by Maggie A. Clark
The best experiences in life are the ones that come to you by chance.
I don’t know if I believe that—and, in fact, I probably don’t—but for the sake of argument, let’s say that’s true. Out of boredom and looking for something to write about, I went rooting around in the Bandcamp tags for “Winnipeg” and “experimental” until a recent-ish release leapt out at me.
The resulting find was the noise is… by NITOTTIR.
The album’s Bandcamp page credits no musicians, so I cannot tell you if this is the work of an individual or a collective. But one thing is clear: NITOTTIR refuses to take this music claptrap seriously. the noise is…’s description reads, “this album is noise and that is all it will ever be.”
Too true! Not every sound we produce needs to be grandiose or made with posterity in mind. Sometimes, a noise need only be itself. The honesty was refreshing.
Song titles like “heartbreak is like pointing a gun to your chest with a bulletproof vest on” and “that numb feeling you can not quite name or label” reminded me vividly of the sophomoric noise offerings of my own early adulthood. Having titled many songs similarly, I was at once delighted, saddened, and scared to discover an individual (or group?) whose musical and existential sensibilities align so closely with mine.
In terms of genre, you could call it “harsh noise.” In terms of feeling, you could compare it to descending a bobsleigh track at 100 km/h—as I did in 2013.
(To be clear, I wasn’t the one piloting the bobsleigh; that was somebody else. As much as I might wish otherwise, I have always lacked the sustained focus required of a professional athlete. The life of a freelance music critic is more my speed.)
All of which is to say: there is something undeniably hypnotic in the album’s layered, abrasive patterns of staticky feedback. After several minutes of pummelling by sound, your head will feel heavy and sink toward your chest or sway in any number of directions, as if you had just been hit by a tranquillizer dart. This must be what it feels like to be waist-deep in quicksand or a bug devoured by a Venus flytrap.
And that sounds good to me! I bet I’d enjoy it.