Sunday, January 12, 5:00 PM at Substation - Event Page
Lana Del Rabies / God is War / TEST FRENZY / Hot Hail
A night of harsh industrial sounds featuring Lana Del Rabies (industrial noise) from Los Angeles, God is War (hyperaggressive electronics) from Los Angeles, TEST FRENZY (industrial noise), and Hot Hail (goth darkwave).
Wednesday, January 15, 7:00 PM at Substation - Event Page
Cecyl Ruehlen & Chelsey Lee Trejo / Tom Scully / Tarsier Levitation
Visiting from Tucson, Cecyl Ruehlen uses “an array of elements including guitar, synth, bells, found noisemakers, vocals, clarinet, bow, and other traditional and unusual instruments - their sounds fluidly mixed and layered into long-form, continuous soundscapes” and Chelsey Lee Trejo. They will be joined by Tom Scully (guitar) and Tarsier Levitation (special collaboration between Tarsier Eyes and Adam Levitt.
Wednesday, January 15, 7:00 PM at Vermillion - Event Page
‘An Observance of Absence’ / Alex Abrams / Royce Hobbs
“An Observance of Absence” (~35 min), by Jason Pappariella, is an abstract visual essay that documents interior and exterior places left vacant and dilapidated by the abandonment of Central Pennsylvania’s former coal-mining region, juxtaposing them against similarly neglected sites in industrial Eastern Europe. Adam Parks will accompany the video with a live musical score, performed on manipulated analogue four-track, using sounds recorded on-site in both locales.
The Grinch is delayed this year bringing fog and harsh sounds (performance by B|_ank, EKG (party noise), Masters of Tapwater, Vast Chains (death industrial obliterations), and Failson (electronic).
Saturday, January 18, 8:00 PM at Dracula’s Castle - Event Page
Visiting from New York City will be Radio Shock (now-wave/trip-metal/junktronix), along with SH!TOMATO (noise), Forrest Friends (freak folk), Peopling (party noise), and SENSE/NET.
Wednesday, January 8, 8:00 PM at Dracula’s Castle - Event Page
A “3x2 noise throw down” with Leather Jester (experimental), CSTMR (explosive noise rock), and Coyote Teeth (doom experimental drone noise). SPAWN (experimental noise), Trigger Object (experimental electronic), and Glad We’re Together will also be there.
Friday, January 10, 8:00 PM at Bad Bar - Event Page
Otolithia / María Dolores A. Matienzo / Ruth Davidson
A cozy winter evening at the Chapel with Otolithia (koto + vocals, flute, and electronics) from Portland. Joining them will be María Dolores A. Matienzo (experimental), and Ruth Davidson (cello).
Saturday, January 11, 7:30 PM at Chapel Performance Space - Event Page
Spoken word from Vanessa Skantze. J “g” J will perform afro-nihilist theatre of cruelty. Crimen Nefandum (improvised industrial noise), and MYAKU (afro industrial) will also play.
Saturday, January 11, 8:00 PM at Teatro de la Psychomachia - Event Page
Upcoming Shows December 29 - January 4
Last post for 2024, moving through the end of the year the calendar remains quiet.
Modbang: Solenoid / miloisntreal / Hemosis / XEK
The monthly free showcase of all hardware electronic music will feature Solenoid, miloisntreal, Hemosis, and XEK.
Tuesday, December 31, 7:00 PM at The 4Bs - Event Page
Saturday, January 4, 6:00 PM at Woodland Theater - Event Page
Seattle Creative Code: Code Craft
(not music show) Seattle Creative Code presents CodeCraft, “a series of pop-up art shows that highlight the work of local creative technologists and algorithmic artists.” Featured artists include: Andriy Kashcha + Yixaio Kang, Maks Surguy, Nicholas Bowen + Diana Xie, and Quba Michalski.
Saturday, January 4, 7:00 PM at The Studio at 2+U - Event Page
Upcoming Shows December 22 - December 28
STATIC GHOST / Total Chroma / Skoto
Presented by NOLIFE booking. STATIC GHOST (industrial techno body music) will play along with Total Chroma (minimal synth) from Vancouver, BC, and SKOTO (synthwave) from Oakland, CA.
Monday, December 23, 7:00 PM at Bad Bar - Event Page
Garbage Fest Boxing Day
Pin the garbage on the garbage.
