Power Electronics Tips xe2x86xa9

[The Mysterious Creep]

It's probably the combination of minimalistic, often rhythmic noise and at least semi-structured vocals. It's closer to a song form. For all Billy Bennett's proclamations about rock music being an outdated fantasy (I read a great collection of his comments on various artists, he gives guitar music a real thrashing), PE is fairly understandable to metalheads. There's anger, harsh distortion, a strong emphasis on tone and mood, and an emphasis on getting something, usually offensive to dear old mum, across rather than acid-casualty texture obsession or nihilistic apathy. A particularly sloppy live metal band will often just sound like a wall of rumbling noise and an angry guy barking, it's not a fundamentally huge jump from that to PE. They share a lot of common misanthropy, as well. I was not surprised at all by Rusty Kelly of noisy hardcore-ists Total Abuse also having a PE project (Breathing Problem), because they're both centered around complete disgust at humanity and the world. I myself got to noise through progressively more extreme rock, though I think part of my love for noise is the fact that it's much more abstract than the sloganeering of punk or power fantasy of extreme metal. I'm not knocking either, but that stuff requires someone of a much more sharp-tongued and brutish mind. Which, of course, leads back to why PE is so much more appealing for pissed-off misanthropic metalheads than just scorched-Earth head trips.

[NoiseWiki]

For all Billy Bennett's proclamations about rock music being an outdated fantasy (I read a great collection of his comments on various artists, he gives guitar music a real thrashing)

Heh never been much of a fan of WB or WH but I'd love to read that.. link?

Which, of course, leads back to why PE is so much more appealing for pissed-off misanthropic metalheads than just scorched-Earth head trips.

Well personally I came from the punk then industrial experimental side of things but I think what you're saying only appears that way because metal is more popular than punk etc. So even a small number if metal fans peeling off to noise seems like more than all the people who naturally found their way to noise but I don't really have any way to prove that other than it should be a given that metal is very popular.

[The Mysterious Creep]

For all Billy Bennett's proclamations about rock music being an outdated fantasy (I read a great collection of his comments on various artists, he gives guitar music a real thrashing)

Heh never been much of a fan of WB or WH but I'd love to read that.. link?

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Turkey_B ... tehouse/1/

[NoiseWiki]

For all Billy Bennett's proclamations about rock music being an outdated fantasy (I read a great collection of his comments on various artists, he gives guitar music a real thrashing)

Heh never been much of a fan of WB or WH but I'd love to read that.. link?

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Turkey_B ... tehouse/1/

Interesting read .. I agree with a number of things he says..

The only non rock album I noticed where he specifically mentioned the use of guitar was an album by Nurse With Wound which is definitely not power electronics. Anyway the story as I recall about the guitar on that recording was that Stapleton had managed to talk his way into letting a recording engineer use the studio at night if nobody else was paying to be there. The only condition was that he be allowed to play guitar on the recording.. Unfortunately this was some serious guitar noodling but in a way I kinda like it because it is so out of place. Stapleton especially at this point was creating sound collages and using his record collection as sources so throwing some Santana-esque guitar improv in there works.

Seems like WB has some fondness for stapleton but skewers him several times. To my knowledge they only collabed on one project and Stapleton hated it because WB just wanted to push all the faders to max.

WB also really dislikes GPO which I can kinda understand especially after reading Cozy's book.

Kinda surprised he likes the Sex Pistols but I guess its a case of they were so bad and obnoxious they are good

[NoiseWiki]

For better or worse here's what wikioedia has to say..

Power electronics is a genre of music that generally consists of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squealing sounds; and screamed, distorted, often hateful and offensive lyrics. Deeply atonal, there are no conventional melodies or rhythms.[1] It is related to the early Industrial Records scene but later became more identified with noise music.[2] The name was coined by William Bennett as part of the sleevenotes to the 1982 Whitehouse album Psychopathia Sexualis. Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine produced a compilation compact cassette tape called Power Electronics in 1986 that was curated by Joseph Nechvatal.

