An unlikely collaboration between noise rock pioneer and former Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, and John Paul Jones and legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones will be launched on March 28 at the 100 Club in London. The duo will be joined by drummer Steve Noble, to raise funds for Resonance FM, which broadcasts under the banner 104.4 FM.
Resonance FM is an independent radio station from the UK which “offers over 125 creative broadcast series every week featuring local and international artists, makers and experts,” according to their website. As a independent station, the station is non-commercial and not for profit, meaning it is supported entirely by donors and fundraising.
Unlike commercial radio stations, independent stations are free of advertisements and work to serve their respective communities. Much of the music and news broadcast on these stations are much more unique than most terrestrial stations, as the broadcasters, DJs and programmers have more freedom and encouragement to play lesser-known artists and more experimental music.
Many genres that have become mainstays due to independent radio include punk rock, new wave and hip hop, which were popular on many independent and college radio stations before they broke onto the music charts. Artists from Kate Bush all the way to BADBADNOTGOOD attribute their success due to the college and independent radio circuit.
Moore extended his 2018 tour in addition to the release of few tracks and an EP with Blake Judd Nachmystium. Although Moore is well known for his contributions to noise rock, he has a diverse array of musical interests, naming people such as the influential Jazz keyboardist Sun Ra as an influence.
“My interest in free improvisation, as a music genre, is the idea, shared by many of its practitioners, of the music, while freely improvised, being a composition in real time or, as Allen Ginsberg would note in regards to Improvised Poetics, ‘composing on the tongue,'” Moore explained in an interview with The Quietus. “I find that free-improvisation inspires and informs my predilection to songwriting and, even before I had any defined realisation of free-improvisation as a discipline, I was interested in open forms co-existing within composition.”
The artist even relates the so-called “no-wave,” musical movement which Sonic Youth grew out of to the free form music movements of styles such as experimental Jazz. No-wave, which began in New York City during the late 1970s, was infamous for lacking a unique melodic structure and went on to feature harsh abrasive sounds. Many genres from today such as punk, experimental electronic music, ambient and some elements of post-rock grew out of this no wave movement.
“It certainly was the case in Sonic Youth early on and has continued to this day as a relationship I feel most intrigued by,” Moore explained further.” In retrospect I see Sonic Youth informed by the outsider aesthetics of No Wave music which, in itself, was wholly fascinated by Free Jazz and (sometimes pseudo-) academic considerations of Chance Musics. And also completely reckless punk rock FUN.”
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