KINGSTON, N.Y. — Noise music enthusiast Craig Spencer tried in vain to identify the cacophonous racket heard through his living room wall, according to sources who had come over to buy weed.
“One afternoon I started hearing this wild music coming from my neighbor’s pad,” said Spencer while rearranging his record collection from alphabetical to chronological order. “The composition began with a deep, pulsing buzz and was soon overlaid with a rhythmic mechanical thrumming. I pulled out my phone and tried to Shazam it, but got no results. I sat there mesmerized until the track ended. Whatever it was, it ranks up there with some of the greatest harsh noise I’ve ever heard. I ran into my neighbor later and asked, ‘What was that incredible music you were playing?’ but she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. I hate gatekeeping.”
Neighbor Gwen Dubovich was initially baffled by Spencer’s questioning.
“I try to avoid talking to Craig as much as possible, so when he came up to me I really wasn’t in the mood to answer questions,” said Dubovich. “But I eventually realized he was asking me about the day my old washer finally croaked. I had tried to wash my heavy duvet after my dog puked on the bed and it was too much for the thing. It started rocking and shuddering, and then fizzled out and began smoking. I guess I could tell Craig what the sound actually was, but I really don’t want to start another conversation with him. The last time we spoke he invited me over to smoke weed and check out something called Agonal Lust. I claimed to have diarrhea and made a hasty exit.”
Underground music scholar Creighton Blemer says Spencer’s experience is enviable.
“Mr. Spencer witnessed something very few of us in the harsh noise community have been privy to: The spontaneous creation of pure music, unsullied by the meddling hand of man. Compositions made solely by machines with no human intervention are in fact the most perfect form of music that exists. What better expression of despair, isolation and ennui could there be than the sonic death throes of an industrial automaton? There is no more fitting way to exemplify the failing anthropocenic experiment than the wailing of machinery as it breaks down and succumbs to the indifferent will of entropy.”
At press time, Spencer had been spotted sitting cross-legged next to a concrete mixer at a nearby construction site, listening with rapt attention.