Death industrial is an industrial subgenre typified by a dense atmosphere, low-end drones, harsh loops and screamed and/or distorted vocals. It can be differentiated from power electronics by a slower, more atmospheric sound reminiscent of dark ambient, and a less abrasive sound. Acts described as death industrial include Brighter Death Now, Anenzephalia, Atrax Morgue, Aelia Capitolina, Author & Punisher, Genocide Organ, Ramleh, Hieronymus Bosch, Stratvm Terror and Dead Man's Hill.

[The Mysterious Creep]

Actual white noise I don't notice that much in PE (outside the apparently common PE practice of overdriven white noise through an LPF for the signature bass rumble, at least according to one Gearslutz thread), but otherwise that is pretty accurate. Extreme frequency exploration seems like the really defining characteristic there, which doesn't seem inherently synthy. Waves Crashing Piano Chords did it with just assloads of piercing mic feedback and no other instruments. I've got a bass EQ pedal that makes the whole room shake when I push the lows and a Bass Synth Wah (Envelope filter) pedal, between the two of them and shrieking high feedback I think the typical PE template of extreme highs and lows is very attainable. I can even push the envelope filter into static with the right setting and a Digitech Death Metal going into it.

Death Industrial is probably closer to what I'm shooting for anyway, very droney (is that the real word? Droneful? Drone-centric? Drony?) and atmospheric. Not a lot of underlying rhythm, just sludgy drones and loops of noise with weaving feedback and distorted vox. As mentioned before, Ramleh on Hole in the Heart is a big influence and that's apparently when Mundy was just getting back into playing guitar before Ramleh turned into dark psych rock.

[RUBBISH]

What's so funny about WB reviews is that he put out the same damn record for 20 years.

I mean does anal american really need to be 7 minutes long...no. Its a good track until it goes over 3 minutes then its just stupid. Live I do see the point of abusing people with extra long versions of a track but most whitehouse track ideas can be expressed in 3 minutes or less and the tracks that are longer are masturbation at best and more than likely just time filling Bullshit.

The sex pistols never mind the bollocks is great because that's it...that one album. The other crap came after they imploded.
Most rock bands could be legendary if they had stopped after thier first album.

[Fire of the Mind]

I am somewhat ambivalent about Whitehouse. There was development over time and there were bright spots in their discography, and I can particularly respect how absolutely astringent those final albums are, but William Bennett was always the defining factor and I'm just not as into his particular vision as I am into what Philip Best or Kevin Tomkins would go on to do in their own projects. Frankly, they're just more interesting lyricists and musicians (and noisers) than Bennett is. That said, the man's taste in noise, as demonstrated on Extreme Music from Japan and Extreme Music from Women, is honestly excellent. It's not like he doesn't know his shit. But his work itself is less intriguing on average.

As for the fashion victims who get mad about metal screams in PE and death industrial, I was kind of like that myselfxe2x80xa6 when I was a literal teenager. Then I realised that death growls and slam gutturals were actually good and putting them through the Genocide Organ/IRM warble tremolo would sound amazing. That said, I kind of came to extreme metal *through* being into more experimental music, so my perspective on metal is distinctly different from a lot of people who, say, came to the genre as kids and are more precious about its conventionsxe2x80x94and, conversely, perhaps I am less precious about industrial and noise because I already went through my purist phase as an adolescent and thus managed to strain that poison from my blood.

To the subject of guitars in PE, briefly: Pure, the project Matthew Bower had with Alex Binnie which would ultimately evolve into Skullflower, was initially a power electronics project which used guitars as a noise source. I'd say Wilt also drift into PE territory, although they're morexe2x80xa6 dark ambient noise, overall. Similarly, White Suns and Bloated Subhumans both ride a very fine line between noise-rock and outright noise, being much less about "riffs" than "horrible sounds." The key is how you use the guitar, I think. Or bass, as with Bastard Noise or some of Burmese's work. Which is to say, less as a vehicle for riffs than as one for destruction. Kind of connects to the war metal thing (Revenge, Blasphemy, Diocletian, etc.), although if you really want to go there with black metalxe2x80xa6 Venowl and Wold in particular come to mind, although I could list a few others on a similar level of abstraction and ear-bleed. (Utarm are one I especially enjoy. Minus the Divine is basically Ramleh circa A Hole in the Heart as a black metal project down to the horripilative guitar tone. It's nightmarish and I adore it.)

