Health's favourite noises.

HEALTH’s ‘GET COLOR’, more than any record this year, is a record in love with the sheer mindbending possibilities of noise. In celebration of this, we wanted to find out what noises they adored, so a couple of weeks ago, I sat down for the interview and chatted for about an hour with the BJ, Jupiter, John and Jake about sound and sounds and sounds they loved. As I thought, they were funny, down-to-earth, totally in love with all noises in the world, and really up for doing this pretty daft idea. Here’s a list of the noises they mentioned.

Musical instruments

1. Didgeridoo
2. Glockenspiel
3. Flute
4. Pan pipes
5. Full upright piano
6. Church organs
7. Harpsichords
8. A string section
9. An orchestra tuning up
10. The jingle-jangle of Gamelan percussion
11. The sound of a marimba
12. The dissonant harmonies of Bulgarian women’s choirs
13. Reverb
14. Distortion
15. Feedback
16. Sub bass

Moments in recorded music

1. The keyboards on An Ending (Ascent) on Brian Eno’s ‘Apollo’
2. The guitar solo on All Along The Watchtower
3. Black metal chainsaw guitars
4. The soft breakdown parts of My Heart Will Go On
5. The first four seconds of Black Sabbath’s Wheels Of Confusion
6. The first two seconds of All I Need by My Bloody Valentine
7. All of Rainy Day Dream Away by Jimi Hendrix
8. The opening of Crazy Train
9. The epic, heavy moment in Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’

Human sounds

1. The human voice
2. Girl orgasms
3. The weirdly soothing sound of Korean yelling
4. Portuguese
5. Argentinean Spanish
6. The Scottish accent
7. The South African accent
8. The Russian accent
9. Norwegian
10. The word restaurant
11. Bavarian accent
12. The “aaahhh” sound
13. The words “Fuck” and “Dude”
14. The words “Es tut mer late”
15. Girls snoring

Nature sounds

1. Waves and the ocean
2. Jungle sounds
3. Thunder
4. Whale song
5. An elk’s call
6. A lions roar
7. An alligator’s growl
8. The dampening effect of snow on the ground
9. Cats purring

City noises

1. A Pringle can opening
2. A tennis ball can opening
3. The growl of an LA bus
4. Traffic swooshing along a freeway
5. Street performers in large stone squares
6. The white noise of people talking
7. A jacuzzi heater
8. A maritime distress horn at a children’s party
9. Tornado distress sirens
10. Cacophonous Cathedral bells
11. Continental European ambulance sirens that sound like B-movie sounds
12. Opening wrappers or presents
13. Glass breaking
14. A mime falling down
15. Cards shuffling
16. Dollars being counted
17. The sound of an analogue tape slowing down
18. The swoosh of a New York subway
19. The chain-clucking on a rollercoaster

The magnificent ‘Get Color’ is out now.

Health’s myspace

Another astounding West Coast noise band is Mi Ami, read about them here.