The Haters are filed in this archive as the conceptual / harsh-noise / object-manipulation project G.X. Jupitter-Larsen founded on 1 May 1979 in New York City, and as one of the moments of American noise practice · running parallel to the 1979–1982 period of European anti-art and anti-music traditions across The New Blockaders, P16.D4 and the cooperative-tape network.
The Haters were founded on 1 May 1979 by G.X. Jupitter-Larsen at the Kick Art gallery on the Lower East Side, New York City. The gallery itself existed for only one or two events; Jupitter-Larsen has stated (PBS SoCal interview, 2014) that he bases the project's anniversary on that first performance. The founding act consisted of videotapes beaten with a video camera · a method as direct statement of the project's composition: physical intervention, object manipulation, the document of action as the released piece. Jupitter-Larsen knew from that performance, in his account, that his life's focus would be the art.
The Haters operate as the sole-permanent-member configuration with a locale-variable cast. G.X. Jupitter-Larsen is the only continuous member; the project's members are local experimental musicians and artists in whatever town a given performance happens to take place. The recorded catalogue runs to over 300 CD and record releases across the 1979-onward span. Jupitter-Larsen relocated to Hollywood, California, and Los Angeles has remained the base since. Through the 1990s he also worked as the sound designer for Mark Pauline's Survival Research Laboratories, the machine-performance group, an outlet for the same interest in destruction and physical process by other means. The catalogue's distribution runs through American collector-noise imprints (RRRecords, Hanson Records, Transparency, Vinyl Communications, Kubitsuri Tapes, Fragment Factory) and a small international correspondence network.
The method privileges physical intervention over compositional or electronic alternatives: amplified suitcases shaken until they break (the 2010 Loud Luggage / Booming Baggage piece), videotapes beaten with video cameras (the 1979 founding act), amplified staple-guns stapling vinyl records together (Mind The Gap, 1996). Reviewers describe the recorded results as ear-shattering, spine-melting racket (PBS SoCal, recalling a 1994 Whittier performance); the Haters' compositional structure across the 1980s and 1990s drew audiences into venues that were, by inside agitators' arrangement, ruined or destroyed in the course of performance · a position the As Loud as Possible 30 Years of the Haters article.
Jupitter-Larsen's catalogue extends across non-confrontational pieces alongside the destructive ones. The 1980s KS mail-art zine documents work like the artist counting garbage cans while walking down a street; the recurring conceptual idiom · holes, donuts, sand, things falling apart, entropy · operates at the small-particle and small-action scale alongside the amplified-destruction one. The Transexpansion Numeral Unit (TNU) is Jupitter-Larsen's parallel numerical and philosophical project: TNUs explore the distance between linear counting locations that do not neighbour each other and form, when arranged in order, a spiral around standard linear numbers. The base TNU is I (pronounced a), located between 1 and 4 but not 2 and 3. Jupitter-Larsen has described the TNU not as a way of doing arithmetic but as an emotional and philosophical barometer. Around it runs a private lexicon of named units · the polywave (self-contradictory movement), the xylowave (the distance between something and nothing) and the romawave (the distance it takes for something to be forgotten) · offered as a personal alternative to the inch and the centimetre. The psammologist (sand-studies) practice completes the small-particle manner.
The 1983 self-released Silent EP is the catalogue's early conceptual statement. The release came with written instructions informing the holder that the record must first be scratched before it could be played on a stereo. The completed-variations conceit made the listener the project's collaborator: each scratched copy is a distinct piece. The same year, Paul Hurst's Sydney imprint Société Anonyme released a C60 cassette titled Performance collecting completed variations from contributors; later labels released similar collections across the years. The conceptual structure · released material as instruction-set rather than recorded sound, completion by the holder, distributed authorship · lies at the catalogue's methodological centre.
The recorded catalogue runs from Silent EP (1983) and the Blank Banner video tape (a black video tape submitted to art and mail-art exhibitions 1982–1986) through In the Shade of Fire (1986 LP, ten noise compositions made from the sounds of things falling apart; Hanson Records remastered and expanded CD reissue 2009) and Mind The Gap (1996 CD, Vinyl Communications; source material: amplified staple-guns stapling vinyl records together; 2020 bonus-track reissue). The mid-2000s onward extends through Nikumu 2007 (Kubitsuri Tapes), Further (2008, Transparency, parts 1-2; 2014 remix), the Loud Luggage / Booming Baggage performance project (2010 onward), and the 2012 Schimpfluch Carnival final performance released by Fragment Factory in 2014 · the Extreme Rituals event with Joke Lanz, Rudolf Eb.er and Mike Dando, method sitting on stage amplifying brainwaves.
The collaborative catalogue is considerable. Merzbow / Masami Akita (the Merzbow & The Haters releases) routes the project into the Japanese noise inheritance. Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) is the long-term English partner · the 1999 Vinyl Communications split documents the late-1990s electronic adjacency. John Wiese / Sissy Spacek (Multifactorial Dynamic Pathways, Helicopter, with Charlie Mumma) is the Los Angeles noise-network partnership. The Schimpfluch Carnival circle · Joke Lanz, Rudolf Eb.er, Mike Dando (Con-Dom) · represents the catalogue's European underground partnership across the 2012 Extreme Rituals event. Hal Hutchinson (Pollutive Static), Ace Farren Ford (also of Le Scrambled Debutante and Smegma-adjacent through the LAFMS network), and EMERGE round out the collaborative network.
Citation. The Haters' compilation positions sit at two centres in this archive. Crasbreak (1:46) appears on Ohrenschrauben (Dom V 77-01, 1985) · Christoph Heemann and Achim P. Li Khan's first Dom Records compilation, placing The Haters in the European cooperative-tape network documented at the Ohrenschrauben / Ohrensausen file. The Haters also contributed source material to P16.D4's Distruct (Selektion SLP 005, 1984), the Frankfurt cooperative cut-up project's central articulation, alongside Nurse With Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris and DDAA. The twice-positioning at the European cooperative-network centres · Dom Records compilation and Selektion long-distance cooperation · places The Haters as one of the American partners in the early-period international tape network. The American sibling to The New Blockaders' 1982 Newcastle moment: a 1979 New York founding act running with the same anti-conventional position relative to the noise and industrial tradition.