My first Bad Revue was its third edition. It was a Saturday afternoon in November as I made my way through the Manchester Metropolitan University campus towards a room above a homely, Taylor Swift-playing pub. I arrived as one act was ending. The room was long and, in my memory, very grey with about twenty people stood around the sides. I found myself a spot with my very hungover friends at the back and prepared for "the anxiety music" as it had been described to me.
Inventing the Plow took a seat behind a laptop on a table. Last I spoke to them, they were unsure of how to turn playing their music out of their laptop into a performance. In the end they committed to sitting there with their hood up, creating an ominous gloom and staring blankly into the distance surrounded by the noise they’d created. Having seen them perform three times now I’ve seen this performance evolve, and when I asked them about it in our interview they attributed it to getting into gear. They now use a contact mic attached to their throat to speak or read aloud during performances.
It was during this first experience of noise music that I discovered that "the anxiety music" doesn’t upset me in the way it does my friend but sounds like Inventing the Plow has managed to take the feeling in my chest and produced a distinct body of noise. After this ,I started going not just for the sake of supporting a friend’s artistic pursuits but also for a love of noise. It was at the seventh edition of Bad Revue for Inventing the Plow’s album release show that I found myself in the same basement as the eleventh Bad Revue where I conducted some of the following interviews alongside Bo Edwards of Fuse TV for an accompanying documentary.
Nestled amongst the domestic lives of Levenshulme residents is a crowd of the complete opposite look, congregated in the front drive of one of the homes. Children pass, heading home from school for the week as the Bad Revue audience smoke and chat outside this house awaiting the first set. Bo and I began by speaking to the founders of Bad Revue, Wren Adobe and Henry Wade. After meeting as fans of the others' work they’ve been running it as just the two them for the past eight months, because no one else was putting on noise gigs in Manchester.
Wren Adobe and Henry Wade interview at Bad Revue #11. Credit: Gabriel Forrest
Wren got started in Middlesborough, a town with a big noise scene. This was surprising initially, but recurringly mentioned in interviews. The year prior, Henry put on a noise gig at MMU in a room next to a conference, which he advertised on the day by putting up posters. Now they put on shows with artists they’ve never met from across the UK, who travel to Manchester just to play a Bad Revue set. At its eleventh edition none of the lineup was Manchester based; a testament to the work Wren and Henry have put into growing this. They made it clear that if it continues to grow, they still want to keep it free and in basements. This might be a reflection of their perception that there is no barrier of entry to noise as it mostly requires a phone or computer, or it might be due to Wren’s love of basements: “I just love to be in a basement. I feel more at home under the earth, that’s where we’ll all be one day.”
Most people I’ve spoken to about this are lost as soon as I refer to it as noise, so it's necessary to clear up what that means. Helpfully, there is no clear-cut definition. When I asked Inventing the Plow to define it they hesitated and then said they “couldn’t”, instead offering that the ambient, noise, drone genres are “at the whim of who is making it”. They classed themselves as a "drone producer", and pointed out that most of the sounds around us are noises, such as the screeching of a stopping bus or Henry's example of the sound layers of a dish washer. The mind behind record label Natural Sciences said it was hard to define because it encompassed so many different styles, though they separately referred to it as "the end destination for people who like fucked up music".
Bad Revue #11. Credit: Gabriel Forrest
Wren, Henry and Inventing the Plow all discussed how one of the best things about noise is that it doesn’t require skill or talent. As an observer of this music and these performances, I can say there is at least some skill or talent involved. During every noise set I’ve attended I’ve been in awe of the producer's ability to create such visceral emotion, such as Inventing the Plow’s music giving my anxiety independent existence. After Romxn’s set at the eleventh edition I was so moved that I struggled to interview him afterwards: I couldn’t believe that the person who had just delivered such a raw and painful performance could so suddenly be speaking to me so casually and lightheartedly. Even the process Inventing the Plow recalled of producing the tracks sounded immensely skillful. Getting into noise through a love of resampling, they would make a song, hate it, destroy it and turn it into something they like.
On the 15th March, just over a month after their album release, Inventing the Plow was played by Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC Radio 6. She played an extract of their 23 minute and 12 seconds track 'the smell of burning fat', very aptly describing it as "strange and untold". I had already talked to Inventing the Plow about this moment as an incredibly proud friend, but I asked them about it again during our interview and they reiterated that they were “not quite sure how it happened”. I had already got this story from Wren and Henry: Wren knew her through someone else, and got the extract to her because they knew she was a fan of the independent record label Industrial Coast. Inventing the Plow vocalised their feelings about this moment as “someone who is paid to have good taste likes what I messed about with in my room for a year”.
Though noise as a genre might seem scary to some, this seems to be related to a fear of something deeply and intimately human, with Inventing the Plow expressing the “raw human aspect to noise music”. It might not be for everyone but, as Henry points out, all experimental art is divisive, and it’s certainly worth attending a Bad Revue event to see whether “the anxiety music” requires you to play a game on your phone in the corner, or feels “life affirming” as it does for Inventing the Plow. Bad Revue has created a wonderful community around a genre which allows artists to share their creations and performances while providing a most appropriate space to listen to this music in “under the earth”. They’re not sure how much it will grow but, according to them, they’ll know they’ve made it when they get Beyoncé on one of their sets.
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