D.N.A.

D.N.A. was a short-lived but influential New York band, associated with the No Wave movement. They were formed in 1978 by guitarist Arto Lindsay & keyboardist Robin Crutchfield. Rather than playing their instruments in a traditional manner, they instead focused on making unique & unusual sounds. Their music was described as spare, noisy, & angular. It was compared to some of Captain Beefheart's output.

Egomaniac's Kiss

D.N.A. originally consisted of Lindsay, Crutchfield, Gordon Stevenson, & Mirielle Cervenka. They took their name from a song by another no wave band, Mars (see above). Stevenson went on to play bass for Teenage Jesus & the Jerks; Cervenka is the younger sister of Exene Cervenka of X. This incarnation of the band was very brief, not playing even one concert. After the rapid departure of Stevenson & Cervenka, Lindsay & Crutchfield hastily recruited Ikue Mori (listed as Ikue Ile on the No New York album) --- a Japanese woman with little command of English & no drum set --- to be D.N.A.'s drummer.

Lionel

This lineup of D.N.A. played occasionally at CBGB & Max's Kansas City. They recorded one 7" single. Within their first year, they had cemented their reputation as a paradigmatic no wave band when Brian Eno selected them as one of the four groups documented on the No New York LP, the first recording to expose no wave groups to an audience outside of lower Manhattan.

Not Moving

Shortly after the recording of No New York, Crutchfield left D.N.A. to form a new band, Dark Day. He was replaced by Tim Wright, previously of the Cleveland band Pere Ubu. As Wright played bass guitar & not keyboards, & also being the only member of the band to have any conventional instrumental technique, the change in D.N.A.'s sound was dramatic. The music became even more spare & angular, with Wright's bass lines creating a sometimes menacing sound to support Lindsay's scraping, atonal guitar & Mori's irregular rhythms. Their song structures became tighter, briefer, more abstract. It has been compared to aural haiku.

Size

The Lindsay-Mori-Wright lineup of D.N.A. developed something of a cult following between 1979 & 1982, but perhaps more of their fans came from the art world than from rock audiences. Live shows were frequent in this period, but rarely outside of the CBGB - Mudd Club - Tier 3 circuit in lower Manhattan.

All four songs in 320Kbps mp3 & FLAC.

The group's 10-minute debut album, A Taste of D.N.A. was recorded for Kip Hanrahan's American Clavé label. It was later released on Rough Trade in 1980. Some live D.N.A. tracks appeared on compilation albums while the band was still in existence.

Lindsay, Mori, & Wright decided to dissolve the band in 1982. It's a measure of the cult following the band had developed that its final concerts were three consecutive sold-out nights at CBGB. D.N.A.'s final encore was a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." Sadly, this is not included on the CD Last Live at CBGB, released more than a decade later on John Zorn's Avant label.

Lindsay, Mori, & to a lesser extent Crutchfield, have remained active in music.

The Aesthetics of Noise is an in-depth, scholarly article on noise & its relationship to aural art (if anyone is interested in learning more).
From the above mentioned article, by Torben Sangild:
Noise can blow your head out. Noise is rage. Noise is ecstatic. Noise is psychedelic. Noise is often on the edge between annoyance and bliss. Noises are many things. Noise is a difficult concept to deal with...
After defining noise and giving a brief history of noise in music, I will take a closer look at Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Merzbow and Curd Duca as four very different aesthetic approaches to noise...
The first composer to consciously operate with noise as music was the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, writing the manifesto "The Art of Noise" in 1913. He constructed the so-called "intonarumori" (noise intonators) and composed a few works for these machines...
Noise in rock music is centered on two effects, both connected to the electric guitar and developed in the sixties: feedback and distortion...
The deliberate use of these effects can be traced back to Link Wray's "Rumble" (1958), but it was garage bands like The Kingsmen who made it an integral part of their sound. The great innovator, however, was undoubtedly Jimi Hendrix, who constructed a whole catalogue of noise effects, using them with virtuosity in his blues-inspired rock compositions. Aesthetically, however, the influence on noise rock came not from Hendrix, but rather The Velvet Underground, with their minimal, lo-fi, sinister music and disillusioned texts. On tracks like "European Son" and "Sister Ray," the noise is alarming in ways that has made Velvet Underground a reference point for all noise rock.