Top 50 Noise Albums
The most extreme records ever, from Lou Reed and Napalm Death to Ty Segall
1 JOHN COLTRANE Ascension (IMPULSE!, 1966)
Not so much a record as a storm with periods of reflective calm, this is a work that might be claimed equally by jazzer, punk, noise freak or rock’n’roller. A 40-minute recording (there is also a second take) made on June 28, 1965, here Coltrane and his additional 10 players met on a tacit mission to shred the envelope. From their original gutsy opening statement, the album opens out into free, and mighty swinging, solo sections, returning occasionally to regroup in something like the opening statement. It’s a joyous noise: composed of an equitable coming together, a true unison of voices. JR
2 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND White Light/White Heat (VERVE, 1968)
With its shootings, orgies and hauntings – not to mention the boxcutter through poor Waldo Jeffers’ head – the Velvets’ second album is a violent affair, its bloody lyrics matched only by the monochrome cruelty of the music. Nico and Warhol had been exorcised by the second half of ’67, and along with them went any pop pretence: instead, Lou Reed was free to explore his manic, free-jazz-influenced solos over pulverised grooves, or as on the closing “Sister Ray”, duel with John Cale’s ever more distorted Vox organ across 17 relentless minutes. Recorded in one take, with the understanding that whatever happened would make it onto the LP, it’s an anarchic, misanthropic mess – and practically perfect. TP
3 RANDY HOLDEN Population II (HOBBIT, 1970)
He’s up there with NZ guitar overlord Doug Jerebine as one of the truly great, under-recognised rock guitarists of his era, but without
Population II, Pennysylvania’s Randy Holden might only have been a footnote in Blue Cheer’s biography. He appeared on their third album,
New! Improved! (1969), but it took his first and best solo album, from 1970, to cement his status as one of rock’s outsider geniuses. Holden’s playing on the album is fierce and overloaded – no doubt thanks to those 200-watt Sunn amplifiers he was wielding – a wild, noise-blurred wipe-out that puts most all its peers to shame. JD
4 THE STOOGES Funhouse (ELEKTRA, 1970)
While the first side of The Stooges’ second album found Iggy Pop, Dave Alexander and the Asheton brothers displaying their taut, structured side with the proto-punk of “Down On The Street” and “Loose”, the flipside found the quartet embracing a sound as unhinged and fiery as the inferno suggested by its cover. The title track in particular is an eight-minute juggernaut, complete with a punishing, endlessly circling groove that suggests funk attempted by troglodytes; meanwhile, tenor sax player Steve Mackay contributes extended soloing that perfectly toes the line between R&B and the avantgarde. As if that wasn’t devastating enough, closer “LA Blues”, five minutes of freeform noise, seems to perfectly magnify the riots, violence and turmoil of America at the end of the ’60s. TP
5 YOKO ONO/ PLASTIC ONO BAND S/t (APPLE, 1970)
“Cambridge 1969” and Live Peace had shown the Plastic Ono Band as a band of extremes – the one, routeone retro rock’n’rollers; the other, a wine glass-threatening, infinitely sustaining free-noise modernist ensemble. Historically, this studio album is one of a pair – its counterpart showing John Lennon at his rawest and most emotional. Musically, it’s quite another beast, as Yoko and band (Ringo Starr; Klaus Voormann; Lennon) unmoor themselves from the song and set out until they can no longer turn back. Tribal grooves, drones and bluesy slide all provide a backdrop to Ono’s devastating vocal. JR ON THE CD “Touch Me”, Track 3
6 NEU! Neu! (BRAIN, 1972)
While much of Neu! 75 might have boiled Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger’s sound down to its essential parts – that motorik beat and Rother’s elegiac melodicism – the duo’s debut is wispier, looser and carried along by some singular noise. “Sonderangebot” casts an eerie spell, despite using just flanged, distorted cymbals and Rother’s Ibanez, its strings tuned to one note and played with a slide; meanwhile, on Side Two, the barely-there “Im Gluck” is based around a Dictaphone recording of a boat trip Dinger took in Norway. Perhaps the noisiest, most invigorating piece, however – and the first song the duo recorded for the