White Noise Sound: White Noise Sound
(Rocket Lady Data)
Obtain | CD
Louder Than Warfare’s Banjo speaks to White Noise Sound because the cult psyche rockers announce a slight return, with a remastered reissue of their debut album and additional releases to come back.
White Noise Sound is maybe a reputation that lots of people would instantly recognise. However all which may be about to alter.
Hailing from Swansea, White Noise Sound burst into my consciousness with the discharge of their eponymous debut album. Hardly ever had I heard a primary file from a band that was so excellent; uncooked and brutal when the tune suited it, languid and flowing when the alternative was true. They sounded to me like a band who had perfected their craft by means of years of onerous gigging and lysergic experimentation, although I settle for that that is in all probability not the case.
Nonetheless they bought there although, White Noise Sound have been in a position to seize their sound completely in a studio to create certainly one of my favorite debut albums of all time, ably assisted by Spacemen 3’s Sonic Growth on manufacturing duties. Followers of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized will discover a lot to like right here and may take heed to this unimaginable journey of an album as quickly as they presumably can.
For some cause, White Noise Sound’s flame appeared to burn vivid however briefly, with the band all however disappearing off the radar after the discharge of their 2nd album, Like A Pyramid Of Hearth.
However this summer season sees the beginning of a flurry of exercise from the White Noise Sound camp. The debut album will probably be launched in remastered kind on 18th July, and this will probably be adopted up by an album of remixes and, early in 2026, a brand new stay album.
The debut album, identified by the tag WNS1, is a should for all followers of contemporary psych. First observe Sundown units out the band’s stall, with a fierce repetitive guitar groove harking back to Spacemen 3’s Revolution, all suggestions and fuzzed-out guitars. In actual fact, there appears to be no finish to the variety of guitars on this observe, with every new twist and switch of the tune including layer upon layer of additional assault. The impact is just like Loop’s chosen technique of bludgeoning listeners into submission.
Even with such a ferocious assault, there’s extra happening behind the scenes. There are hints of keyboards and hidden melody within the midst of the maelstrom, and it’s this moderately than the wall of noise that factors the way in which to the remainder of the album.
Subsequent observe It Is There For You instantly pivots away from attacking the ears and focuses on seducing the thoughts. A hypnotic strummed bass line and a solitary bass drum lure us in, and a laid-back vocal floats round heads, each driving and stress-free concurrently, as keyboard swirls add psychedelic texture. The tune grows and evolves as we take heed to it. Across the midway mark, all devices other than the keyboard drop out, making a spectral pause earlier than all different devices come speeding in ALL AT ONCE, revealing a tune of virtually dizzying highs and lows. Neither noise retailers nor ambient noodlers, White Noise Sound have each of those elements of their nature at their management and may launch them to devastating impact.
Fires In The Nonetheless Sea performs as much as their ambient facet, recalling the calmer moments of early Spiritualized gigs, with tremolo keyboards floating previous. Figuring out what we already find out about White Noise Sound, it’s tempting to think about that that is however the calm earlier than the storm, however subsequent observe There Is No Tomorrow resists this urge and begins with gently picked bass chords and a easy guitar line. Barely there vocals croon excessive of this, and White Noise Sound reveal certainly one of their biggest strengths, the flexibility to place collectively massively catchy songs from sparse instrumentation.
This time, the tune slowly builds, because it by some means grows with every flip across the verse and refrain. Midway by means of the tune, it has modified from a sparse patchy sound to a lush epic after which, simply whenever you suppose all is properly, a fanfare of brass devices kick in and the tune merely soars away. This construct and fade is masterfully dealt with, and I needed to test that the operating time of the tune genuinely was beneath 5 and a half minutes. It feels prefer it has been taking part in for hours and will fairly fortunately proceed for hours extra. Excellent, trippy stuff that, to my thoughts, has by no means been bettered on this style.
Blood sees the scuzzed up guitars make a return, together with some huge-sounding drums and once more would sound completely at dwelling in a Spiritualized gig. These will not be mere pastiches, although. White Noise Sound have their very own id operating by means of these songs properly sufficient to tell apart them from their friends. On its end, Blood instantly segues into Blood (Reprise), the place results pedals rule and sound texture is all. The observe ebbs and flows, lyrics and conventional constructions are solid apart. That is the beating coronary heart of White Noise Sound, an off-kilter soundscape that they will use as a platform to launch off into different songs.
No Place To Cover is a darkish Pink Floyd acid journey that once more creates melody that works its method beneath your pores and skin utilizing minimal instrumentation. Psychedelic moderately than psyche, No Place To Cover exhibits White Noise Sound to be fearless in the case of the development of their songs. We’re solid off from normality with little to carry us down whereas the tune unfolds round us.
Don’t Wait For Me is a drone-based tune that places me in thoughts of movies I’ve seen of the ’60s acid scene, with oil wheel visuals, the scent of weed within the air and a sense of dropping out and tuning in. This fades within the album’s closing observe, (In Each) Goals And Ecstasies, with echoes of The Doorways and Velvet Underground creeping in. Such nostalgia is saved restricted, although, because the tune once more evolves and progresses, with a contemporary sounding synth line including extra twists and turns.
