Only saw Fantomas and The Locust once. Trevor Dunn’s trio was the first/opening act. I learned later that the guitarist was Mary Halvorson - had no idea who she was until years later.
The Locust was quite an opening act! There were all dressed in black and wearing masks, as if getting ready to fight The Green Hornet and Kato. The keyboard player had a huge modular synth behind him. Bass was massive!
In the mid-2000s we had a local band called Facemat. They used guitars but more often that not just did harsh noise for almost their entire set. The first time I saw them, the lead guitarist started the set with a faithful cover of “Eruption” by Eddie Van Halen, then gradually transitioned to free-improv then all out noise. Archetypical piss-and-vinegar lads, just out to get loud and have fun.
The one time I saw Whitehouse was at DC9. I at first disappointed to see two guys with two laptops sitting at a table for their set. I thought “So this is the legendary power electronic Whitehouse???”.
Then the boys of Facemat stumbled into the room. They’d obvious pre-gamed with a six-pack or three of cheap beer, and who knows what other substances. They immediately initiate crowd-surfing, kicking ceiling fans, etc. One of the Whitehouse guys gets pissed at them, picks up a mic and starts yelling at them. They of course start yelling back. The rest of the show was “F^^ you!” “No, eff you” “Eff you back!”
Over 10 years later, I ran into one of the Facemat boys. He had become a bartender at Looking Glass. We started catching up as he served me drinks. He just smiled when I brought up that night at DC9. We agreed that was a fun time.
I feel like more than half of the thousands of shows I’ve been to could fall into this category! Haha! Small venues (preferably underground) with raw acts letting it rip. It doesn’t really work as well in a “proper” venue setting, there’s too much separation between crowd and performer.
Lightning Bolt was mentioned earlier. I saw them a bunch of times between ‘00 and ‘05. The first time was in seattle. I had never heard of them but my friend who was in the know recommended them since I was a massive Godheadsilo fan and played in a band of that style. Lightning Bolt completely blew my mind. Years later they played at my place and it was one of the most sonically intense things I’ve ever witnessed, yet even with a couple hundred people going apeshit packed shoulder to shoulder it was incident free and everyone had a smile on their face. As soon as the crowd thinned out the two brians found me to ask for brooms so they could help clean up! We nerd talked about sound system gear for an hour or so and then they were off to the next town. Zero rockstar bullshit. Nicest guys ever. Side note; my band played earlier that night and our drummer bailed on us, lightning bolts roadie sat in on drums and killed it. I bought a drum set at the flea market the next day and switched instruments, I’ve played drums in most bands I’ve been in since. Thinking about it now I see how fateful that show was for me.
A shorter anecdote than my last post;
In about ‘05 or so I saw Wolf Eyes play at Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco. Their set left a lot to be desired, just kinda generic noise. Anyway, there were two hesher dudes in front of me most of the set yelling into each other’s ears though naturally I couldn’t hear them. I wondered what they could be going to that much effort to talk about. At one point the pa cut out for a few seconds and I heard a tiny snippet of their conversation, just one of the guys yelling “then I said, I’m a 10th level magic user!”, sounding totally indignant. Good stuff.
Do you follow inzane Johnny on instagram? Better quality than anything Wolf eyes ever did
Saw Wolf Eyes once at a festival for about 15 minutes. Didn’t think much to them, to be honest.
They struck me as noise music for people who don’t really like noise music. Kind of like a noughties hipster version of what Marky Mark was to hip-hop.
Nope. I’m not on Instagram. Elektronauts is the closest thing I’ve ever had to social media.
It’s a guy from wolf eyes, does loads of funny noise / obscure music memes.
That’s a great description of them. The Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch of noise music!
I went to that show to see my friends who were opening for them, not to see Wolf Eyes. It was just like a few hipsters who had just discovered contact mics and distortion. Nothing inventive or experimental whatsoever.