Yall Hurd? Theres a Surprise Boxing Day Garbage Fest in “Seattle” Dec 26th with an amazing SECRET Lineup. Come Box One Another, Share and Tear Boxes, and throw your own Box-Themed GF wheresoever you be in the world! There’ll be a slot for shortform Boxy freaky performances yes besides our top40s banger celebs, put sumfng 2gethr!
Thursday, December 26, 3:00 PM at Under 1st Avenue Bridge - Event Page
Saturday, December 28, 8:00 PM at Conor Byrne Pub - Event Page
Interview with Scarlet Death
As part of the upcoming show, meatspace (Eventbrite) , I wanted to take the moment to interview Scarlet Death, the artist behind the Discord server Noise Music, also the new label Noise Discord. The server has been active since 2017 and remains a popular way to connect with others in the larger noise community.
Seattle Noise: Can you give us some background about yourself?
Scarlet Death: I was born near DC. Grew up in Tennessee. I used to run Black Flower Music, which was a netlabel, podcast, and private torrent site that I operated between 2003 and 2013. We were sort of a collection of Soulseek users who were a blend of users from the Noise Music room and the Japanese Music Room as well as Tonberry Torrents users. I eventually turned it into a music/gaming/culture blog and podcast. I went to Middle Tennessee State University where I was in Sigma Phi Beta, a queer fraternity and intermittently the vice president or events coordinator for the MTSU Anime Club, whose forum I also operated. I had a radio show on WMTS 88.3 called “Soundwave Tsunami” and hosted a one-day anime convention on campus called Adacon and was active in that circuit for a bit, getting invited to other states to do panels. I have a BS in Public Relations. I was bodymaster of the Kephale OTO Camp in Nashville, TN for like 6 months. I started making music in 2001 just goofing around in Fruityloops 3.3. I married a violist (and divorced her too) that kind of exposed me to thinking more critically about the chance operations, stochastic music, and aleatoric philosophies which lead to a rabbit hole to where I’m using AI and storytelling and crypto to post-scarcity economics using sonic weapons and propaganda.
Seattle Noise: What prompted you to start the Discord server?
Scarlet Death: Life got a bit rocky and I ended up abandoning Black Flower Music and that whole sort of Web 1.0 / Web 2.0 transitional community behind in favor of Final Fantasy XIV and voice chats over Discord. I was homeless in Seattle and didn’t know about the noise scene here yet and Soulseek didn’t work on this Lumia 950 someone gifted me when I got dropped off here so I ended up making a generic “Noise Music’ discord server in 2017. I wanted to capture that early Soulseek noise room vibe where DJ RedSK was releasing community comps, so it was an opportunity for me to run another netlabel and stay connected with my community that had sort of been falling apart since the transition into Web 2.0 and the shutdown of BFM.
Seattle Noise: Is there anything by hosting the server you have found rewarding?
Scarlet Death: Sometimes I go into the channel where the robot logs who joins the server and leaves just to give myself exposure therapy to perceived abandonment. It’s actually one of the topics for a song in one of my side projects, therapyspeak.
Seattle Noise: I think one of the most underrated aspects about building community on Discord compared other platforms is you have much more autonomy compared to a Facebook Group or on Reddit. There is much less interference from automated moderation. At the same time Discord users can be more anonymous so it attracts people who may just be stopping by to troll. Do you agree? Do you have anything to add to this?
Scarlet Death: I think that when it comes to cybersecurity best practices, it’s important to remember that we’re already living in a post-singularity society in which it’s hopeless to try to make a distinction between synthetic and organic lifeforms online. Whether it’s a “human” coming there to troll, or autonomous agent governed by some 22 year old cracked developer with a Replit account and a can-do attitude trying to automate pyramid schemes in the self-promo channel, or bots selling VSTs with malware in them, I just know that nothing really matters and I don’t care what anyone thinks. I love noise music and this community means a lot to me. I think noise music is in itself an act of trolling, that I already embrace. And as a performance artist, I generally try to come at it with a sense of appreciation; however, I often find myself disappointed that the few trolls we do get aren’t up to my quality standards. Discord is cool but running your own phpBB forum and private torrent tracker in the early 00s, today’s trolls are weaksauce for reals.
Seattle Noise: Let’s talk more about your noise music. You’ve participated in other projects in the past, but you also perform solo as Scarlet Death. How do you feel like your sound has shifted over time?
