Boxing Noise – Boxing Noise Review

What does Boxing Noise sound like?

Rhythmic patterns like a boxer’s workout.

The review of ‘Boxing Noise’ by Boxing Noise

One of my stranger impulse buys across various Bandcamp Fridays this year is Boxing Noise and their self-titled debut album. The idea is somewhere between performance art and a high-impact take on boxing as a percussive album. I didn’t know a skipping rope and a punchbag could make such a good beat…

The seven-track album is bookended by two long performance pieces. The twelve-minute ‘WARM-UP’ starts with skipping ropes and boxing club noises before slowly drums, organs, synths and vocal samples start chopping in and out increasingly vigorously. The mixture of drums and boxing club items becoming percussive instruments sets the overall tone of this album. It is designed to be visceral and hypnotic – like a trance in many ways. Ending the album is a slow dirge of empty noise rage synths and fumbling drum loops with ‘Stretching’. As the workout slows down and we reach a resting state, so does the album itself. These two tracks make up 23 minutes of the 38 minute runtime and would appeal to math rock fans.

The five tracks that sit between them are known as rounds. Each one is an exploration of rhythmic poise and athleticism. Boxing Noise adds in vocal treatments that are damaged to sound like guitar feedback and then mixes in grizzly, sizzling bass synths. The tone is aggression and power but in a way that showcases flexibility and dynamism. The synths bend, twist and surge between loud and disruptive to subtle organ hums.

‘Round 1’ introduces us to the waxing and waning of trickling drums. ‘Round 2’ brings in lots of drumsticks, mini flourishes and sparkling synths like a noise metal version of a post-rock track. ‘Round 3’ removes the drums but delves into distortion and noise effects. It sounds like we’re being dragged around a boxing ring or that we’ve been attacked on a sensory level. ‘Round 4’ is the most post-rock and melodic the album gets. It has a psychedelic synth warble that marries up with distant vocal hues in a shroud of noise rock. All the while, the toms of a drum set pound away like a ritual. This culminates in the angular ‘Round 5’ where the metallic and electrified fried synths scream out like jagged razors over the beats. It is a primal piece that allows you to finish on a triumph before you stretch it all out.

Boxing Noise is experimental but not totally untethered from noise rock or lo-fi rock. The synths are doing all kinds of interesting atonal things. The percussive nature of the album means it gets the blood pumping like a primal urge. Primal is a word I’d use to describe this album as a whole. Primal with an locker room elegance to it. When performed live, Boxing Noise place a suspended boxing bag that has been fitted with a microphone and invites some of the audience to punch along to the beats and use gym equipment to capture their moves to the music. It is a genuinely unique approach to music and sport and one I’d like to see get a performance run somewhere where it would be appreciated in the future. The album works as a standalone entity and could well be your next soundtrack for some high-velocity exercise.

Recommended track: Round 4

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