Noisegate was a group of artists dedicated to the exploration of sound as an artistic medium, based in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, United States. Constantly recording, touring, and collaborating with other experimental artists and filmmakers, they became a staple of the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

experimental music and sound-art scenes between 1995 and 2002.

Biography

Noisegate began in 1995, when

Trevor Paglen Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work tackles mass surveillance and data collection. In 2016, Paglen won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and he has also won The Cultural Award from the ...

, Nicolas Lampert and Tae K Kim began to experiment with using

timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...

as a basis for a musical language. In November 1995, Excavation Day was released. This tape-only release, limited to 500 copies, is an early document of their development. Barren Earth was released in the summer of 1996, and at this point, Noisegate's musical language had expanded to include a much wider range of textures, all of which were composed into one another. An early version of "Solar Eclipse" was on this release. In the fall of 1996, now consisting of

, Nicolas Lampert, and Sean Thomas, Noisegate embarked on their first major tour of the United States, with filmmaker Laura Klein. Upon their return, Chris Fitzpatrick was enlisted to run sampler. This new lineup began reworking the music which became the Towers Are Burning LP, produced by Lars Savage and released in 1998 by the One Hundred Years of Solitude label. After several tours supporting the LP across the US and in Canada, it was decided to record two more tracks, and release all four on Tumult Records and Legion Records as the Towers Are Burning CD. One of these tracks, "Alamogordo", featured

Dave Edwardson Dave Edwardson is an American musician who is the bassist and backing vocalist of Californian post-metal band Neurosis. He founded the band alongside Scott Kelly and Jason Roeder in 1985, and the group would later form experimental/noise group Tr ...

Neurosis Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...

on bass guitar and vocals. Noisegate also recorded As We Were Walking, a split-release with

KK Null , known by his stage name KK Null, is a Japanese experimental multi-instrumentalist active since the early 1980s. He began as a guitarist but learned how to compose, sing, play drums, and create electronic music. He also studied Butoh dance at ...

on Wagenhault Records. After more touring, Nicolas Lampert left Noisegate and Chris Fitzpatrick and

began work on Suspended Animation (Vol. 1), where the new emphasis of the compositions were fluidity and subtlety. Suspended Animation was released in May 2000, and supported that summer with a lengthy multimedia tour of the US, accompanied by filmmaker Jon Frechette. This tour included a string of West Coast tour dates with

Bastard Noise Bastard Noise is an American noise band founded in 1991 by musicians Eric Wood, Henry Barnes, and W. T. Nelson. The project started as a type of sister band to the trio's previous group Man Is The Bastard. While Man Is the Bastard broke-up in la ...

. We Stood There Watching was a recorded version of the interpretations of Suspended Animation that Noisegate performed on their U.S. tour, and was released exclusively in Europe in December 2001 on Manufracture, and supported by a European tour in January 2001. Where in the past, Noisegate tours have created rich and immersive multimedia environments, for this tour, the opposite was achieved. The performances occurred in absolute darkness with the performers unseen, disarming rather than facilitating spectacle. Noisegate amicably disbanded in 2002 to pursue other projects.

Discography

Albums: *Noisegate, We Stood There Watching (2001) (limited European-only release) Manufracture Records *Noisegate, Suspended Animation (vol. 1) (2000) Tumult Records *Noisegate, The Towers Are Burning (1999) (full-length compact disc) Tumult Records *Noisegate, As We Were Walking (1999) (split 7” with

) Wagonhault Records *Noisegate, Towers Are Burning (1998) (original LP version, edition of 1000, out of print) *Noisegate, Barren Earth (1996) (tape edition of 500, out of print) *Noisegate, Excavation Day (1995) (tape edition of 500, out of print) Compilation albums featuring Noisegate: *In Formation: A Tribute To

Throbbing Gristle Throbbing Gristle were an English music and visual arts group formed in 1975 in Kingston upon Hull by Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, and Chris Carter (British musician), Chris Carter. They are widely regarded as pi ...

(Released on ADR and Invisible Records) *Audio Terrorism: 99 Bands (Released on C.N.P Records)

Biography

Discography

See also

External links