Dachise is the early alias of Paul D. Knowles (born 1976, Yorkshire, England), a British noise release I keep as significant beyond its modest physical-distribution scale. The Knowles position has operated continuously across about three decades through an alias-cycle: Dachise across the 1990s; The Digitariat from about the early 2000s onward; Threads Original Soundtrack from about 2022 onward. I keep the Knowles position at Tier II mainly on the strength of the early Dachise partnerships and the cult-status the 1990s position has later sustained in the UK noise tradition.
The founding event: Knowles' first live position was at the 1 in 12 Club, Bradford, supporting Smell & Quim and Con-Dom. Mike Dando (Con-Dom's working operator) called Knowles in to replace the Haters at short notice; the position constituted the Knowles debut and the partnership through which the early Dachise mode later extended into the UK noise scene. The 1 in 12 Club, Bradford, is significant in the UK noise tradition: a long-running anarchist working venue that has documented the UK noise, hardcore-punk and experimental tradition across the 1980s-onward career.
The early catalogue: Knowles' position on the Tochnit Aleph imprint (the European mail-order and cassette partner) sustained the early releases. Sugar Path / Eager is the early document on the imprint; the catalogue extends through positions on the Self Abuse imprint, the Tonspur imprint and the 1990s UK noise network. The later catalogue (Coalescence, Sweet & Bitter, Sunken Chambers and the vein the Rate Your Music documentation has chronicled) extends the early release across the 1990s.
The idiom: Dachise's method runs through the harsh-noise and experimental-electronic tradition the UK 1990s noise release cultivated. I read the manner as adjacent to the Smell & Quim position (the noise partnership the founding-show partnership engaged with) and the Con-Dom tradition (Mike Dando's UK power-electronics release the partnership engaged with), but distinct: Knowles' method has tended toward the abstract-noise and experimental-electronic palette rather than the confrontational power-electronics mode the Con-Dom tradition mainly inhabited.
The successor position: from about the early 2000s onward Knowles operated mainly as The Digitariat. The vein extended into the Entr'acte partnership (the UK abstract-electronic imprint the tradition has produced); Agitated (E22, recorded July 2005) constitutes the Digitariat position I have chronicled. The Digitariat idiom documents the transition from the early harsh-noise release into the later disciplined-drone and abstract-electronic manner the Knowles position has later cultivated.
The current position: from about 2022 onward Knowles has operated as Threads Original Soundtrack. The release Reveals New Face (Tribe Tapes, 18 November 2022) constitutes the founding Threads document; the palette runs through the clinical-steel and harsh-noise release the Knowles tradition has later developed, themed around plastic surgery and beauty-ideals mode. The Threads name position is adjacent to the 1984 BBC nuclear-war film Threads, a working touchstone the UK industrial-and-noise tradition has variously engaged with across the decades.
My editorial reading: Dachise is at Tier II as the early alias of Paul D. Knowles, a cult position in the UK 1990s noise tradition. The life across the Dachise / Digitariat / Threads alias-cycle constitutes one of the UK noise tradition's sustained career across about three decades. I keep the Knowles position with reference to all three aliases; this entry mainly addresses the early Dachise position but cross-references the later aliases as continuous with the early vein.
VAGO · c. the Georgian era