What's the sound of New York City in 2016? If you were to tap the streets of Gotham for the soundtrack, you'd have spiky hip-hop from the badlands of Queens, chi-chi alternative music from whoever can afford to live in Williamsburg these days and a melange of house and electronic music from one-man or one-woman operations throughout the city. You'd also have some throwbacks vying for a berth on Vinyl, but we'll leave them to their own devices.
As cities change, sounds change too. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York was an economic and social basket-case. To outsiders, it seemed as if the Big Apple was rotten to the core. Who in their right mind would set up shop in a place like that?
The answer is artists and musicians. The reissue of the New York Noise compilation by Soul Jazz, detailing the sounds of the city's underground from 1977 to 1982, is a reminder that when everyone else was skedaddling out or moving uptown, a vibrant scene of makers, shakers and doers were setting up shop on the Lower East Side downtown.
These days, the LES has been tarted up and gentrified like the rest of the city. The edge has disappeared and the variables such as cheap rent and easy access to empty spaces which enabled the no-wave musicians to exist in the first place are no more.
Every big city has similar stories to tell about what happens when development takes over from dereliction. Long before the arrival of a café flogging bowls of cereal signals the end is really nigh, rising property prices and economic migration means areas which were once affordable are now far beyond the reach of the musicians and artists who once resided there.
While such change in circumstances may mean the compilation is seen as a chronicle of a lost world, New York Noise actually foretells a lot of what is to come musically. The work of such acts as James Chance & The Contortions, Konk, Bush Tetras, Implog, Arthur Russell and the rest laid out a path that James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem and the DFA gang would follow a few decades later. You can discern the same yelps, note the same walk on the tightrope between the punk and the funk and even make out the same cowbell in some cases.
Naturally, a whole ecosystem grew up around these artists in the shape of venues, record shops, labels and studios to help the various subcultures get up and running. Such infrastructural middlemen were hugely important because they helped to document what was going on and get the message out beyond the city.
Economics and social engineering mean it's hard to imagine such a scene getting similar space and time to thrive in the New York of today. You have to go elsewhere to find the same level of uninhibited experimentation and eclecticism. All that's left for the Big Apple is to pen another verse of New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down.