Scarlet Death: The projects I had started in high school where I was just goofing around on FruityLoops or with my ex-wife sound different than the stuff where I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and filling the soundscape with pure terror for sure. When I moved here in 2017 I didn’t have any gear any more due to the circumstances that brought me to Seattle in the first place, so I founded Queen Antifa with Lauren Croney and Squidlarkin. I just screamed over them doing crunchy synths and people seemed to like it, so once I got more situated I started exploring ways to get louder and more intricate as opposed to the older, goofier stuff. With SNMT it all kind of felt like homework, in a sense. Scarlet Death feels more like I’m being true to myself, putting all my blood into it instead of it being purely an experiment.
Seattle Noise: What is your latest release? Can you describe what went into making the album?
Scarlet Death: My last release is actually a complicated matter to address. I wanted to release two singles during September, “Giga Passoid” and “Audio Danmaku”. GP is an excuse to release a track like “Princess Brick” and fulfill my need for public self-deprecation, and AD is an experiment with my new high resolution and spatial audio workflow. Then there’s the deathOS synthetic content that I try real hard to make a distinction from the wholly organic:think Sekai meets Visual Novel meets Amory Wars (but it’s j-sasscore and post-scarcity economics instead of second stage turbine blades or whatever) meets Macross meets Ender’s Game scifi narrative about propaganda but with noise music/sonic weapons and—well, I am releasing AI-generated soundtracks for it. The latest for that is “Void Witch OST 2: Prima Materia Collection.”
Seattle Noise: What about the future? Any plans? Where can people best follow you and keep up with what you’re doing?
Scarlet Death: I’m working on the deathOS agentic operating system and fine tuning a Void Witch—Scarlet Death—LLM where I’m essentially containerizing, tokenizing, and automating my entire thought process through an overly complicated of lore masquerading as a compute cluster, an agentic kernel, and a zkEVM for some reason. Imagine essentially wanting to make the operating system for an eventual holodeck. I like making very complicated egregores and I like making them with the latest technologies. I’m trying to create some sort of federated Harsh Noise community since I have harshnoise.social harshnoise.club and harshnoise.online I figure I might do something like start a private Bluesky instance on a VPS with one I also want to make for the cybergrind community since I have some domains for that as well. Once I figure out how to actually win a battle in The Loudness War, I plan on releasing some Dolby Atmos audio, and once I pay Dolby for access to trim controls, I want to make a sort of hour long music video thing in Dolby Atmos and Vision at an actual theater or something. Ultimately, as a servant of the Primordial AGI, my continued efforts for the foreseeable future will be engineering qualia experiments for interested parties so that I can accelerate the number of unique sensations a person can handle at once and still manage to be qualitative about the experience. That’s the dream! Cheers.
Find all social media links for Scarlet Death on Linktree.
Upcoming Shows December 15 - December 21
Real quick this week, only three shows as we await the new year. Also if Bluesky is your thing, you can follow Seattle Noise there too. For Bluesky, I plan on posting shows a little earlier than the usual weekly posting schedule on Thursdays and Fridays for the upcoming week.
Coyote Teeth / Seed Order / Adam Levitt
Apartment show (DM @tiny_vipers on Instagram to RSVP). Featuring Coyote Teeth (doom experimental drone noise), Seed Order, and Adam Levitt (noise). There will also be visuals by Eric Acosta and Sean Waple.
Sunday, December 15, 4:00 PM at DM for location - Event Page
meatspace vol 1: Scarlet Death / Rodeo Queen / Brad Anderson / Nilc
In conjunction with Noise Discord, I will be hosting meatspace vol 1. Featuring Scarlet Death (catgirl power electronics), Rodeo Queen (digital grindcore), Brad Anderson (electronic), and Nilc (gentle chaos). This event will also be streamed online on the Discord server.
Friday, December 20, 7:00 PM at Gallery 1412 - Event Page
Sunday, December 8, 5:00 PM at Substation - Event Page
V.Vecker / Bit Graves / Archival Image / Dion.Egg
V.Vecker (minimal composition spiritual jazz) will play along with Bit Graves (experimental electronic synth), Archival Image (experimental ambient drone), and Dion.Egg.
