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‘The Color of Noise’: The Amphetamine Reptile Records story


 
So blah blah blah Nevermind, huh? It was an epochal album that experienced world-altering success, but in the early ‘90s underground, it was more like a harbinger of doom.

Once Nevermind hit radio, heavy indie-rock concert audiences began filling up with the types of hateful “normals” whom fans of weirdo music had spent their lives trying to avoid, so the more dedicated and tribal noise-ists, whose embrace of post-hardcore was less flannel-and-MTV-oriented, dove deeper. And when Sub-Pop band after Sub-Pop band kept shooting for the big time, “deeper” meant Amphetamine Reptile.

AmRep was in many ways like a ‘90s SST, a natural home for fearless disreputata to make the twisted and powerful music they needed to make. Tar’s Roundhouse, Helmet’s Strap It On, Cows’ Cunning Stunts, Surgery’s Nationwide, and Hammerhead’s masterpiece Into the Vortex were all crucial documents of this new noise from the Midwest and NYC, and all of them were on AmRep. The label stopped releasing new artists at the end of the ‘90s, but it never deactivated entirely, and it still occasionally releases material by its older acts—King Buzzo’s painfully limited 10” acoustic E.P. from earlier this year was an AmRep release.

The label was started in the ‘80s by the colorfully cranky Tom Hazelmyer, a USMC vet, printmaker, firearms enthusiast, and the leader of the vociferous Minneapolis trio Halo of Flies, whose collection Music for Insect Minds is a must-have if you go in for this kind of stuff. Hazelmyer is the subject of the forthcoming documentary The Color of Noise. Financed by a Kickstarter two years ago and directed by Eric Robel, the doc is set to debut at the end of this month in Nashville, in conjunction with an exhibit of Hazelmyer’s linocuts. It features archival concert footage and interviews with most of the above-mentioned, plus The Melvins, Today is The Day, Unsane, Helios Creed, and several noteworthy poster artists. Clips, outtakes and the official trailer made their way online this week. Here’s a snippet that looks at the label’s amazing R&D series of gorgeous 7” picture discs.
 

 
And here’s the trailer. If you’re going to be in Nashville around the end of the month, the debut screening is scheduled to be held at Third Man Records on May 30th. If you’re just dying to know more but can’t wait, an official blog has been documenting the process of making the film, and this Hazelmyer interview is top-notch.
 

 
Some Halo of Flies footage that didn’t make the final cut, after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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05.07.2014
11:57 am
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