The 1996 compilation by which a small American noise label is best remembered, and a clean cross-section of the global harsh-noise underground at its mid-90s peak.
Compilations are how a scattered scene takes its own measure, and Music Should Hurt is one of the better ones the harsh-noise world produced. Issued on CD in 1996 by Self Abuse Records and compiled by Pat O'Neil, the man behind Skin Crime, it gathers sixteen acts from across the world into a single seventy-eight-minute survey, assembled by post and tape-trade in the years before the internet made such gathering easy.
The selection is the point. Merzbow, Aube, K2 and Pain Jerk stand for the Japanese strand; Macronympha, Emil Beaulieau, Daniel Menche and O'Neil's own Skin Crime for the American; Smell & Quim and Iugula-Thor for the European. Killer Bug, Thirdorgan and Hanged Mans Orgasm fill out the rest. Few comps of the period put the three regional noise traditions so plainly alongside one another.
The Bureau files Music Should Hurt as a record rather than building a page for the label that issued it, on the editorial position that the document outlasts and outshines its imprint. It is the snapshot that matters.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene