Nocturnal Emissions
Encyclopedia
Nocturnal Emissions is a sound art
project that has released numerous records and CDs in music styles ranging from electro-acoustic, musique concrète
, hybridised beats, sound collage
, post-industrial music
, ambient
and noise music
.
The sound art has been part of an ongoing multimedia campaign of guerrilla sign ontology
utilising video art
, film, hypertext
and other documents.
(b. 1957) together with collaborators Danny Ayers(b.1964) and Caroline K
(b.1957- d.2008). From early in their work, the group concentrated on the axiom
of music being a form of social control
, and highlighted concepts such as information overload
, cult
conditioning
, brainwashing and subliminal advertising, in a critique
of information society
. Their music drew heavily on worldwide folk
traditions as well as that of the European avant-garde
. One of their earliest performances was in a railway arch in Atlantic Road, Brixton, while the 1981 Brixton riots
raged outside.
Since 1984 Nocturnal Emissions has continued mainly as Nigel Ayers' solo project. Line-up has varied from one to a dozen musicians. Nocturnal Emissions temporary members have included net artist Stanza
, Ben Ponton of Zoviet France
and (somewhat bizarrely) life coach Fiona Harrold.
Nocturnal Emissions ran their own record label, Sterile Records
and later worked closely with the editors of the art music
label Touch
, later with both the Netherlands- based Staalplaat
and USA- based Soleilmoon
recording labels. All three labels came to the fore as part of 1980s cassette culture
.
In 1990-92 Nocturnal Emissions collaborated on Butoh
dance performances in Europe & the USA, with the Japanese
choreographer Poppo Shiraishi. Around this time Nocturnal Emissions' Situationist-influenced practice became increasingly informed by magick
, stone circles, techno
–shamanism
, neo-paganism, animism
and Fortean
research. There were many collaborations on animated films by Mancunian
TV director Charlotte Bill
. Bill was never an official member of Nocturnal Emissions, but admits to being one of the legion of members of The Fall (band).
Nocturnal Emissions were later to be associated with the Kernow section of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts
and to feature in a best-selling story by the novelist Stewart Home
.
Tissue of Lies Revised CD (Dark Vinyl, 1990)
Fruiting Body LP(Sterile, 1981)
Drowning in a Sea of Bliss LP (Sterile, 1983; cassette reissued by Touch, 1985; CD reissued by Soleilmoon, 1993)
Viral Shedding LP (Illuminated, 1983)
Chaos (Live at the Ritzy) LP (Cause For Concern, 1983)
The Fight Goes On cassette (Staalplaat, 1984)
No Sacrifice 12" (Sterile, 1984)
Shake Those Chains Rattle Those Cages LP (Sterile, 1985)
Songs of Love and Revolution LP (Sterile, 1985; CD re-issue from Dark Vinyl, 1992)
The World is my Womb LP (Earthly Delights, 1987; Soleilmoon cassette, 1989; Soleilmoon CD, 1999)
Duty Experiment 1982-1984 LP (Earthly Delights, 1988; CD reissue Soleilmoon, 1995)
Spiritflesh LP (Earthly Delights, 1988; Soleilmoon cassette, 1989)
Stoneface LP (Parade Amoureuse, 1989; CD reissue from Staalplaat, 1994 with Spiritflesh)
Da Dum 7" (Parade Amoureuse, 1989)
Invocation of the Beast Gods CD (Staalplaat, 1989)
Beyond Logic, Beyond Belief LP (Earthly Delights, 1989)
Mouth of Babes LP (Earthly Delights, 1990; CD reissue from Soleilmoon, 1991)
Energy Exchange LP (Earthly Delights, 1991)
Cathedral CD (Musica Maxima Magnetica, 1991)
Blasphemous Rumours CD(Staalplaat, 1992)
The Seminal Works -12 tape box set (Earthly Delights, 1992)
Magnetized Light CD (Musica Maxima Magnetica, 1993)
The Quickening LP (Earthly Delights, 1993)
Glossalalia CD (Soleilmoon, 1994)
Holy of Holies - 4-hour DAT (Soleilmoon, 1994)
Binary Tribe CD (Staalplaat, 1994)
Imaginary Time LP(Soleilmoon, 1995)
Autonomia CD (Soleilmoon, 1996)
Friction And Dirt CD (Staalplaat, 1996)
Tharmuncrape An'goo CD (Soleilmoon, 1997)
Sunspot Activities CD (Soleilmoon, 1997)
Omphalos CD (Soleilmoon, 1998
Futurist Antiquarianism CD (Soleilmoon, 2000)
Collateral Salvage CD (Soleilmoon, 2003)
Nightscapes LP (Small Voices, 2006)
Mesmeric Enabling Device CD (with John S. Everall and Mick Harris) (Soleilmoon, 1999)
The World Turned Gingham CD (with Robin Story, released under the name Hank & Slim) (Caciocavallo, 2000)
Transgenic CD (Solo album released under the name Transgenic) (Soleilmoon, 2000)
www.thethreetrials.com
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
project that has released numerous records and CDs in music styles ranging from electro-acoustic, musique concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
, hybridised beats, sound collage
Sound collage
In music, montage or sound collage is a technique where sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage, the use of portions of previous recordings or scores...
