Noise isn’t chaos. It’s intent.

It’s texture, pressure, distortion, restraint, release — the stuff most records are too scared to lean into. Experimental music doesn’t ask for permission, and it sure as hell doesn’t wait for the mainstream to catch up.

This is where Apocalypse Vinyl feels most at home.

From Japanese noise and industrial pioneers to modern ambient disturbances, outsider electronics, and unclassifiable sound experiments, this page is your doorway into the deeper end of the underground.

Not everything here has a melody. But everything here has a purpose.

Core Japanese Noise

Japan did not “dabble” in noise — it built the damn cathedral.

Artists like Merzbow, Masonna, Incapacitants, Hijokaidan, and hundreds more turned distortion into a language and volume into a philosophy. Whether you’re a newcomer or already deep in the static, our Core Japanese Noise collection gives you the essentials and the modern torchbearers.

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Discover more about Japanese Noise

A 1500-word crash course into the world’s most extreme music.

If you’ve ever wondered why noise exists, why it thrives, and why it matters, start here. We break down the subgenres, the history, the artists, and the listening pathways.

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Noise isn’t one thing — it’s a thousand micro-scenes cross-pollinating at high volume. Each corner has its own logic, its own language, its own way of turning sound into impact. If you’re diving in, here’s the lay of the land — or at least the parts we can map without the whole thing catching fire.

Industrial & Post-Industrial

Industrial and post-industrial are the blueprints of musical brutality — grinding machinery, metallic rhythms, frayed edges, and the constant threat that the song might collapse into pure electrical voltage. These are sounds born in warehouses, basements, and abandoned factories, where tape hiss and metal clatter aren’t flaws, they’re ingredients. It’s the intersection of machines and menace: manmade noise shaped into ritual.

Think: Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Coil (early era), Nurse With Wound.

Harsh Noise & Harsh Noise Wall

Harsh noise is sonic pressure in its purest form — no melody, no structure, no escape hatch. Just texture and intent shoved directly into your skull. Harsh Noise Wall takes it even further: a single, steady, immovable slab of sound that doesn’t shift, doesn’t blink, doesn’t care if you’re still breathing. It’s the closest music gets to staring into a storm drain and hearing the universe answer back.

Think: Merzbow, Vomir, Prurient.

Dark Ambient & Drones

Dark ambient and drones operate at the opposite speed — slow, creeping, unsettling, and atmospheric. This is sound that seeps rather than strikes, building landscapes you don’t see so much as feel in the walls. Long, suspended tones. Hums that hang like fog. Textures that unfurl over minutes or hours. It’s the calm before (and after) the chaos, stretching time until it starts to pulse.

Think: Lustmord, Deathprod, Thomas Köner.

Outsider Electronics

Outsider electronics are the strange heart of experimental sound — home-built synths, found-sound tape loops, cracked gear pushed far beyond its intended use. These recordings feel personal, mystical, intimate, and occasionally unhinged. It’s music made by people who understood the rules well enough to shatter them and rebuild something glowing and crooked in their place.

Think: Eliane Radigue, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Oneohtrix Point Never.

Experimental Rock & Deconstructed Sound

Experimental rock and deconstructed sound take the energy of rock and rip out the spine, leaving behind raw nerves, odd angles, improvised chaos, and rhythms that behave like they’re alive. It’s guitars feeding back into eternity, drums melting into texture, and vocals used as instruments rather than statements. This is the place where noise becomes movement — loud, tangled, and beautifully wrong.

Think: Swans, Lightning Bolt, Boredoms.