Month: May 2025

Initial Shock #12

US Noise in Montreal!

JHK (NY)
Energetic harsh noise from NYC’s premiere noise sound tech and one half of Ende Tymes festival.

VALISE (NY)
Maralie Armstrong-Rial’s VALISE “transposes ancient star data into video song, and listens for ecstatic energies”

VOSP (RI)
“the floating world that VOSP created is an interstellar river which cascades hail or steel slag along the sides of the listener’s head”

UNIVERSAL CELL UNLOCK (NY)
Christopher Forgues from KITES. Homemade electronic ruminations.

SPLINTER ASSEMBLY (QC)
Local noise lad.

Friday June 13, 2025
Doors 8 / Show 9 / End by midnight
$15 PWYC
Rocket Science Room

Please note the venue has a strict no BYOB policy!

CKUT sponsors Initial Shock

Initial Shock is supported by CKUT 90.3 FM, a non-profit, campus/community radio station based at McGill University in Montreal.

Since 1987, CKUT has existed as an important voice of, and for, the community of Montreal. The crew of staff and volunteers provide exceptional alternative programming, delivering music, news and spoken word programs to the city, surrounding areas and around the world 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

CKUT has been a supporter of noise since its early broadcasting days and have a dedicated “musique actuelle” section in their station library, which contains a wide array of boundary-pushing albums in the realms of noise, avant-garde, power electronics, glitch, ambient, and improvised music (and plenty of late-90s selections from local noise label Alien8 Recordings).

As an important cultural hub for activists, community organizers and artists, CKUT remains a vital part of the Montreal community and Initial Shock is proud to partner with them this year. Keep your FM dial tuned to 90.3 or tune in online at www.ckut.ca to hear our advertisements for the festival on their airwaves.

Advanced tickets for Initial Shock III are available now.

Nauseous Ejector and Quivering + Nausiate at Initial Shock III

Nauseous Ejector is the project of Max Parker, an artist based in New York City. He makes crude and frantic electronic noise mostly utilizing cheap tape recorders, contact microphones, and broken stringed instruments. Forthcoming releases on Angst, Narcolepsia, and the artist’s own Magnetic Irritation Recordings.
NAUSIATE, Autumn/Otto Evelyn (she/they) is a sound artist, designer and technician originally from Kingston, ON. Their main practice is within industrial and noise music based in feedback loops, synthesiser and metal sounds. QUIVERING, Steff(ania) Juniper (they/them) is a non-binary trans, neuroqueer, cultural worker and performance artist from Toronto, ON. Now residing in Montreal, QUIVERING + NAUSIATE enjoy collaborating on their noise projects as they passionately align themselves with gay leather politics, harm reduction networks, disability justice, activist art, and DIY ethics. Together, Steff & Otto appreciate community building in all its many forms in the leftist spirit that grieves for lost futures and fights for better possible worlds! They will be performing a set inspired by their 2024 release, “The Earth Bleeds Fire”, which heavily features themes of climate collapse, femicide and ecocide.
Tickets on sale now!

The Nausea: A Page of Madness + Ritual Purification (Suoni x Initial Shock)

24 Juin – 19h/19h30 – LA SALA ROSSA – 20/25$

Delve into the unsettling brilliance of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 silent film masterpiece, “A Page of Madness”. This groundbreaking work, co-written by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata, transcends conventional narrative to explore the fractured psyche of individuals confined within an asylum.

Anju Singh’s project, The Nausea, will provide a live, multi-instrumental score, amplifying the film’s emotional intensity.

The evening beings with Ritual Purification (Jarrett Martineau), an Indigenous noise and drone artist.

Following the film and performance, join Anju Singh and Jarrett Martineau for an artist talk.

Tickets available via Suoni per il Popolo.

Presented with Initial Shock, MUFF, CJLO and la lumière collective.

Matriarch and Generic Fatigue at Initial Shock III

Matriarch is the alias of Julia Spotts, currently based out of Philadelphia, PA. After beginning in Massachusetts, Matriarch rose to a venerable position within the Western Massachusetts noise scene through her work of experimental compositions exploring themes of memory and detachment. Matriarch is primarily a project focused on transcriptions of memory, taking listeners on a journey through specific instances of highly emotive and key experiences in the artist’s life. Taking a step back from these memories, her work exhibits moving, dynamic experimental sound most notably seen at Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, otherwise known as LUFF, in 2023. Currently, Matriarch is exploring the techniques of classical music, and applying those forms to experimental compositions, resulting in pieces of work made in the form of acts, segmented yet dynamic in nature.

Generic Fatigue is a moniker of Montreal based artist and musician Harpur Quee. Fusing their love of venetian plaster with exaggerated and archaic amplification, a curious and overblown exposure is given into the world of grit weathered trowels, palette knife sorcery, and luxury mineral abuse.

Pizza Bouquet sponsors Initial Shock

Initial Shock III is sponsored by Pizza Bouquet, a Montreal pizzeria that is popular for its New York-style pies & slices for eat-in or takeout.

Locally-owned and operated since 2018, Pizza Bouquet is a spot favoured by many for their large slices, 16″ pies and unique specials that make them arguably the best pizza joint in town.

They’ve now expanded their mouth-watering services to two locations: in Little Italy at 45 Rue Beaubien East (12-9pm) and at the excellent new establishment Star Bar in the Plateau located at 4671 Blvd St. Laurent (5pm-3am). Special thanks to André and the crew for sponsoring Initial Shock once again.

Advanced tickets for Initial Shock III are on sale now!

Apologist and S.D. at Initial Shock III

Rose Actor-Engel (Apologist) is a Philadelphia musician and composer. She uses synthesizer, tape and field recordings to create ambient and experimental music, implementing specific rules and protocols to determine structure.
Since 2016, Montreal based S.D. has been playing in various projects (desolatum, high grove) with a focus on tape experimentation and improvisation. Using only cassette tapes and loops, she creates dissonant ambient drones swelling into harsh textural noise often accented by unamplified wailing screams.
Advanced tickets are available!

White Centipede Noise sponsors Initial Shock

Initial Shock III is sponsored by White Centipede Noise, an esteemed noise label and podcast based in Potsdam, Germany.

White Centipede Noise podcast seeks to give language to noise through long form interviews with those in the underground. New episodes are published every other week.

WCN TV is a Patreon-exclusive media subsidiary of White Centipede Noise, going beyond the traditional podcast format into in-studio performances, mini-documentaries, and much more, with independent multimedia noise journalism as the overarching goal.

Everything operates out of WCN Studios, a brick and mortar podcast studio and noise-exclusive record shop in Potsdam, Germany.

Visit whitecentipedenoise.com for the latest label releases and access to the podcast!

Death Kneel and Mother Mary at Initial Shock III

DEATH KNEEL is the primary recording outlet of Toronto based musician Max Klebanoff. His output is characterized by unyielding binaural manipulation and unapologetic octatrack abuse. Incidental sound and electoacoustic automatic drawings dismantled and deconstructed to be recycled, again and again. Since 2014, Klebanoff and featured on notable labels Chondritic Sound, Total Black and his own imprint Life of Sensation, with new releases forthcoming on Students of Decay and White Centipede Noise.

Mother Mary is noise about a people being abandoned by it’s creator. Utilizing the aesthetics of Christianity and preaching, Mother Mary screams from a dying planet to a god that is silent. Informed equally by power electronics, films like Winter Light, Silence and First Reformed, old radio broadcasts and preacher tapes, Mother Mary is a eucharist of feedback for a world with no God.

Tickets on sale now!