, post-industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
and noise music
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
.
The sound art has been part of an ongoing multimedia campaign of guerrilla sign ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
utilising video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
, film, hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
and other documents.
History
The project was initiated in London in or around 1980 by Nigel AyersNigel Ayers
Nigel Ayers is a multimedia artist born in Tideswell, Derbyshire, England, in 1957.His sound art has included numerous audio releases and live performances through his genre-busting group Nocturnal Emissions....
(b. 1957) together with collaborators Danny Ayers(b.1964) and Caroline K
Caroline K
Caroline Kaye Walters , known as Caroline K was an English singer, songwriter and artist/producer. She was a founder member of the UK based Nocturnal Emissions experimental/industrial music group in the 1980s. She co-founded Sterile Records with Nigel Ayers in London in 1980...
(b.1957- d.2008). From early in their work, the group concentrated on the axiom
Axiom
In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...
of music being a form of social control
Social control
Social control refers generally to societal and political mechanisms or processes that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group. Many mechanisms of social control are cross-cultural, if only in the control...
, and highlighted concepts such as information overload
Information overload
"Information overload" is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information...
, cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
conditioning
Conditioning
Conditioning may refer to:* In psychology, the process of performing some particular action to directly influence an individual's learning; see education...
, brainwashing and subliminal advertising, in a critique
Critique
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...
of information society
Information society
The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally through using IT in a creative and productive way. An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic,...
. Their music drew heavily on worldwide folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
traditions as well as that of the European avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
. One of their earliest performances was in a railway arch in Atlantic Road, Brixton, while the 1981 Brixton riots
Brixton Riots
Brixton riots may refer to:* 1981 Brixton riot – 11 April 1981* 1985 Brixton riot – 28 September 1985* 1995 Brixton riot – 13 December 1995* 2011 Brixton riot – 7 August 2011; see 2011 London riots...
raged outside.
Since 1984 Nocturnal Emissions has continued mainly as Nigel Ayers' solo project. Line-up has varied from one to a dozen musicians. Nocturnal Emissions temporary members have included net artist Stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
, Ben Ponton of Zoviet France
Zoviet France
Zoviet France is a prolific music group from Newcastle upon Tyne in north east England. While often dissonant and made of industrial textures, their music also falls into the ambient music category...
and (somewhat bizarrely) life coach Fiona Harrold.
Nocturnal Emissions ran their own record label, Sterile Records
Sterile Records
The Sterile Records record label was formed in London in 1979 by Nigel Ayers and Caroline K of the post-industrial music group Nocturnal Emissions. With a background in the mail art networks, their intention was to create and promote a new form of music...
and later worked closely with the editors of the art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
label Touch
Touch Music
Touch is a British audio-visual organisation, operating the Touch label. It is the main arm of the London-based multimedia publishing company Touch, established in 1982...
, later with both the Netherlands- based Staalplaat
Staalplaat
Staalplaat is an independent record label that is located in Amsterdam with a separate store in Berlin. Created in 1982, the company's mission was created as a sound forum for sound artists, who write and perform new and experimental music...
and USA- based Soleilmoon
Soleilmoon
Soleilmoon Recordings is an American record label that began in 1987 as a cassette label, operating from the back of a record shop called the Ooze in Portland, Oregon, USA. The first releases were by Smegma, Muslimgauze, Coil, and Nocturnal Emissions. Compact discs releases soon followed in...
recording labels. All three labels came to the fore as part of 1980s cassette culture
Cassette culture
Cassette culture, or the cassette underground , refers to the practices surrounding amateur production and distribution of recorded music that emerged in the late 1970s via home-made audio cassettes...
.