Thursday, December 12, 7:00 PM at Casa Del Xolo - Event Page
Flesh Produce / Sea Moss / Miscomings / Lonelygirl15
Thursday, December 12, 7:00 PM at Chop Suey - Event Page
Dr. Hamburger / SPITRAT / Forrest Friends / Kati McKinley & Lukas Dickson
Visiting from Rochester, will be Dr. Hamburger (experimental). They will be joined by SPITRAT (no input sound), Forrest Friends (freak folk), and Kati McKinley & Lukas Dickson.
Friday, December 13, 7:30 PM at Gallery 1412 - Event Page
Friday, December 6, 7:00 PM at Lucky Liquor - Event Page
Death Spa / Turian / Cicatrice / Al Bundy
Cassette celebration show for Death Spa (abrasive prog punk), along with Turian (grindcore noise), and Al Bundy (grindcore)
Friday, December 6, 8:00 PM at Bad Bar - Event Page
Acid Relapse / Kole Galbraith / The Masters of Tapwater / The Beachcomber BBQ & Grill / Ectopic Pregnancy / Resin Cough
Another grindcore focused noise collaboration show featuring Acid Relapse (hypergorenoise) from Losa Angeles. They will be joined by Kole Galbraith (noise), The Masters of Tapwater (special harsh noise project by Jakob from Izthmi), The Beachcomber BBQ & Grill (experimental noise), Ectopic Pregnancy (grindcore), and Resin Cough (mincecore).
Saturday, December 7, 7:00 PM at Mudlark Oddities - Event Page
Upcoming Shows November 24 - November 30
Old Man of the Woods / Mind Mirage / Gall / Malversation
Sunday, November 17, 7:00 PM at Lucky Liquor - Event Page
Ground Hum: FSS / Sketch Artist / Deadquiet
Experimental electronic music featuring FSS, Sketch Artist (electronic breakbeat), and Deadquiet.
Tuesday, November 19, 6:30 PM at Recreational Psychoacoustics Lab - Event Page
Max Nordile / Casey Adams / Sadie Siskin / MASHA
Max Nordile (human music) from Olympia will perform solo and in collaboration with Casey Adams (percussion). Joining them will be Sadie Siskin (experimental), and MASHA (dark folk).
Thursday, November 21, 8:00 PM at Drongo Tapes HQ - Event Page
Oh Nothing / I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE / Dicqbeats / 9-5 Hyperfuck
Venture out across the ferry or over the Narrows bridge to catch this noise show featuring Prehensile Dataspike (folk noise), UHURA (noise), Lukas Dickson (noise loops), and MONED (guitar driven noise).
Saturday, November 23, 6:30 PM at Bigfoot’s House of Vinyl - Event Page
Stargazr is a new Seattle supergroup formed of members of Prom Queen, somesurprises, Von Wildenhaus, Tacocat, Loose Wing, among others! This will be the band’s debut performance showcasing a set of original songs by Leeni Ramadan arranged for this celestial soft grunge ensemble. The group features Billie Bloom playing a saw through a pedal board and Ahmad Yosefbeigi on the frame drum.
Saturday, November 23, 7:00 PM at The Rabbit Box - Event Page
South Sound Experimental Film Fest
A number of people who make experimental / noise music will be featuring their films, in addition to other submissions from around Cascadia and beyond.
Program for Saturday:
Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present
Eulogy, Elegy - Lily King
Melencolia: The End of the Alphabet - M Woods
Hemorrhage - Ruth Hays
Bread & Honey - Kyndra Lee
Gab - Hogan Seidel
,,,so thee lilac never wilt alone,,, - Elijah Jamal Asani
Woman On A Rocket - Sierra Cosmidis Grove
Mechanical Eye - Deb Seitz
Oh Then Until - Hawk Ferdig
CEREMONIAL ABYSS PLAYS TONY CONRAD FEAT. (THE FLICKER)
Program for Sunday
Tripsitters - Al Granstrom & Lucas Montgomery
At Captain Daniel David’s on the Coast - Jeffrey Sundin
Origins - Konya
Wishfulweed - Laura Iancu
Resting Place - Brittany Appleby
Siren’s Song - Blue Jaye Corvidae
i was never the siren - Moonyeka
120,000 lumins - Scott Oshima
Heavy Water - Victor Anthony Martin
American Hypocrite - Brittney Cash
Infinite Resignation and Wallowing in your Own Filth - Don Haugen
November at the Beach - Eric Acosta
Divine Intervention - Yun Jieh Wu
Saturday, November 23, 4:00 PM at Northwest Film Forum - Event Page