Genre story · Experimental
No Wave
Downtown New York bands tearing away the familiar comforts of punk and rock until almost nothing conventional remained.
No wave emerged from New York's downtown art and punk underground in the late 1970s. Groups such as the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and Mars were central to the short-lived scene. Brian Eno's compilation No New York, released in 1978, brought these separate acts together on one record, but it did not make them musically identical. The movement's force came from disagreement about what rock should sound like.
Sharp corners and refusal
No wave could be jagged and danceable or barely recognizable as a song. The Contortions drew on funk and free jazz, while Teenage Jesus and the Jerks offered radically stripped-down, abrasive performances. Guitars were often treated as sources of dissonance, and vocal delivery could feel closer to theater or confrontation than singing. The lack of polish was usually a chosen method.
Small scene, wide effects
No wave had an important effect on Noise Rock and later experimental guitar music, but it was a specific cultural moment in New York, not a catch-all name for abrasive music anywhere. The wider post-punk and art-rock connections should be described without erasing its local setting or the differences among its participants.
Essential listening
- 1978Various ArtistsNo New York1978 compilation. A record documenting four central bands rather than a single artist's album.
- 1979James Chance and the ContortionsBuyNervy and confrontational rhythm-based noise.
- 1981DNAA Taste of DNA1981 EP. An economical, fractured approach to guitar and drums.