Various Artists

Massive, piercing, and raucous - deliberately raw and disorienting, "Noise" features tracks by musicians from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: Torturing Nurse, Wang Changcun, Mei Zhiyong, Ronez, Wang Fujui, Orgasm Denial, Li Jianhong, Xu Cheng, Zafka, and more... 

Originally released in a small edition China-only 2CDR 15-track set (2012, Kwanyin Records), this new edition of "Noise" incorporates seven additional sets of works; 22 tracks in total. Scattered throughout, they feel entirely natural - as if they had always belonged in their respective spots. With some tracks dating back as far as 2005, the selection process focused on the actions and temperaments embodied in the works - qualities consistent with the past, yet offering new possibilities. 

These works were initially solicited via the internet: instant messaging, email, and gatherings in online noise groups, creating music with software or hardware, driven by a mindset that was at once curious and uncompromising. Most of these musicians lived in Beijing or Shanghai - China's two most pivotal yet disorienting cities. Like the alternation of day and night, before the noise erupted, they would share various musical resources, digesting them fully in a single afternoon and savouring the thrill of a shared conspiracy, before setting out to create the noise. That pure blend of black and white was a new city they built together via the internet.

During that period, noise art united the fervour of youth, shattered the tracks of syntax, and briefly levelled identities and differences. It was a form of surrogate screaming - expressing satisfaction or discontent - that erupted anytime, anywhere. Noise at that time signified invention and transformation: dissolving the solid, coaxing unconventional sounds from conventional instruments, and making silent objects clamour.

Contemporary listeners might not perceive the shifts in auditory impression wrought by the passage of time and the march of eras. Vocal techniques, tools, and people themselves evolve (or devolve); noise possesses its own aesthetic. Through vigorous action - choosing, transforming, and performing - a vast, fleeting phenomenon takes shape. It articulates attitudes, interprets the self, distils philosophy, elevates purpose, and confronts the void and its echoes head-on.