Stray Landings

The title of this discussion comes from Q Bass’ 1991 rave jam, ‘Hardcore Will Never Die’, in which a desperate voice asks the listener: well hardcore did die, so where’s the fucking noise? This is noise not in the sense of noise-music, but as hype, as furore, as a burgeoning cultural movement. In the 90s, the question was asked in earnest, to find the next party, rave, or sound-system. But today, looking for ‘the next big thing’ sounds more like a marketing strategy. Some have argued that ‘hype’ has become an empty signifier for superficial trends and gimmicks: a nightmarish conflation of music and meme. The problem we have now is not so much a scarcity of noise, but an overabundance. The democratising effect of the Internet has enabled a proliferation of new music, and radically new listening practices. So if we want noise, where should we be looking? How can we make sense of it all? Can we find the noise in the ether? To discuss all this and more, Georgie McVicar from Stray Landings will be speaking with