The Shanghai project that founded the Chinese noise scene, built its live series, and made an instrument of broken pedals and scrap metal.
Torturing Nurse is the harsh-noise project of Junky, born Junjun Cao, in Shanghai, and the act the Bureau files at Tier II as the founding and central figure of the Chinese noise scene. Junky started it on 25 April 2004, a date he keeps as the project's official beginning, taking the name from a John Zorn album. He had tired of the conventional rock band he led, and turned to what he calls extreme, harsh, nihilistic noise as the freest sound he could make, having come to Japanoise and American noise around 2000.
The line-up has shifted across two decades. It began as a four-piece, then settled most constantly into a duo with Xu Cheng, who asked to join after seeing an early set and was admitted on one condition, that he use only hardware and no software. Xu Cheng stayed until 2015, when he left after having a child and went on to run his own label; Torturing Nurse has since been largely a solo act. The instrument throughout has been broken guitar pedals and contact-mic'd metal scrap, played with the janky, sporadic physical movement and blue mask that mark Junky's performances.
Beyond the records, Junky built the scene's infrastructure. He runs the monthly NoiShanghai live series, the backbone of noise activity in the city, and has amassed around five hundred releases and more than three hundred performances worldwide. His stated influences run as much to the cinema of Herzog, Pasolini, Terayama and Ozu as to any musician.
The Bureau's reading. Torturing Nurse is filed at Tier II as the seminal Chinese noise act and as the organiser whose NoiShanghai series gave the scene a place to happen.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene