Smegma sounds like a thrift store exploding in slow motion. It is a dense, often hilarious, and perpetually surprising slurry of 'real' instruments played with 'wrong' techniques, mixed with tape loops, record crackle, and domestic clatter. There is a distinct sense of play here that separates them from the grimness of modern power electronics; it is noise as a toy box rather than a weapon.
What makes them truly distinctive is their long-standing affiliation with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). They treat noise as a folk tradition, blending the grit of 1970s punk with the improvisational freedom of avant-garde jazz. Their work feels handmade and tactile, avoiding the sterile digital sheen of contemporary experimental music in favor of a dusty, analog humanity.
Start with 'Glamour Girl 1941' to hear their classic era at its most potent. It captures the group's ability to turn absolute sonic debris into something that feels strangely like a song, or at least a very compelling argument against the concept of one.
Smegma is an American experimental noise group formed in Pasadena, California in 1973. Author Richard Meltzer became their vocalist in the late 1990s. The group was included in the Nurse with Wound list and was featured on the cover of the August 2006 edition of The Wire.
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