The next album, Dance Noise, is in progress. Tracks will get added as they reach “decent beta” quality.
Stuff will be updated over time.
No fixed number of tracks or release date.
The album is a place to collect whatever number of pieces that fit some ill-defined unifying quality.
I started writing music back in the mid ‘70s. In 1977, after seeing Richard Hell at CBGB, I decided I’d rather be a performer instead of a spectator.
I had started recording proto-songs using set of cassette recorders, ping-ponging sound from one to another as a way to do really cheesy multitracking. It worked.
To find musicians I placed an ad in the Village Voice.
“Noise – Ramones – Bach” was the heading.
There was a fundamental idea running through my work. I wanted to combine a solid rhythmic unpinning with serious noise over they top. The idea (more or less) was that each instrument in a four-piece band would sit at different levels of predictability. Basic four-on-the floor drums as the root, simple (and, ideally, catchy) bass, then some angular rhythm guitar, and some nosey atonal lead.
Thus was born Chinese Forehead.
As we got gigs at CBGB and Tier 3 we plastered Lower Manhattan with 3D Day-Glo posters proclaiming our sound as “dance noise”.
While the group ultimately disbanded the notion of dance noise stayed with me. Driving, pulsing, beat-and-bass driven music mixed with a swirl of abrasive shards.
Certainly this concept informed a lot of Maximum R&D but the goal now is to try to make it more tribal, more intense.