Any Loop fans in here? They reformed a few years ago, most recently I saw the with mudhoney in 2018, but heavens end and gilded eternity are both incredible records. They’re kinda like it spacemen 3 could play their instruments (btw I fuxking adore spacemen 3 too)
Oh yeah, snd the Telescopes? They’re still going strong, used to see them regularly at sticky mikes in Brighton, opening for all the psyche bands like cosmic dead, gnod,
There’s nothing that makes me want to punch someone in the ciders more than seeing some fucking hipster come shuffling out on stage with his little table full of contact mics and pedals so he can stand there and take out all of his middle class rage on us for half an hour. It’s a strange form of post modern macho boy posing that I can really do without having to sit through.
Big fan of Loop, even though it took me a while to grok them compared to Spacemen 3.
I knew Neil when he worked at Rough Trade and even tried playing some sort of improv thing with him and others with a borrowed SH-101 that I had literally no idea how to play at the time… that didn’t go far.
I finally saw Loop play at the last ATP and they were immense…even the carpet was swirling in proper Fear And Loathing style by the end.
Great band and their cover of Can’s “Mother Sky” is almost the equal of the original.
Like you, I preferred the US hardcore scene. The Dead Kennedys were one of my favourite bands and I listened to Plastic Surgery Disaster on repeat. Unfortunately I was way too young to see these bands at the time. I was lucky enough to live in a small town in Wiltshire where the Sub-Humans were from. This meant I got to see Culture Shock regularly (as well as Eat Static!).
Crass were a mix, Steve Ignorant (lead singer) was definitely working class, Penny Rimbauld was the son of a barrister. But I remember hearing the Christ album for the first time and being shocked by the wall of noise. Another album that ended up on repeat!!
American HC scene as a whole was so much bigger that they had more good bands due to sheer size. That said, I do love Swedish & Finnish hardcore, it’s more so minimalistic and raw. Americans either played rock and roll sped up or fused metal into their hardcore. Nordic bands just played two chords as fast as they could.
Here’s some swedes making an unlohy racket: https://youtu.be/I4XxscpCp7A
Here’s one of my favourite 7’'s from Finland, from the 90s but so chaotic and fucked up that it rates high even compared to the 80s greats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYYmOIFC_7E
This is what hardcore and punk is all about for me, just deconstructing guitar based rock music to it’s bare minimum, and then doing that as fast and loud as you can. In a way bands like Loop and other droney noise rock bands did the same (Brainbombs!), they just didn’t go quite as minimal as the gnarliest hardcore bands.
Dude! That’s a band I completely forgot about. Had to dig into my basement record boxes to find them, found one but I know I’ve got one or two 7’s from the same time as perfect needle, and an album called high on fire or something. Id love to pop over for a show, whenever the bloody G decides to let us out of the country.
Also came across Daisy Chainsaw right next to it. “Love love love love all your money” to the tune of half a dozen Boss HM-2’s.
I probably saw the Telescopes a few times, though it being the 90s I don’t remember - but Daisy Chainsaw were a mainstay of all the shoddy clubs and bars, and great fun live. I have that 7" too somewhere.
Man I love the perfect needle, and ‘second untitled telescopes record’ which has high on fire on it. Literally the first weekend I’d moved to Brighton I went to see them play a show and I ended up meeting peeps I’m still friends with, including peeps from the boredoms and seefeel who lived locally, and would often go to gigs at the same venue to see them. I was a massive fan of all
groups mentioned and it was so weird how our paths crossed.
They’re still an amazing band live.
Big “noise rock-adjacent” music fan here ! Most well good bands have already appeared in this thread it seems so i’ll share with you some of the most amazing french underground band in the style:
Hint, especialy this album but everything is good:
DOPPLeR, almost never heard of this band until I talk with my upstair neigbour when I lived in Lyon, who happened to be the guitarist and woked on his solo album, needed some drone recorded, so I went in his little studio with a Moog and had fun for a couple of hours. He ended up giving me the full discography of his band in CD, this one is probably the best:
Picore ! Perfect mixture of trip hop weirdness with noise rock / shoegaze guitars (I happen to have a duo with the guitarist that i’ll link later on)
That’s my project with Picore guitar player, another EP and a full album incoming 
Merci!
Do you also know Ulan Bator? Amaury is an old friend and their live sets have been fantastic - his more drone / fuzz / gaze project I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral (which is such a great band name too ) is huge!