The keyboards develop into extra prevalent, driving excessive of backwards guitars and strummed chords. It’s a becoming climax to an album that has given us so many peaks and troughs, so many journeys and voyages. By the top, it’s straightforward to really feel exhausted, travelled out. Battered however liked.
It’s enormously excellent news that this album is being reactivated. I can consider no album this century that extra deserves to be reappraised and reappreciated. Hopefully this time it would discover the viewers it deserves.
Together with all this exercise, Louder Than Warfare spoke to White Noise Sound’s Adam Tovey to learn the way the band are in a position to make such unimaginable music and what has occurred to them since.
LTW: I completely love White Noise Sound however, not like most bands I really like, I do know subsequent to nothing about them. Might you fill in a couple of gaps about the way you all got here collectively and the way you got here to jot down and file your songs?
“Thanks. We fashioned correctly in Swansea in 2006.
Swansea is a small place – in numerous methods – nevertheless it sits within the shadow of the Welsh mountains, looking into the expanse of the ocean. Trying again, the setting performed as a lot a component within the mentality and the sound of WNS as did the set.
It was inevitable that we have been drawn collectively. We have been outsiders in a small pond – united by a shared want to create one thing that we resonated with. Creating music for another objective was by no means a consideration.
From the outset, we have been as a lot about channelling atmospheres as we have been about writing songs. We write by immersion – the sounds we make are extra like transmissions.
Lengthy nights. Loops. Drones. Dream machines… till one thing uncommon glints into kind – then we observe it.”
LTW: Might you discuss me by means of your songwriting course of?
“We don’t write songs within the conventional sense. One in every of us may deliver one thing to the desk – a lyric, a pulse, a sample – however the sounds have been inbuilt a ritualistic collective trance.
‘Sundown’, as an example, began life as an acoustic strummer – earlier than it was distilled to 2 chords, underpinned with Pete Kember’s oscillating Synthi, slammed with an 808, brutalised with each distortion pedal we might lay our palms on, and the vocal transmuted right into a chant to the setting solar… then the theremin bought thrown across the room for good measure.”
LTW: One factor that strikes me about your two albums is how a lot they take from their producers. Do you suppose that may be a honest remark or did White Noise Sound select the producers to match their newest songs?
“It’s honest within the sense that we don’t see mixing and manufacturing as separate from songwriting. Mixing and manufacturing are a part of the composition, for us.
We’ve been fortunate to work with people who we glance as much as. We learnt from Pete Kember, Cian Ciaran and Phil Kieran – they every introduced their very own dimensions to the sound, opened our minds, helped us kind new shapes.
Sonic alignments – nevertheless it was all the time collaborative. They didn’t adorn the sound of WNS – they helped unlock it.
We’ll be endlessly grateful.”
LTW: Who have been your influences on each albums?
“We’ve bought a few Spotify playlists up on this. The reality is that you just’d get completely different solutions depending on who you ask. The melting pot of influences meant we didn’t really feel restricted in any method. Utterly unbounded.
I’d say Suicide, Spacemen 3, Neu!, Brian Eno – however our non-musical influences have been each bit as formative… Gysin’s dream machine, Burroughs’ fold-in and cut-up methods, Nietzsche… the static between stations… the record goes on.
There have been additionally numerous nice bands with out huge profiles round on the time we have been making each albums. All of them pushed us to go additional, not directly, whether or not they knew it or not.
The albums each doc ‘altered’ states. The primary album was about constructing our personal wall-of-sound monoliths that we might get misplaced in. The second album was about transcendence – taking that sound someplace new. We weren’t occupied with making the identical album for a second time.”
LTW: I’ve been lending your albums out for years, and everybody who hears them loves them. Why do you suppose White Noise Sound weren’t extra extensively identified?
“Thanks once more!
There was no hype. No slick PR machine. I assume it is smart that we exist on the margins, given we didn’t make the music for anybody apart from ourselves. It was a consciously chimeric wall-of-sound.
Possibly that was by no means going to suit neatly wherever?
We’ve all the time felt that the music has discovered – and can discover – the individuals who have been meant to seek out it.
Entrance not for everyone. Like a shortwave sign, solely sure radios can tune into.”
LTW: What occurred to the band? why did you cut up up?
“We didn’t cut up up. Life simply pulled in several instructions.
Silence is a part of the circle, too.”
LTW: What’s the rationale for the sudden flurry of exercise?
“Rocket Lady bought in contact about reissuing our first album. Different alternatives and energies then introduced themselves – and it felt proper.
Our first album is being reissued July 18 – it’ll be accessible for the primary time throughout all main platforms. Streaming platforms have been solely of their infancy when WNS1 was initially launched.
The following WNS transmissions are incoming.
Time folds.
Keep tuned.”
White Noise Sound is obtainable on pre-order right here
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Phrases by Banjo, you could find his Louder Than Warfare archive right here
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