It's a shame that New Zealand's thriving experimental/noise/improv scene has gone so neglected by our local press when it's been so revered overseas. While the words "noise" and "experimental" might suggest some level of inaccessibility - and I'll be the first to admit some of the shit still scares me - this lovely compilation by Auckland sound artist Tim Coster should perhaps unlock a few doors for those curious to explore other rich musical frontiers beyond the realm of the conventional.

http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3432/artsbooks/5515/crude_effective.html...

Outside the moveable but reassuring guidelines of genre and tradition – perhaps especially in the white-guy tradition that likes to think it’s always about boldly going beyond them – choice paralysis and worse confront the musician who takes seriously the possibility that anything goes. Self-conscious experimentation collapses easily into convention: clownish genre hybrids, or genre fare in thin disguise (self-important club music, conspicuously).

Some years back, having written a few sound stories of my own, I began collecting anecdotes from sound artists and experimental instrument builders I met with whilst travelling in the USA. Each artist would be asked to tell a yarn about a sound experience imprinted on their memory that may have influenced the direction or path they were to take as artists. A collection of these I later published as a video, titled
“Sound Stories #1: Meetings with 14 U.S experimental instrument makers”.