I’m not a noise historian. I stumbled onto the art form in Lowell in my early twenties, while I was recovering from a psychotic episode. A friend brought me to 119 Gallery, a venue in town that hosted exhibitions and performances until 2015. (The organization, headed by Walter Wright and Mary Ann Kearns, remains otherwise active). When I heard the sounds, I felt stunned, perplexed, and then, ultimately, found. As far as I’m concerned, noise art is the most extreme musical confrontation of the systemic -isms and phobias which rot our society.

I wanted to understand why Ron would invest so much of himself in the art form. He’s released several American debuts of culturally impactful noise artists, makers who were crucial in forming a global sound. He’s spent decades with the art and toured internationally. He is a pillar in the proliferation of the sound. So, I asked him how he got into noise.

“I was really more into the more weird rock bands,” he told me. “I mean, back in high school, you know all the dudes were listening to Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple, that was hard rock, you know, but I didn’t care about that kind of stuff. That was just way too normal for me. I was more into like Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls and the underground—the stuff that was punk rock before it was called punk rock. I was into the extreme stuff almost from the beginning… the next thing you know I’m listening to progressive rock and avant-garde classical music, like John Cage and all these really weird far out guys. It became a quest for hearing something more weird, more extreme than the previous.”