Since I got heart surgery a month ago, I can hear my heart beating all the time. Apparently it’s normal. I read online that they proved it wasn’t psychosomatic by performing open heart surgery on dogs and measuring the sound of their heartbeats afterwards. They found that dogs split open on the operating table -> dogs that hear their own heartbeat all the time. I also read that some dogs have a resting heart rate of over 200bpm. Woof woof woof. They’ve had me on gabapentin for a second now. It makes me feel so stupid like I got a lobotomy. I kept imagining a surgeon covered in dog guts. Woof… I wonder if my cardiologist knows about that study. I’m in the waiting room to see him now. I don’t think he would believe me about my symptoms unless I told him a dog experienced it too. Maybe that would be a more reliable source to him. It took so long to even get a referral to a cardiologist. I started noticing symptoms when I was 16, my mom noticed too in my behavior. She took me to the doctor. A lot of girls your age can misinterpret period cramps as chest pain, or it could be painful breast growth. Have you noticed your breasts getting larger? Actually, the new primary care I switched to said basically the same thing. It took 3 years of mentioning it at every appointment with multiple doctors for them to finally refer me to a cardiologist, who then told me the exact same thing again. At least he ordered some tests, surely with the intention to prove that I was making it up, give me a psych rec, etc, but they all came back abnormal. I thought that getting proof of my condition would stop my cardiologist from being so condescending, but being wrong wounded his ego or something. He treats me like I wanted this outcome just to rub his face in it. Yes, you technically do have a heart condition, that I found, that I diagnosed. Don’t forget who’s the doctor here. Just because you read Webmd doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about. The thing that made me an even bigger nuisance in his eyes was when I wanted to actually go through with surgery, the standard treatment for my diagnosis. I’ve been worried to tell him that I don’t think I’m recovering properly.

The waiting room was small, lit like a clinic in a hospital. It smelled like a perfume I tried in a store while visiting my family in Japan a few years back that was supposed to smell like spinal fluid. I don’t know why I sprayed it on my wrist, the smell made me sick for the rest of the day even after I tried to scrub it off. Who would ever want to smell like that? A few people had been called back before me now, elderly wives shuffled back to the examination rooms with their husbands. A lot of the chatter had died down. Quiet rooms are the worst for me, all I can focus on is the sound of my own heart beating. It sounds sick, like it’s whining with every contraction. Is it really that fast? Anyone that had seen me for the past month must have thought I accidentally superglued my two fingers to my carotid artery. It’s such an awful sound. Highway pileup with 160 new cars crashing into it every minute. I wish everyone could hear this when I walked into a room. Your period’s so loud! haahhhh. Bear down, breathe through pursed lips. That’s what slows it down. I can’t stand it… The gabapentin stops my chest from hurting, but I can still feel it buzzing where it would hurt, I can hear that it hurts. When I eventually have a heart attack, I’m sure I’ll hear it before I feel it. I imagined the sound of a shipping crate being torn in half and then me dying. I’m going to have an echocardiogram later, maybe they’ll catch that sound on the speakers.

The entire time during my meeting with my cardiologist I couldn’t stop squirming in my seat thinking about the fact that he saw me naked during my surgery. My boyfriend came over the other day and he wanted to see the big scar under my shirt, and then he started grabbing my chest. I was happy he didn’t think it was ugly. He said it was cute, a mark that showed I needed him to take care of me. My moms mostly been taking care of me though. I wish I could go back to helping her around the house, but she wont let me. After he started touching me I threw up all over my bed and he left. I didn’t want my mom to have to deal with the sheets so I cleaned them up myself. I squirmed in my seat. I wish my mom could have come with me to this appointment. I wonder how many people saw me naked in the operating room. I have another scar right above my crotch from the catheter they used… When they moved me to an examination room I realized I forgot to mention a few symptoms I had been having, probably because of the gabapentin making my memory so bad.

I couldn’t help but laugh during my echo, hearing my heartbeat doubled on the speakers made me feel like I was losing my mind. It was painfully long and my chest was sore from how hard the nurse was pushing the probe into me. I was waiting on a bench outside the hospital for my mom to finish some errands she had been running down the street. The sun was shining directly on me, it made me feel woozy but I didn’t want to go back inside. The heat was drying the ECG gel into an awful sticky consistency all over my chest. My shirt kept getting glued to the spot where they spread the gel, I pulled at it and it made a noise as it came unstuck. I listened to birds and my heart.

