Mix Cover: Bastard Noise’s iconic Skull (on a background added by me)
Banner Image: Eric Wood performing live.

I first connected with Eric Wood, the Californian frantic power-violence/noise musician aka Bastard Noise, in February 2024, when I commented on an insta story about his kitty. He went like the kitty is fine but I have a very serious “hearing disorder thats is very rare”. I paused for a bit. Could he be having a laugh? When you’ve been performing a most aggressive style of music for over 30 years it is likely (not rare) that such a continuous beating will damage the ear canals. I checked it out, it is in fact a condition called Otosclerosis. The ‘rare’ bit meant fewer than 200.000 cases in the US, thats pretty rare. The goal was to raise 15k for the surgeries, it was well documented and the  GoFundMe page made the rounds on social, reddit et all. Of course I helped and we kept contact since then.

At some point in our ongoing exchanges we moved on to politics. Difficult not too from January 2025. Eric’s bands lyrics were always often political and dark, with common themes being animal rights, police brutality, political violence, inequality, and the baddest social issues. I am not one for digging deep into lyrics exploring emotional rut, depression, isolation, alienation and misanthropy, as I am in a pretty sunny place in my life and it doesn’t trigger anything, but I appreciate the delivery and the intent. Noise and many other music styles with harsh screamed vocals should be the right vehicle for messages of dissent and protest and this is the absolute time for that so I appreciate Eric gets pissed off at Trump and MAGA through is music as much as he does when commenting on leftist, ecologist and liberal & progressive social accounts (and he does participate a lot).

A few days ago I asked Eric if he wanted to participate in my ongoing Guest Mixes, a new drill in which I get to mix a list of tracks submitted by musicians I have been following and count amongst my favourites. The next day I had the list of tracks and I have now mixed them into this 150 minute medley.

This is quite a surprising list of tracks, for the most part. From Uriah Heep to Sabbath, White Noise to Budgie, Eric listened to some cool, progressive rock n’ roll when he was younger, and the mix is in big part an ode to a heavy rock 70’s.

These guest tracklists are always filled with surprising choices. In all the guest mixes before this, I always encountered bands or albums that I had never listened to before and this one is no exception. You expect to get some obvious like-minded, like-sounding tracks from bands that sound similar, that may reference early influences, and the eventual story of the ‘first record’ and the eventful ‘first gig’ – which may or many not be the roadmap to the musician or band’s initial sound direction – or you get a bunch of newer stuff that they are listening to currently, working as both a compliment to, and the introduction of, some new kick ass bands.

About the choice of tracks in this mix, all I can say is that as I am about the same age as Eric, so I was thinking we’re going to get a pretty noisy, aggressive industrial bunch from the 80’s and 90’s… say Einsturzende, KMFDM, Hijokaidan, Bad Sector, Swans but also US punk-hardcore, say Agnostic Front, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies… but it came out radically different: Eric, it seems, grew up on psychedelic and acid rock vibes after all!

Special note about the mix start, with Eric’s own piece ‘Rogue Astronaut’, taken from the album with the same name released in 2009 on Gravity Records. It was not in the list Eric sent me, but I wanted to feature a Bastard Noise track, so I pressed Eric to name some of his favourite albums, 1 or 2 releases he “was most proud of”. He countered that was really hard. So I asked for a few tracks… “Rogue Astronaut” was one of them, others included “The Eternal Blackened Horror Of Proliferated Speciesism” and “The Skull Scriptures“. Do check these albums out, I spent some time with ‘The Eternal…’ yesterday, and it is one of the most unsettling experiences I had for quite some time.

Note about the mix sequence itself: I started with Eric’s own and then just went from the oldest to the newest track. I like the way it starts and ends with pretty experimental and free-spirited noise, hiding 1 hour of sick old-school rock tracks in the middle.

Follow and Support Eric Wood’s ongoing noise endeavours!