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Artist
Nocturnal Emissions
12+ albums
industrialexperimentaldark ambientambientnoise
about
Nocturnal Emissions is a British post-industrial sound art project that has released numerous records since the early 1980s. Their material has been described as blurring the lines between electroacoustic music, sound collage, noise, ambient, and musique concrete. The group's material constitutes part of an ongoing multimedia campaign in guerrilla semiotics, utilising video art, film, hypertext and other documents. The project was initiated in London in or around 1980 by Nigel Ayers (b. 1957), together with collaborators Danny Ayers (b.1964) and Caroline K(1957-2008). From early in their work, the group concentrated on the axiom of music being a form of social control, and highlighted concepts such as information overload; cult conditioning; brainwashing and subliminal advertising, in a well-researched if often misunderstood, critique of information society. Their music drew heavily on worldwide folk traditions as well as that of the European avant-garde. The importance of Nocturnal Emissions in the early 1980s in the development of Video Art in Britain has, like that of Psychick TV largely been erased from art history. This may be because of the radical political nature of the material. Since 1984 Nocturnal Emissions has continued mainly as Nigel Ayers' solo project. Line-up has varied from one to a dozen musicians. Nocturnal Emissions temporary members have included net artist Stanza, Ben Ponton of Zoviet France and (somewhat bizarrely) life coach Fiona Harrold. Nocturn
