No Wave was a short-lived but influential art music, film, performance art, video and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City and continued through the 1980s and into the early 1990s alongside punk subculture.^[1] The term No Wave is in part satiric wordplay rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre - a term imported into the New York contemporary artworld by Diego Cortez (born, James Allan Curtis, Geneva, Illinois) in a show he currated called "New York/New Wave" held at the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (1981). The No Wave term also highlights the music's experimental nature; as No Wave music belonged to no fixed style or genre.

No Wave movie poster

East Village Eye cover featuring James Chance

Styles & Characteristics

In many ways, No Wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features. Various groups drew on such disparate styles as funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, avant garde, and experimental. There are, however, some elements common to most No Wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds, repetitive driving rhythms, and a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody - typical of the early downtown music of La Monte Young. No Wave lyrics often focused on nihilism and confrontation.

No Wave is often better defined in terms of the artistic environment in which it thrived (the downtown scene of minimal art) and the character of performances typical to its context. No Wave performances drew heavily on performance art and as a result were often examples of a highly theatrical minimalism in their renditions.

Also during this time, there was a period of No Wave Cinema which was an underground film movement in the East Village. No Wave filmmakers included: Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, James Nares, Vivienne Dick, Scott B and Beth B, and Seth Tillett (among others) and led to the Cinema of Transgression and work by Nick Zedd and Richard Kern.

No Wave had a notable influence on noise and industrial bands who formed after, like Big Black, Lev Six, Helmet, and Live Skull. The Theoretical Girls heavily influenced early Sonic Youth, who then emerged from this scene by creating music that eventually reached mass audiences and critical acclaim. Also for new bands like Liars, Ex Models, Neptune, Erase Errata the influence of the No Wave scene was important. The Brian Eno-produced album No New York is perhaps the best example of this genre, featuring songs by Mars, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, DNA and The Contortions.^[2]

Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, wrote:

And although "affection" is possibly an odd word to use in reference to a bunch of nihilists, I do feel fond of the No Wave people. James Chance's music actually stands up really well, I think; there are great moments throughout Lydia Lunch's long discography, and Suicide's records are just beautiful. (Listen to James Chance & the Contortions, "Contort Yourself," 1979; and Suicide, "Touch Me," 1980.)^[3]

No Wave Musicians

• Glenn Branca
• Rhys Chatham
• Bush Tetras
• James Chance/James White and the Blacks
• The Contortions
• Dark Day
• Lizzy Mercier Descloux
• DNA
• 8-Eyed Spy
• Friction
• J. G. Thirlwell
• Lydia Lunch

• Jody Harris
• Mars
• Massacre
• Judy Nylon
• Rosa Yemen
• Sonic Youth
• The Static
• Swans
• Teenage Jesus & the Jerks
• Theoretical Girls
• Ut

1990 On

The No Wave movement continues to have a far-reaching impact on the American anti-culture music scene. In a foreword to the book No Wave, Weasel Walter wrote of the movement's ongoing influence,

I began to express myself musically in a way that felt true to myself, constantly pushing the limits of idiom or genre and always screaming "Fuck You!" loudly in the process. It's how I felt then and I still feel it now. The ideals behind the (anti-) movement known as No Wave were found in many other archetypes before and just as many afterwards, but for a few years around the late 1970s, the concentration of those ideals reached a cohesive, white-hot focus.^[4]

In 2004 Scott Crary made a documentary, Kill Your Idols about the No wave scene. ^[5] In 2008, three books on the No Wave scene were published: Soul Jazz's New York Noise^[6], Marc Masters' No Wave^[7], and Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980"^[8].

Compilations

• No New York (1978) Antilles, (2006) Lilith, B000B63ISE
• Just Another Asshole #5 (1981) compilation LP (CD reissue 1995 on Atavistic # ALP39CD), producer/editors: Barbara Ess & Glenn Branca
• N.Y. No Wave (2003) ZE France B00009OKOP
• New York Noise (2003) Soul Jazz B00009OYSE
• New York Noise, Vol. 2 (2006) Soul Jazz B000CHYHOG
• New York Noise, Vol. 3 (2006) Soul Jazz B000HEZ5CC

See also

• ZE Records
• Noise music
• ABC No Rio
• Colab
• Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine selective issues

References

ReferencesTexts

• Carlo McCormick, "The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974?1984", Princeton University Press, 2006
• The Red Book, 1978 (NEA application document authored by Coleen Fitzgibbon, Andrea Callard and Ulli Rimkus) Andrea Callard Papers, ?The Downtown Collection? Fales Library, NYU
• David Little, "Colab Takes a Piece, History Takes It Back: Collectivity and New York Alternative Spaces", Art Journal, Vol.66, No. 1, Spring 2007, (College Art Association, New York), 60-74. (Full Articlehttp://www.tomotterness.net/pdf/news_artjournal_colabdavidlittle_2007.pdf)
• Alan W. Moore, "Artists' Collectives: Focus on New York, 1975-2000", Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, Blake Stimson & Gregory Sholette, eds, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2007, 193-221.
• Alan Moore and Marc Miller, eds., ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery, Collaborative Projects, NY, 1985
• Grace Glueck, Up With People, Collaborative Projects exhibition review, New York Times, January 6, 1984

External links

• No Wave at AllMusicGuide
• New York No Wave Photo Archive
• Official MySpace page for Kill Your Idols, a documentary about the Cinema of Transgression & the No Wave scene

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