Harsh noise wall, also known as wall noise or HNW, is an extreme subgenre of noise music, described as "a literal consistent, unflinching and enveloping wall of monolithic noise." The movement is spearheaded by French musician Vomir, who described his aesthetic as "no ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse". The genre soon gained traction in the United States. Artists such as the Haters,

Daniel Menche Daniel Menche (born December 4, 1969) is an American experimental musician and multidisciplinary artist from Portland, Oregon. Since 1989 he has recorded many albums that are categorized as electro-acoustic, noise music, dark ambient music, abst ...

, and

Richard Ramirez Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez (; February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), dubbed the Night Stalker, the Valley Intruder (as his attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley), and the Walk-in Killer was an American serial kil ...

are best known for popularizing the noise genre in the US. Harsh noise wall features noises layered together to form a static sound. Harsh noise wall musician Sam McKinlay, also known as The Rita, considered the genre as "the purification of the Japanese harsh noise scene into a more refined crunch, which crystallizes the tonal qualities of

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signa ...

in a slow moving minimalistic texture."Novak (2013), p. 57 Despite largely staying underground, harsh noise wall has enjoyed a cult following among the noise music scene. A series of events dedicated to the genre, named as Harsh Noise Wall Festival, is organized at Les Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis by Vomir, with guests involving prominent musicians such as Werewolf Jerusalem, TheNightProduct, Black Leather Jesus and Tissa Mawartyassari.

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