Join NICK SOULSBY for the story of The New Blockaders: from the groundbreaking 1982 LP Changez Les Blockeurs to their most recent Antibox

Forensically detailed and beautifully written by Nick Soulsby, The New Blockaders: The Noise of Art and Nothing presents the story of The New Blockaders’ work from the groundbreaking 1982 LP Changez Les Blockeurs to their most recent Antibox.

Nick’s book is the most extensive consideration ever given to the evolution of noise music. The most comprehensive evaluation of any artist operating in the modern-day realm of experimental, avant-garde, industrial, power electronics and noise. A compelling tale of raw individuality, determination and endurance with no regard for financial reward or popularity. This is art. This is noise. This is the sight, sound and story of a powerful NOTHING.

A recording made in a garden shed in a small rural village north of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (in the far north of England) now stands as the recognised catalyst for the entire global phenomenon of noise music. You would be hard-pressed to name any noise artist who hasn’t, directly or indirectly, been influenced by the work of The New Blockaders or by their debut LP, Changez Les Blockeurs.

In this sweeping narrative, Nick Soulsby lays out the five decade-long journey of TNB and their vast influence over the development of noise which has seen them eulogised by key figures throughout the worldwide network of noisicians in Japan, America, Europe and beyond.

Accompanying the book, the two-CD compilation Collaberrations features a fearsome selection of TNB’s collaborative works spanning 1982-2026 with artists including Coil, Organum, Ferial Confine, Anomali, Vortex Campaign, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Raymond Dijkstra, Vomir, The Haters, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, irr. app. (ext.), Merzbow, Incapacitants, and Nobuo Yamada. There is also a DVD component comprehensively documenting live footage from every TNB performance for which film or video exists, including an unseen anti-film from 1982, and two performances by TNB’s shadowy extreme alter-ego Nihilist Assault Group.

Richard and Philip Rupenus’ refused any kind of public profile to the extent that fan theories and guesswork in the 1980s solidified into a belief common among many of the world’s best noise artists that the two brothers are not, in fact, real people; that the masks worn on stage and in photos conceal any number of other culprits who have moonlighted as TNB over the years. Few artists in music have retained such mystique and mystery while continuing to issue such an expansive sprawl of new work which extends to this present day.

With forewords by Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), and Masami Akita (Merzbow) marking TNB’s transcendent level of respect and appreciation, Viva Negativa! traces their origins in the post-punk DIY cassette underground; their forging of connections to key artists in the nascent industrial and power electronics scenes — including Whitehouse, Coil, and Ramleh; the way in which their slim catalogue was beloved by Japan’s extreme music underground — including artists like Merzbow, Incapacitants, and Hijokaidan; then their resurrection in the golden age of noise in the 90s and early 2000s which saw them acquire well-deserved status as the founding fathers of the entire edifice of noise music.

Perhaps the world’s most uncompromising experimental group, TNB’s ethos of rejection, their blockade, their eternal NO exploded the self-seriousness of bourgeois art, music and culture. Using little more than a pile of scrap metal, barely functioning equipment, machine guts, broken gadgetry and coruscating feedback they blew a hole right through music into sound worlds beyond. This is the story of five decades of untrammelled, boundless creativity and the most important DIY outsider (anti-)art sonic terrorists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Copies of Nick's book will be available at the Festival and there will be a dedicated book signing immediately after his event.

Limited to 400 copies, this beautiful volume is 416 pages, with full-colour printing throughout, on 130gsm art silk paper, board cover 350gsm silk board, featuring original photos of many of the incredible releases by TNB.

The book comes with a CD/DVD package of remix ‘collaberrations’ with TNB by Coil, Organum, Ferial Confine, Anomali, Vortex Campaign, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Raymond Dijkstra, Vomir, The Haters, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, irr. app. (ext.), Merzbow, Incapacitants, and Nobuo Yamada.

About Nick Soulsby:

...In February 2012 I read an advert seeking book proposals for one volume accounts of significant albums...Voice in my head said "you could do that," the other voice sneered, "yeah right...Prove it!" So I did. Whatever got in the way I just kept going and by that winter created my first published work: "Dark Slivers: Seeking Nirvana in the Shards of Incesticide" (Running Water Press, 2012) tackling

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