No New York

No New York is a compilation album released in 1978 by Antilles Records (AN-7067) under the curation of producer Brian Eno. Although it only contained songs by four different artists, it is considered by many to be the definitive single album documenting New York City's late-1970s No Wave movement.

No Wave was a short-lived but influential art music & art scene that thrived briefly in New York City during the late 1970s & early 1980s alongside the punk subculture. The term No Wave is in part satiric wordplay rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre. The term also highlights the music's experimental nature: No Wave music belonged to no fixed style or genre.

In many ways, No Wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features. Various groups drew on such disparate styles as funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, avant garde, & experimental. There are, however, some elements common to most No Wave music, such as abrasive atonal sounds, repetitive driving rhythms, & a tendency to emphasize musical texture over melody. No Wave lyrics often focused on nihilism & confrontation. No Wave is often better defined in terms of the artistic environment in which it thrived & the character of performances typical to its context. No Wave performances drew heavily on performance art & as a result were often both highly theatrical & minimalistic in their renditions.

Also during this time, there was a period of No Wave Cinema which was an underground film movement in the East Village. No Wave filmmakers included Amos Poe, John Lurie, Vivienne Dick, Scott B & Beth B. This in turn led to the Cinema of Transgression, with work by Nick Zedd & Richard Kern. Late followers of this movement included groups such as Sonic Youth, Skeleton Key, Swans, Cop Shoot Cop, and others. The Theoretical Girls heavily influenced early Sonic Youth, who then emerged from this scene by creating music that eventually reached mass audiences & critical acclaim.

No Wave had a notable influence on noise & industrial bands who formed after, like Big Black, Lev Six, Helmet, & Live Skull. Also for new bands like Liars, Ex Models, Neptune, Erase Errata the influence of the No Wave scene was important. The Brian Eno-produced album No New York is perhaps the best example of this genre, featuring songs by The Contortions, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Mars, & D.N.A.

The No Wave movement continues to have a far-reaching impact on the American anti-culture music scene.

In a foreword to the book No Wave, Weasel Walter wrote of the movement's ongoing influence:
"I began to express myself musically in a way that felt true to myself, constantly pushing the limits of idiom or genre and always screaming "Fuck You!" loudly in the process. It's how I felt then and I still feel it now. The ideals behind the (anti-) movement known as No Wave were found in many other archetypes before and just as many afterwards, but for a few years around the late 1970s, the concentration of those ideals reached a cohesive, white-hot focus."

From No New York, spring 1978...
Enjoy,
NØ