You have to listen to certain kinds of music by yourself. Bastard Noise is a good example. A California group that includes members of the punk/metal band Man is the Bastard and the more experimental Amps for Christ, they make sound ("music" isn't really accurate) that lends itself to dark introspection and solitary headspace thrills. But there'll be no socializing with Bastard Noise on the hi-fi, and no dancing either.

The project's name is the first harbinger of the style. Song titles like "Death Wish for the Dying," "Brotherhood-- Execution Style," and "A Head in the Refrigerator of Apartment 213" provide further clues. Bastard Noise emphasizes the dissonance that others put in the background. "Equinox '98" consists mostly of an extended tone that sounds like the pulsing air raid siren drone that weaves through My Bloody Valentine's "To Here Knows When." Or, if you took Godspeed's F#A# Infinity and removed everything but the tape manipulation and added loads of distortion, the resultant dark ambience would approximate The Analysis of Self-Destruction. It's a schizoid symphony of cheap technology gone wrong, with step-down transformer drones, bubbling oscillators, churning power drills, and some dusted fool banging on a Weber grill somewhere in the distance. It's not for everybody.

The Analysis of Self-Destruction is what it sounded like inside Ted Kaczinski's head when he sat down at his desk to "catch up on paperwork." And I'm man enough to admit that it frightens me. But then, noise music is all about fear. The same neurons that are excited by watching "Silence of the Lambs" fire like crazy when you listen to machine music that sounds like people screaming. And when the record is over, you can look out at the sunlight and smile, secure in the fact that you don't hear this kind of thing in your head all the time. It's the catharsis of "Seven" without two hours of Brad Pitt. And it's a journey one must take alone.

-Mark Richard-San