The appointment was stupid, like every other appointment. I don’t believe my cardiologist would notice or care if there were complications. If I died suddenly it must have been for something that couldn’t be helped. Even if I didn’t die from it, if my body feels like this for the rest of my life I’ll slit my throat. I would slit my throat in the middle of his office. Here’s something you can’t deny. The blood that I’m always aware of moving through my body, that I hear every drop of, all over your office. I want to turn myself inside out. You’re not allowed to look away! Look at me! Look at what I go through! This is the truth! My physical heart, ripped in half! Please, hold it in your hands, go ahead and crush it too, would you? Would you even believe me if I told you that you were making me sad? Or would you need to come up with that on your own too? Corroborated with a blood test, even. I guess all killing myself would prove in his eyes is that I’ve always been hysterical, maybe they would even let him use it to retract from my records that I ever had a heart condition or surgery in the first place. Poor doctor, some crazy girl insisted she had a heart condition, you wisely told her she was stupid and didn’t know what she was talking about and then she ruined your nice tie with her blood, I’ll throw her body in the psychosomatic mass grave for you. I wish I could have gone to college. I was going to go to college before my health got bad. I want to have a normal life. I want to be able to leave my house. I want to be able to live alone. My heart is so loud. I want my mom to get here soon, I want to go home and listen to music.

In April of 2004, Japanese noise scene veteran Junko met up with Spanish electroacoustic improv musician and political writer Mattin at Tanker Studios in Tokyo to record Pinknoise, the followup to Mattin’s Whitenoise released in February of that year. Whitenoise was recorded in Vienna with Austrian composer Radu Malfatti in September of 2003, and was met with an outpouring of praise within tight-knit EAI circles after its release, drumming up a decent amount of anticipation for its followup within its niche. While Whitenoise was a very soft album, marked by long stretches of silence, Pinknoise was meant to subvert Whitenoise in every way. Complete auditory destruction. The album clocked in at 30 minutes and 52 seconds, consisting of Junko’s trademark screaming, and Mattin experimenting with “computer feedback,” resulting in unrelenting high-end-heavy digital noise.

When asked if Pinknoise was deliberately intended to be the antithesis of Whitenoise in a 2009 interview with Paris Transatlantic, Mattin had this to say: “For me Whitenoise reaffirms an already established appreciation of improvised music. Nowadays I’m interested in making records that are more difficult to categorise… How can we make a music that cannot be easily pigeonholed?… It made sense. One was quite quiet and the other was quite loud.” This is also supported by the simplistic art of the 2 releases. A picture of a CD in a clam-shell case, one clear, and one pink. Mattin said in the same Paris Transatlantic interview that those specific clam-shell cases were chosen for the album art because when looking for CD cases, the computer store he went to had those two options. An easy way to differentiate. Where a lot of noise releases are as much exercises in aesthetics as they are in the music itself, Pinknoise is stripped down to the barest elements possible. An exercise in pure sound as a force, Junko’s voice in its unadulterated form free from the constraints of language, as something that cannot be aestheticized, categorized, or denied.

I’ve taken the time to compile a few reviews from major noise publications (and a few amateur blogs) from around the time of Pinknoise’s release for the sake of archival purposes.

XXX, New York 2004

Woah! Geisha’s gonna geish! After Mattin’s critically acclaimed album Whitenoise earlier this year, nobody knew what to expect from the EAI world’s badass, but I especially wasn’t expecting it to be so Japanesey! Junko’s vocals totally evoke those freaky movies from the orient where they tie some poor girl up in her school uniform and… ahh im getting carried away. Let me get my katana, I’ll protect you Junko-chan!!! No promises afterwards though ;P

XXX, Berlin 2008

The title and pink shell case signifies a lady at work. She is Junko, her characteristically Japanese hi pitch screamy shouty vocal is accompanied by the less obviously male computer feed back. Junko remains hysterical until the end. The computer feed back has a subtle at times imperceptible flow of pitch and frequency but still maintaining the manic and unrelenting nature of this recording.

XXX, UK 2004

Who wants to hear the sound of a woman screaming? Junko, the Japanese torture victim, suffering under the instruments of Mattin, the white man acting as her colonizer. As she screams, Junko appears to be writhing in agony under the relentless electronic devices of the cruel Mattin. A different slant (no pun intended!) might be to somehow empower the woman in this fiction. Perhaps she’s not in pain at all, but instead a frustrated feminist railing against the constrictions of patriarchal society, only to be met by the indifference of the powers that be, as represented by Mattin’s drones of futility. On the other hand, if you hear this as plain non-associative abstract noise. Well, that’s no better. It remains startling and incredibly severe.

