San Diego Reader

Margaret Noble: Beats, Drums, Electronics

Genre: Electro | DJ, Noise | Xprmntl

Sound description: Experimental sounds from the edge of nothingness.

RIYL: Laurie Anderson, Nina Hagen

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Synoposis

Influences: Laurie Anderson, Kronos Quartet, Phillip Glass, the Residents, Marcos Fernandes, Frank Zappa

Background:

Texas-born Margaret Noble uses synthesizers, electronic equipment, turntables, and drum machines to produce experimental music. Raised in San Diego, she graduated UCSD with a degree in philosophy.

She used to be known as DJ Margaret Noble, but she says local clubs gave her the cold shoulder when she first set out to spin. “The Underground Lounge was the most receptive. Bar Dynamite was a great place to play, and then Lips on Fifth Avenue, when it was this hot house music club.”

As of 2010, Noble teaches film and art at High Tech High School in Point Loma. She calls herself a sound artist and a producer. “I mess around with a lot of toys,” she says, meaning various noisemakers, such as a kalimba, or thumb piano, and a zither-like bowed instrument. “There are pickups on them and they’re running through [electronic] devices, and then I’m overdubbing and looping them and mixing textures and layers.”

It’s music, but can you dance to it? “I don’t like to alienate people,” she says, “but I want to challenge them on some level. I want anybody to be able to walk in and get something. But I don’t want to be so soft and so pop that it’s generic.”