noise, many are. In the liner notes of Teenage Hallucination, T. Mikawa of Incapacitants writes this: .. the strongest sound of all is noise. Pure noise encompasses all of time and space. This is my definition. As a definition I think its a bit limited but you know, good on him for having a go. The purity of noise of which he speaks is certainly in evidence on this retrospective of John Wiese’s earlier recordings. This is dense unrelenting electronic bastardry. Particularly the later stuff which indicates the blueprint of the manic hyperactivity of Soft Punk for instance. Those looking for the spacial glitch and click of his awesome Circle Snare might have to look elsewhere. The real treat for Wiese fans and there are some of us out there,the final cuts which actually stem from his time as a 14 year old. The idea of Wiese as the harsh noise version of Miley Cyrus kills me but the tracks, despite the dreadful production have some great noise ideas which I haven’t heard in some time. The backwards noise loop stuff was particularly fun. If you like Wiese then this will certainly not disappoint.
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