XXX, Portland OR 2010

I’m soy into Japan right now! Sayonara stress, Konnichiwa epic Japanoise

XXX, Paris 2006

Erotic!!! That’s the word for it! Submit to the erotic vibrations of Junko’s voice, let your body be ingested by the sonic slag of the feedback, and then be regurgitated and ingested again! Junko’s scream transcends into the hyper-sonic—that other dimension where the shadow (the voice) detaches itself from the body, striking the listener’s body right where it hurts: in the flesh. All this matter seems to swell like the male member—something contained for too long within the unconscious of music itself. Lay waste to established social norms! An album to be played in hell!

XXX, Seattle WA 2005

It took me awhile to get around to this release. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t offput by all the reviews I read claiming it was some feminist art piece about women rebelling against being put in their place by society, but after finally listening to it I can say with authority that it’s not like that at all. I’ll tell you what it is: JAPANESE BULLSHIT. This album isn’t saying anything at all, just like all other weird offputting japanese “art.” Don’t bother writing in and telling me to review shit like this again. *puts on my headphones* if you don’t mind, I’ll be listening to Prurient’s History Of Aids now.

XXX, Prague 2005

You see, the backyard of my house is opposite of a school. at the morning young brats of all ages (from 6 to 12 actually) run screaming in the schoolyard. one of them always talks, screams etc in a particularly irritating high-pitched, at-the-verge-of-nervous-breakdown and always complaining voice [which in my opinion is a proof that a) the parents of this kid are probably fucked up and b) the brat herself is gonna grow to be fucked up as well – but]. some mornings when i do my gardening her voice makes me absentmindedly ponder on the virtues of sterilisation among other things. Now this 30 minutes cd starts with Junko screaming some japanese words. and you guessed it: She has very similar tone… Deary deary me. i think i would love to see this live but (as is common in most noise releases) i am not sure i am gonna play this often. but then again you can call me prejudiced and you’d be right

XXX, Shanghai 2008

Ahhhh I can’t wait to tell you guys about my trip to Japan. If you know my blog at all, then by now you must be aware that Junko is my favorite musician of all time, and that it’s been my lifelong goal to one day see her live. Well, now I can finally die happy. I’ve listened to her albums more than anyone else in the world maybe, but not even that couldn’t prepare me for just how intense it would be in person! So many people left before it was over. What losers!!! To no one’s surprise at all, I was front and center the entire time. Her stage presence is just something else… I wish I could get on her level ;_:

After the show I ran up to her to tell her how much I love her and she immediately dropped everything to talk to me. She was so nice, she even complimented my dress :DDD

I told her I make noise and gave her one of my tapes and she said she would listen to it!!! Ahhh I’m so happy. I’ve been listening to Pinknoise nonstop since I got home and smiling ear to ear remembering the show. Life is so good

XXX, San Francisco 2011

The sonic equivalent of a Diamanda Galas x Plague Mother rape-baby. 

XXX, Lisbon 2004

Oh dear, Yoko Ono screaming into a dentist’s drill for half an hour. Unfortunately this album failed to hold my attention. This is painful not in the sense that it is challenging or disturbing, but for the fact that it’s so underdeveloped. For all the sonic distortion and screaming the actual content is dull and hardly worth listening to twice. However it does make quite a comedy children’s album if you slow it down by an octave.

XXX, Richmond VA 2004

Mattin’s previous album Whitenoise with trombonist Radu Malfatti works so well because the two artists are equals both in intellect and skill.  Malfatti’s trombone is understated, purposeful, and works perfectly in concert with Mattin’s digital improvisation, culminating in an album that feels mature, well thought out. I wish this was the case with this release as well, unfortunately Junko’s shrill, petulant vocals do nothing but trample over and hide any of Mattin’s work that could have made this album worth listening to. One must imagine he settled for her after repeated attempts to get in contact with a more proven artist such as WIlliam Bennet (not that I have any idea whether he’s actually tried to do so). A blemish on Mattin’s discography that he can overcome, so long as he learns when to drop dead weight.

XXX, Tokyo 2004

Even after 22 years as a pioneer in Japan’s noise scene, Junko still has it! No one is more of an expert in terrifying pure noise than her! Missing out on this is strictly forbidden!