The Haters
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The Haters are a noise music and conceptual art troupe from the United States. Founded in 1979, they are one of the earliest and most well-known acts in the modern noise scene. The group is primarily the work of the Hollywood, California-based musician, artist, writer, and filmmaker GX Jupitter-Larsen, accompanied by a constantly changing lineup of other "members," usually local experimental musicians and artists in whatever town in which a Haters performance happens to take place.
[edit] Origins
The group began as a punk rock band, but assumed its current form when Jupitter-Larsen realized he was more interested in making noise and destroying venues than in structured music. Soon the Haters established contacts with like-minded artists in what would become known as the noise music scene, including Merzbow, Maurizio Bianchi, and The New Blockaders.
[edit] Work and aesthetic
Haters performances typically consist of Jupitter-Larsen and one other performer, both wearing masks, creating extremely loud noise using various types of machinery, with the sound distorted and amplified until it is virtually unrecognizable. The Haters' many CD and record releases are usually recordings of these performances. Underlying all the Haters' output is Jupitter-Larsen's peculiar mix of aesthetic and conceptual obsessions, particularly entropy and decay, professional wrestling, and a self-created lexicon consisting mainly of personalized units of measurement such as "polywave," the "totimorphous," and the "xylowave."
A central aspect of the Haters' work is that the sounds they produce are not music. This is a frequently repeated idea among noise artists, if only to distinguish pure harsh noise from more musical related genres such as noise rock, but the Haters take the idea far more literally than most. The sounds they create are made not with musical instruments or even audio equipment, but with physical processes such as grinding, crashing, and other forms of destruction. At the same time, there is always a pronounced, often absurd conceptual element to the group's work.
The Haters won for Best Electronic Experimental Artist at the 2005 LA Weekly Music Awards.[1]