In 1990-92 Nocturnal Emissions collaborated on Butoh
Butoh
is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup...
dance performances in Europe & the USA, with the Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
choreographer Poppo Shiraishi. Around this time Nocturnal Emissions' Situationist-influenced practice became increasingly informed by magick
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
, stone circles, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
–shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
, neo-paganism, animism
Animism
Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....
and Fortean
Fortean
Fortean refers to:*Charles Fort's ideas and philosophy and the people and things inspired by it*Fortean Society, formed by New York's literati led by Theodore Dreiser, Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht...
research. There were many collaborations on animated films by Mancunian
Mancunian
Mancunian is the associated adjective and demonym of Manchester, a city in North West England. It may refer to:*The city of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England**The people of Manchester, or the list of people from Manchester...
TV director Charlotte Bill
Charlotte Bill
Charlotte Jane "Lalla" Bill was a nanny to the children of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George V and Queen Mary. She was most closely linked with the couple's youngest child, Prince John, whom she nursed devotedly from 1905 until his death in 1919.- Employment :Lalla began her...
. Bill was never an official member of Nocturnal Emissions, but admits to being one of the legion of members of The Fall (band).
Nocturnal Emissions were later to be associated with the Kernow section of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts
Association of Autonomous Astronauts
The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is a worldwide network of community based groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. The AAA was founded 23 April 1995. Although many of their activities were reported as serious participation in conferences or protests against the militarization of...
and to feature in a best-selling story by the novelist Stewart Home
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
.
Partial discography
Tissue of Lies LP (Emiss, 1981)Tissue of Lies Revised CD (Dark Vinyl, 1990)
Fruiting Body LP(Sterile, 1981)
Drowning in a Sea of Bliss LP (Sterile, 1983; cassette reissued by Touch, 1985; CD reissued by Soleilmoon, 1993)
Viral Shedding LP (Illuminated, 1983)
Chaos (Live at the Ritzy) LP (Cause For Concern, 1983)
The Fight Goes On cassette (Staalplaat, 1984)
No Sacrifice 12" (Sterile, 1984)
Shake Those Chains Rattle Those Cages LP (Sterile, 1985)
Songs of Love and Revolution LP (Sterile, 1985; CD re-issue from Dark Vinyl, 1992)
The World is my Womb LP (Earthly Delights, 1987; Soleilmoon cassette, 1989; Soleilmoon CD, 1999)
Duty Experiment 1982-1984 LP (Earthly Delights, 1988; CD reissue Soleilmoon, 1995)
Spiritflesh LP (Earthly Delights, 1988; Soleilmoon cassette, 1989)
Stoneface LP (Parade Amoureuse, 1989; CD reissue from Staalplaat, 1994 with Spiritflesh)
Da Dum 7" (Parade Amoureuse, 1989)
Invocation of the Beast Gods CD (Staalplaat, 1989)
Beyond Logic, Beyond Belief LP (Earthly Delights, 1989)
Mouth of Babes LP (Earthly Delights, 1990; CD reissue from Soleilmoon, 1991)
Energy Exchange LP (Earthly Delights, 1991)
Cathedral CD (Musica Maxima Magnetica, 1991)
Blasphemous Rumours CD(Staalplaat, 1992)
The Seminal Works -12 tape box set (Earthly Delights, 1992)
Magnetized Light CD (Musica Maxima Magnetica, 1993)
The Quickening LP (Earthly Delights, 1993)
Glossalalia CD (Soleilmoon, 1994)
Holy of Holies - 4-hour DAT (Soleilmoon, 1994)
Binary Tribe CD (Staalplaat, 1994)
Imaginary Time LP(Soleilmoon, 1995)
Autonomia CD (Soleilmoon, 1996)
Friction And Dirt CD (Staalplaat, 1996)
Tharmuncrape An'goo CD (Soleilmoon, 1997)
Sunspot Activities CD (Soleilmoon, 1997)
Omphalos CD (Soleilmoon, 1998
Futurist Antiquarianism CD (Soleilmoon, 2000)
Collateral Salvage CD (Soleilmoon, 2003)
Nightscapes LP (Small Voices, 2006)
Collaborations
The Beauty of Pollution (with C.C.C.C.) (Endorphine Factory, 1996)Side projects
Oedipus Brain Foil 3xCD (with Randy Greif and Robin Storey) (Soleilmoon, 1998)Mesmeric Enabling Device CD (with John S. Everall and Mick Harris) (Soleilmoon, 1999)
The World Turned Gingham CD (with Robin Story, released under the name Hank & Slim) (Caciocavallo, 2000)
Transgenic CD (Solo album released under the name Transgenic) (Soleilmoon, 2000)
Soundtracks
The Three Trials - Adventures in Psychotica (Randy Greif dir.)www.thethreetrials.com