{"id":12830,"date":"2025-01-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=12830"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:26:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:26:25","slug":"album-review-nitottir-the-noise-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2025\/01\/07\/album-review-nitottir-the-noise-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review :: NITOTTIR :: the noise is\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"light<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

by Maggie A. Clark<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best experiences in life are the ones that come to you by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if I believe that\u2014and, in fact, I probably don\u2019t\u2014but for the sake of argument, let\u2019s say that\u2019s true. Out of boredom and looking for something to write about, I went rooting around in the Bandcamp tags for \u201cWinnipeg\u201d and \u201cexperimental\u201d until a recent-ish release leapt out at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting find was the noise is\u2026<\/em> by NITOTTIR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The album\u2019s 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\u2026<\/em>\u2019s description reads, \u201cthis album is noise and that is all it will ever be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Song titles like \u201cheartbreak is like pointing a gun to your chest with a bulletproof vest on\u201d and \u201cthat numb feeling you can not quite name or label\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of genre, you could call it \u201charsh noise.\u201d In terms of feeling, you could compare it to descending a bobsleigh track at 100 km\/h\u2014as I did in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(To be clear, I wasn\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of which is to say: there is something undeniably hypnotic in the album\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that sounds good to me! I bet I\u2019d enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Maggie A. Clark The best experiences in life are the ones that come to you by chance. I don\u2019t know if I believe that\u2014and, in fact, I probably don\u2019t\u2014but for the sake of argument, let\u2019s say that\u2019s true. Out of boredom and looking for something to write about, I went rooting around in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1420,1680,1681,1682],"class_list":["post-12830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-nitottir","tag-the-noise-is","tag-winnipeg-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12832,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830\/revisions\/12832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}