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Post-noise
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Post-noise (also known as post-noise psychedelia) is a music genre and scene closely associated with contemporary hypnagogic pop, new-age, and hauntology movements. Artists include James Ferraro and Spencer Clark of The Skaters, Oneohtrix Point Never, Pocahaunted, Zola Jesus, and Emeralds.

The American post-noise underground mostly propagated on the Internet, primarily through tape trading. Post-noise would influence the emergence of several online microgenres such as chillwave and vaporwave.

Etymology and characteristics

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In August 2009, writer David Keenan coined the term "hypnagogic pop" in the article Childhood's End in issue 306 of the British music magazine The Wire.[9][10][11][12][6] The blurb of the article described hypnagogic pop as a "questing post-Noise network that worships New Age music and uses half-remembered hits as portals to the subconscious."[6] In the article, Keenan discussed artists such as James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Ariel Pink, Ducktails, Pocahaunted, Zola Jesus, and Emeralds as hypnagogic pop acts.[6] Keenan also noted the commonalities between hypnagogic pop and noise music, stating that "Like Noise before it, Hypnagogic pop fetishises the outmoded media of its infancy, releasing albums on cassette, celebrating the video era and obsessing over the reality-scrambling potential of photocopied art."[6][13]

In Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music (2016), author Stephen Graham defines post-noise as a wide subgenre of noise music which breaks apart noise music's orthodoxies, "inserting newer influences and references from popular culture alongside dyschronic affects [...] and subliminal modalities."[4] It can even add "some commercial appeal."[4] For Graham, post-noise encompasses hauntology and hypnagogic pop.[4] Throughout the book, he uses the term "post-noise" to refer to artists such as James Ferraro, LA Vampires, the Advisory Circle, Fatima Al Qadiri, Daniel Lopatin, Broadcast, Sun Araw, and Moon Wiring Club.[4][14]

Post-noise artists were influenced by noise music,[15] psychedelia,[3] and new age,[6][16] alongside German progressive electronic and kosmische musik artists such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis and Edgar Froese.[5] In 2010, The Guardian published an article by music critic Simon Reynolds where he stated "post-noise microscenes like glo-fi" were maintaining "the tape trade tradition, releasing music in small-run editions as low as 30 copies and wrapping them in surreal photocopy-collage artwork".[13]

History

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Origins

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See also: Hauntology (music)
James Ferraro (pictured in 2012) and Spencer Clark's noise group the Skaters formed in 2004.[1]

Stephen Graham traces "the wide genre(s) of post-noise music" to a hybridization of the noise music scene which took place from the 1990s onwards.[4] Coming from several noise scenes in the United States, artists James Ferraro and Spencer Clark formed the group The Skaters in 2004.[17][18][19] After a year of recording, they began touring around the country.[20] Other acts associated with the post-noise scene included Oneohtrix Point Never,[1][5] Pocahaunted, Dolphins Into the Future, Sun Araw, Yellow Swans,[21] Stellar Om Source,[5][22] Ducktails,[18] Zola Jesus,[18] Xiphiidae,[1] and Emeralds.[1][23][24] Independent record labels such as California-based Not Not Fun proved influential.[25][26]

The American post-noise underground primarily proliferated on the Internet, especially through cassette tape and CD-R sharing.[27][28][29] Some artists also owned netlabels that published music coming from the scene, such as Spencer Clark's Pacific City Sound Visions, James Ferraro's New Age Tapes and Muscleworks Inc., along with Xiphiidae's Housecraft Recordings.[15][14][30] Ferraro used New Age Tapes primarily for small-run releases of his own work on CD-R and cassette.[4]

A close relationship existed between New Age Tapes and David Keenan and Heather Leigh Murray's Glasgow, Scotland-based record shop, distribution company, and record label Volcanic Tongue.[4] The Volcanic Tongue shop enabled James Ferraro's UK and European audience to obtain physical copies of his music.[4] The relationship between New Age Tapes and Volcanic Tongue was facilitated by the Internet.[4]

Hypnagogic pop and New-age music

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Main articles: New-age music and Hypnagogic pop
Ariel Pink performing in 2007

David Keenan's Childhood's End article from 2009 coined the term "hypnagogic pop" referring to "hypnagogia", the psychological state "between waking and sleeping, liminal zones where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams."[31] In December 2010, writer Ed Jupp acknowledged the article and a debate surrounding it in a review of Twin Shadow's Forget:[32]

[...] the advent of artists like Neon Indian, Emeralds, and Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (the latter labelmates of Twin Shadow) have started a seachange in thinking about 80s AOR, particularly when filtered through a post-noise and shoegazing filter. David Keenan wrote an article in The Wire last year that examined the concept and lead to a whole lot of discussion of whether the term is fair or not, and whether totally different bands are being shoehorned into the type of movement-making more commonly associated with the NME.

According to Keenan, hypnagogic pop "takes New Age at its word, as legitimate devotional music filtered through the particular ethos of the time."[6] Keenan acknowledges that "it's vaguely serendipitous that the post-Noise underground would finally find its spiritual side in New Age music and 1980s pop culture," but argues that they allow for "true creative freedom."[6] In Keenan's view, new-age music's "punk" simplicity makes it a "readymade DIY form of devotional process."[6]

In 2016, Fact magazine published an article written by Adam Bychawski regarding an emerging revival of new-age music. Bychawski noted that by the end of the twentieth century, "listeners’ appetite for the genre had waned," but it had an "afterlife" among some artists, including from the post-noise scene, "not long after [new-age] faded from public consciousness."[16] These "post-noise converts" to new-age included Emeralds, Stellar Om Source, and Oneohtrix Point Never.[16]

Vaporwave

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Main article: Vaporwave § Eccojams
Daniel Lopatin contributed to the development of vaporwave

Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) has been cited as emerging from the post-noise scene.[4] In 2010, he released the album Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 under the pseudonym Chuck Person. The album would coin a style of music known as "eccojams" which would later develop into the larger vaporwave microgenre and movement.[33] In 2025, Pitchfork stated in a retrospective review:[33]

[Lopatin] was at the vanguard of the American noise scene in the hazy years when it retreated from feedback-soaked harshness into an unkanny kosmische. Alongside artists like Emeralds, Yellow Swans, Skaters, and Carlos Giffoni, noise music was starting to sound less like Texas Chain Saw Massacre and more like Tarkovsky’s Stalker—and Lopatin was quietly training to become the house DJ for the “Zone.”

