My new harsh noise album on Fame Fighter Records

This is the second release under my new noise project name Rogue Deployment. It's noise. It's harsh. It's loud. Hey, it got an upvote on the jaded r/noisemusic subreddit last night!

Two more inputs

We've had some very spring-like weather the past few days, contrasting with the warm summery weather of the previous couple weeks. I've been loving the rain!

I spent part of yesterday evening setting up my gear for today's Teasel Swarm. Not sure if I've mentioned it, but for my birthday gadget last month I got a Zoom Livetrack L12next multitrack recorder. It has supplanted my old Zoom R16 for band recording, and it gives us two more inputs, one for lēlūlāserlight and one for me. I think we're still experimenting with our new added capability; at least I am. I thought I'd try adding a mic but it turns out I really don't want to do vocals. Today I'm using my new input for my old Yamaha keyboard, which has been out of action since the end of LaunchPad in 2019. I've missed playing it, so I'm excited to have it out again!

Slow-binge-watching

Rain! It was raining when I went to bed at midnight, and it is raining now as I go for my first sip of coffee. I love it. It looks like we've got a cool and somewhat rainy weekend to look forward to before the temps head back up.

I've been slow-binge-watching Noise-related podcasts on the White Centipede Noise youtube channel. Oskar Brummel in Potsdam, Germany, has interviewed many significant Noise artists, as well as running a record label and distro and physical store. The 1.5 to 2-hour interviews are fascinating and super informative. Brummel is really doing a great service to the genre getting all these artists in front of camera and microphone, talking about their own backgrounds, their artistic careers, and their perspectives on other artists and the Noise world in general. I've learned many things much more quickly than if I'd had to rely on other available sources out there.

Well, that's my blog for today. Bye for now.

Right meaning visceral

Ahhh, pizza for breakfast. I did nuke it for 30 seconds, so it's not the classic cold pizza for breakfast I used to prefer. I've gotten a bit more civilized in my sixties. We got Track Town delivered last night—our standard large, half Florentine, half Triple Jump. Yum.

I'm still on the Noise kick, of course. I made another track yesterday. Noise is the Abstract Expressionism of sound art (or "music" if you will), I guess I could say. No need for particular rules, structures, or forms: just go for what feels and sounds right. Right meaning visceral. And a natural affinity for randomess doesn't hurt!

My VHS dubbing project is going quite well, and the actual finish line is in sight. I've dubbed close to 200 tapes to digital files, and I've got maybe three or four dozen to go, give or take. After that, I want to dub my 8mm camcorder tapes, and THEN there are the many spindles of CDRs and DVDRs to deal with. But I can already see significant space liberation has happened in the Bunker. It's great to experience big progress on a massive decluttering project.

This morning we're getting our roof leaf-blown and our house and driveway power-washed. Before they get here, we need to move stuff away from the house, so that's the next order of business. Type at ya later.

A New Entropy

The family room is a mess of cables and tables and music gear. tHE bOY came over on Monday and we revived our old band FRANTIC! but decided to drag it beyond, evolve it past, our traditional bass vs. bass format. He brought two synths, a couple mixers, several effects pedals, and a sequencer, and I quickly set up my own synth and effects; plus we also had our basses. Equipment malfunctions and mystery silences and sounds plagued/blessed us throughout the session, and I ended up getting barely more than 15 minutes of useable material recorded onto my new multitracker (a "damaged mix" of which might soon be released as an EP). I chalked it up to the universe reacting to a challenge to the status quo. We bring a new entropy here in 2026, and the old sonic physics structures are groaning in protest. I'm sure the proper realignments will have taken place by the time we reconvene to make more noiz.

Meanwhile since Monday, I've taken advantage of having gear sprawled out, and added my drum machine and more effects to the mess. Yesterday I made a couple of really noisy pieces for my new project Rogue Deployment. In my recent reading and watching, I've noticed that it's common in the Noise community for artists to use Noise to process personal trauma as well as anger and angst towards society and politics. Me, I'm just reveling in the sonic mayhem. It feels good.

NOISE

Happy Solstice, blog readers. My last entry was two months ago. In the meantime, what has happened, transpired, come to pass? Radio Free Random is on hiatus, still. I've gone somewhat whole or at least 75% hog into making "noise music" and learning about the history of the Noise scenes around the world, going back to the early 1980's. I mean, I've been a noisician for decades, to be honest. FRANTIC! is a "noiz-improv" band, and we started in 1998. I even bought a Merzbow CD around the turn of the century (Venereology, 1994). But I never really had dived into the culture of Noise and makers of Noise. A couple of books and lots of Youtube videos and Bandcamp pages and the r/noisemusic subreddit have brought me up to speed on the general outlines of Noise-making over the years and have given me a feeling for how pervasive and complex this underground/DIY phenomenon is—very similar to punk rock in its early days, with hyperlocal focus, international reach, and self-produced recordings and art. Color me fascinated and maybe even hooked.

So, during the last month I've made four noise albums for my Bandcamp page. Two are of the Harsh Noise Wall variety. HNW is basically what it sounds like: an relatively unvarying wall of noise lasting an hour or more, typically. The other two consist of shorter more varied tracks. I had a blast making these albums, and I've got ideas for more.

"Why would you want to listen to and make noise music, and can you really call it music??" You might ask. If you're really curious, the internet has lots of prose for you to peruse. Suffice it to say, many people love Noise. I couldn't really add much to what's already been said. There are lots of "extreme" music genres, and they wouldn't exist if there weren't people passionate about them. Nobody else needs to understand, frankly.

I have thought about bringing Radio Free Random back as a much more experimental and "noisy" station. I do realize that many of my regular listeners, some of whom are friends, would not really like such a direction-shift. But RFR is something I do for me, to be honest. It's like, you're welcome to come along but I want to do stuff I'm personally passionate about. Pleasing listeners is secondary. I'd rather attract listeners who enjoy what I'm going, not adjust what I'm doing to attract listeners. Know what I'm saying?

I sold my Freewrite Smart Typewriter, so I'm down to this Traveler I'm typing on now, and the Alpha. The Typewriter is definitely a very cool machine, but I found it to be overkill for me. And the friend I sold it to was very happy to get it.

If you want to check out my new albums, go to https://mrrandom.bandcamp.com. Cheers!