Knurl is the noise project of a welder from Toronto named Alan Bloor. Since his first tape in 1994, he has established a reputation for his unique sonic aesthetic. Involved in the punk scene growing up, he developed a taste for loud and dissonant music. Years later, he drew inspiration from the sounds of his welding. “I was influenced by the sound of the saws and grinders in the shop I was working in and thought it would be great if you could get a band to sound as fast and furious as that,” he explained in a previous interview.
This reflection inspired Bloor to harness the sounds of metal scraps, which have served as the foundation of his many Knurl releases. Juxtaposed against today’s noise producers, many of whom create their music entirely using computers, Bloor’s methodology seems almost primitive. The majority of his music uses the unmodified sounds of metal attached to guitar pick-ups with no post-production editing. His custom instruments are like metallic mutants; he welds sawblades, threaded rods, and irregular steel shards together to create bizarre noise objects.
Bloor’s first official release dates back to 1994, when he self-released the Initial Shock cassette. It was based on some experiments he had been capturing on tape for his own listening pleasure. “In the early 1990s, I was so fascinated with the sounds of screeching and grinding metal that I would create cassette tapes that I would listen to on a Sony Walkman tape player. The sound pieces would be created from metal being scraped and mashed into the pickups of a bass guitar I had, as well as contact mics being placed on electric fans and car springs. At the time, I was using head phone speakers as contact mics, and running the signal through Boss distortion, and DOD equalizer pedals, and recording it straight onto cassettes.”
Bloor tells me the audio for Initial Shock was originally intended as a soundtrack for a dance performance. “One day my wife and I were going to see an experimental dance company and there was going to be a Q&A after, and she suggested that I take a couple of my cassettes to see if they would be interested in using any of the sounds as a score for future dance pieces.
“The Q&A didn’t materialize and afterwards I stopped in at a local record shop that I frequented and told my friend there about these cassettes I was making. He listened to one, liked it, and told me that I should send out copies to some record labels to see if they would be interested releasing any.
“I didn’t know of any labels, so he gave me some addresses. This prompted me to create a project name, and a release. I came up with the name Knurl, which comes from the diamond grip pattern on handles and knobs.”
Initial Shock was cobbled together from the tapes Bloor had been privately recording for his own listening. “I dubbed off the cassettes in real-time, hand made the labels from card stock and lettering stencils, and once the release was produced, I sent it out to a few of the labels that my friend at the record store told me about. One label wrote back and told me to contact Joe Roemer at Mother Savage Noise. I sent him one and he really liked it. He asked for a few copies and he sent them out all over the world. I couldn’t believe it when I received a letter from Taiwan asking me to be part of a compilation.”
The total circulation of Initial Shock was very limited. “I only made about 20 Initial Shock releases. They’re not the best recordings, but to me that was the beauty of it. I loved the rawness and the stripped down approach to this recording, and many other Knurl releases.”
Thanks to Alan Bloor for the interview. Visit his Bandcamp here.
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