Legacy

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Nashville, Tennessee artist River Everett's ambient and new age project New Mexican Stargazers is heavily inspired by hypnagogic artists such as James Ferraro and Spencer Clark.[34] Her work has been characterized as spanning "post-noise pastiches and dense braindance."[35][36] She is the founder of Retrac Recordings,[35] a DIY label active between 2019 and 2025 which released and reissued "past, present, and future internet cult classics," described as ranging from "analog bliss to digital psychedelia," on cassette tape, CD and vinyl.[34][37]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Whiteley & Rambarran 2016, p. 409.
  2. ^ Priest 2013, p. 158.
  3. ^ a b c Trainer 2016, pp. 409–410.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Graham, Stephen (2019). Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music (4th ed.). United States of America: University of Michigan Press. pp. 8, 170, 185, 207, 212. ISBN 978-0-472-12164-9.
  5. ^ a b c d e Quietus, The (2009-12-03). "Oneohtrix Point Never — Rifts". The Quietus. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Keenan, David (August 2009). "Childhood's end". The Wire.
  7. ^ Gabriele, Timothy (2010-08-22). "Chilled to Spill: How the Oil Spill Ruined Chillwave's Summer Vacation » PopMatters". www.popmatters.com. Retrieved 2025-11-12.
  8. ^ Reynolds, Simon (2010-01-22). "The 1980s revival that lasted an entire decade". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  9. ^ Spicer, Daniel. ""Breathless yea-saying": David Keenan's Volcanic Tongue collection reviewed - The Wire". The Wire Magazine - Adventures In Modern Music. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  10. ^ "Dolphins Into The Future - I cherish my insecurity | skug MUSIKKULTUR". Skug (in German). Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  11. ^ Quietus, The (2011-12-14). "Wreath Lectures 2011: Club Beats From The Digital Ether". The Quietus. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  12. ^ Quietus, The (2011-12-15). "Adventures On The Far Side: An Interview With James Ferraro". The Quietus. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  13. ^ a b Reynolds, Simon (2010-01-22). "The 1980s revival that lasted an entire decade". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  14. ^ a b Graham 2016, pp. 185–186.
  15. ^ a b Graham 2016, p. 8.
  16. ^ a b c Bychawski, Adam (2016-08-16). "The new wave of new age: How a maligned genre finally became cool". Fact Magazine. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  17. ^ "Interview: James Ferraro And His Music Multiverse", Red Bull Music Academy, March 6, 2012, archived from the original on June 28, 2013, retrieved March 10, 2013
  18. ^ a b c Masters, Marc (2009-09-14). "The Decade in Noise". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  19. ^ Staff, SPIN (2011-10-25). "James Ferraro, 'Far Side Virtual' (Hippos in Tanks) - SPIN". SPIN. Archived from the original on 2025-01-24. Retrieved 2025-11-14.
  20. ^ "Interview: James Ferraro And His Music Multiverse", Red Bull Music Academy, March 6, 2012, archived from the original on June 28, 2013, retrieved March 10, 2013
  21. ^ Byrne, Michael (2011-12-24). "MB Mixtape 2011 .06: Pete Swanson, "Remote View"". VICE. Retrieved 2025-11-13.
  22. ^ Quietus, The (2013-06-11). "There Are Other Worlds: Stellar OM Source Interviewed". The Quietus. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  23. ^ Gabriele, Timothy (2010-09-16). "Emeralds: Does It Look Like I'm Here? » PopMatters". www.popmatters.com. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  24. ^ Quietus, The (2014-06-06). "Sonar Festival 2014: A Quietus Preview". The Quietus. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  25. ^ Graham 2016, p. 139.
  26. ^ Reynolds, Simon (May 2011b). "NOT NOT FUN label". The Wire.
  27. ^ Reynolds 2011a, p. 416.
  28. ^ Harvell, Jess. "Woebot: Automat EP / East Central One EP". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  29. ^ "Matt Shoemaker | Erosion of the Analogous Eye". www.helenscarsdale.com. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  30. ^ Reynolds, Simon (29 May 2010). "Dolphins Into the Future: The Music of Belief (Director's Cut)". The Wire.
  31. ^ Keenan, Dave (August 2009). "Childhood's End". The Wire. No. 306.
  32. ^ Jupp, Ed (2010-12-10). "Twin Shadow Forget 4AD". Retrieved 11 November 2025.
  33. ^ a b Weingarten, Christopher R. "Oneohtrix Point Never: Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  34. ^ a b Records, Hiraeth (2025-05-01). "Retrac Recordings & Hiraeth Records - EU Distro". Hiraeth Records. Retrieved 2025-11-12.
  35. ^ a b "bagel fanclub Find A New Type of God While I Try To Interview Them". trickyStoop. 2025-06-11. Retrieved 2025-12-02.
  36. ^ "bagel fanclub". bagel fanclub. Retrieved 2025-12-02.
  37. ^ "Retrac Recordings". Retrac Recordings. Retrieved 2025-12-02.

Bibliography

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