[The Mysterious Creep]

To the subject of guitars in PE, briefly: Pure, the project Matthew Bower had with Alex Binnie which would ultimately evolve into Skullflower, was initially a power electronics project which used guitars as a noise source. I'd say Wilt also drift into PE territory, although they're morexe2x80xa6 dark ambient noise, overall. Similarly, White Suns and Bloated Subhumans both ride a very fine line between noise-rock and outright noise, being much less about "riffs" than "horrible sounds." The key is how you use the guitar, I think. Or bass, as with Bastard Noise or some of Burmese's work. Which is to say, less as a vehicle for riffs than as one for destruction. Kind of connects to the war metal thing (Revenge, Blasphemy, Diocletian, etc.), although if you really want to go there with black metalxe2x80xa6 Venowl and Wold in particular come to mind, although I could list a few others on a similar level of abstraction and ear-bleed. (Utarm are one I especially enjoy. Minus the Divine is basically Ramleh circa A Hole in the Heart as a black metal project down to the horripilative guitar tone. It's nightmarish and I adore it.)

White Suns are cool (Bloated Subhumans as well, but I'd already listened to White Suns a while ago when I saw them mentioned), and I quite liked that Utarm album. Both tremendously dismal artists. Any recommendations for good examples from Wilt? Seems to have a pretty large back catalog with diverse instrumentation and style.

I finally dug up some Pure material (as opposed to Total going by Pure), yet more envy towards Matt Bower for being so much better at noise guitar than I am. How the fuck does he do it!? Definitely more classic PE than the early-Skullflower-as-late-Skullflower noise drones of Total. I need some better fuzz, I don't have anything really sputtery and crunchy (every other fuckin' thing though, between a Bass Big Muff, Death Metal, Rat, and the Grunge circuit in my Gonkulator). It seems like an important step toward those truly fried industrial noise tones. So far the example track is just one shoegazy chord drone (granular texture from guitar chord with MBV-esque vibrato piped through an MS-70CDR with reverse reverb + more and the muff), with a bass drone coming next (hopefully via prepared guitar + EQ + looper) and then the noise and vocals as one live layer over top.

[Fire of the Mind]

I finally dug up some Pure material (as opposed to Total going by Pure), yet more envy towards Matt Bower for being so much better at noise guitar than I am. How the fuck does he do it!? Definitely more classic PE than the early-Skullflower-as-late-Skullflower noise drones of Total. I need some better fuzz, I don't have anything really sputtery and crunchy (every other fuckin' thing though, between a Bass Big Muff, Death Metal, Rat, and the Grunge circuit in my Gonkulator). It seems like an important step toward those truly fried industrial noise tones. So far the example track is just one shoegazy chord drone (granular texture from guitar chord with MBV-esque vibrato piped through an MS-70CDR with reverse reverb + more and the muff), with a bass drone coming next (hopefully via prepared guitar + EQ + looper) and then the noise and vocals as one live layer over top.

To take a page out of very early Sonic Youth and The Dead C, strange tunings (strange intervals and open chords, microtonal near-unisons, tension dropped just short of slack on heavy gauges) and extended techniques (objects beneath the strings, striking/scraping/bowing with non-pick objects) plus letting the amp feed back at sufficient volumes can do a lot of heavy lifting where pedals alone will not. Add in whammy bar abuse on top of that looping setup and you can create some thoroughly hellacious sounds. Also, distortion alone won't do it if you want to maximise ugliness; ring modulators, reverb with reverse attack functions (which you already have down, apparently also being aware of the MBV "swooning" portamento technique), and delays with lots of odd parameters are similarly useful, not to mention primitive modulation effects (cheap chorus/flangers/phasers) which can be cranked to completely unreasonable settings and really ghoulish pitch-shifter/fuzz-octave pedals.