March 1995
Silhouettes of quarter-inch mastering tape drape from the club's ceiling and glitter against pornographic images on a movie screen ahead. Pleasurable moans echo as a sound collage of machine-like noises seize the movements of the leather-clad, fetish dancers, their jet black hair whipping that familiar musty, coconut smoke-machine scent.
These are a few of the Tahoe-based industrial band Organized Noise's favorite things to display while playing live in Rubicon Bay, Calif. or while incorporating the ambient guitar stylings of 42-year-old Dean Smith into their work at Blue Rube Studios in Carnelian Bay, Calif.
Yet it's not just the theatrical fun house of psychedelic furnishings that puts an Organized Noise show attender in a hypnotic state of mind. It's their variety of music.
As if putting every type of music into a Cuisinart, Organized Noise combines elements of classical, jazz, rap, rock, pop and soul with distorted, whispering voices and samples from horror movie flicks that convey messages of violence. In other words, these are sounds and quotes that require listeners to take a break from easy-listening music and awaken their senses to the dehumanization and destruction that reflects society today.
Seven years ago, before recording actual tracks in Florida and California-based studios, two North Tahoe High School students gave birth to the idea of playing music "your parents can't stand" by breaking old record players to produce sound effects in percussionist and producer Dan Shimer's bedroom. But tape loops and a Casio keyboard were only rough drafts in the careers of this up and coming band.
While Shimer was seriously thinking about a career in the music industry, vocalist and sample research artist Jeff Loc and sampler Ted Leonard casually recorded a rap cut at One Little Indian studio in Richmond. Being given the demo tape and thinking that it "really, really sucked," Shimer distorted the vocals and left the rest of the make-over to keyboardist/programmer Matt Green. A spoonful of additives and a dash of preservatives, and Organized Noise was born.
With Green leaving Organized Noise in January 1992 and not having the sufficient cash for equipment, the industrialization of this newborn phenomenon came out of a rebelling anger toward the world, a preference for a darker type of music and "a tight budget."
"Since we don't have a budget," says Shimer, "we just hit pans, record dogs barking, kids screaming in the playground or a car driving by. We record natural sounds and make them into instruments by reconstructing them through a sampler."
However, sampling of the mundane is not a fresh idea that suddenly sprouted in the '90s. Early 19th century icons had an appetite for natural experimentation.
"Composer Luigi Russulo utilized noises taken from machinery," says Dean Suzuki, music professor at San Francisco State University, "or imitated such industrial sounds in his work."
Industrial music is not a new idea. As a matter of fact, according to Ron Lessard, owner of RR Records in Lowell, Mass., it should have been retired 10 years ago because true industrial music does not exist. It has been replaced by techno-punk disco dance music.
"Industrial music is a dead, generic catch phrase," says Lessard, "adopted by the mainstream music industry to identify a certain genre."
Echoing Lessard's response, Organized Noise agree that it's only a billing term of how to present the band, a way of distinguishing their sound.
"As a courtesy to our listeners," says Leonard, "we would have to be placed in the industrial section at the record store because when you buy something, you're kind of expecting a certain sound. You're not real strict, but you know what you're expecting."
The experimental nature of industrial music may explain why it has only recently caught on. "People are not into hearing noise," says Suzuki. "It's challenging to listen to."
As for Organized Noise's audience, Leonard says, "People who pursue industrial or similar music will find stuff in it that they like. They won't think that it's too candy-appleish or that it's just not quite hard-core enough because it's got a lot of tones that aren't too poppy."
The music of Organized Noise is not so in-depth that one has to be different to comprehend what's going on. "The people who don't normally listen to our kind of music can still dig it," says Leonard, "because the tones are there and the sounds are there that create a really cool feel for everyone."
Organized Noise has done two videos for the songs "Separation" and "Concrete Pillow Death," which could be viewed as pornographic and blasphemous. But the band stresses that these elements are for shock value. "That is the key selling point," Shimer says.
On the other hand, Loc likes to show violence in the videos "just to put it in people's faces so that they realize that it's there," says the 24-year-old. "How much more realistic can you get than everyday life?"
Leonard adds, "The point is to just remove you as far from the state of mind you're in before you listen to it."
Currently, Organized Noise manager Mitch Wright is considering recording a CD at Music Annex Studio in San Francisco as well as signing up the artistic talents of the guys with a new industrial record label in the Bay Area. Possible future gigs include Berkeley Square and Club Paradise in San Francisco.
Though industrial music may have originated from hammers, plastic buckets, marbles or a metal bowl, "you can still go down to the bass of Organized Noise and ride it smooth like a big hill," says Leonard, "or you can go to the top of a synthetic tone like a bird flapping its wings toward infinity."
For more information on Organized Noise contact Dan Shimer at P.O. Box 770, Tahoe City, Calif. 96145 or at (916) 583-1075.