No Age’s new art “Object�

The suburb of Sunland-Tujunga is a long way from the downtown L.A. alley that houses The Smell, the club where the noise-punk duo No Age cut their teeth. But it’s where No Age guitarist Randy Randall went in search of a little new space.

“I tell people it’s the new Eagle Rock,� he said. “It was affordable and it’s actually really beautiful.�

Randall’s physical uprooting makes sense, given all the other deconstructions going on in No Age’s universe. “An Object,� the band’s third studio full length, finds them ripping up their sound and renewing a commitment to re-imagine the structures of their music. They play a high-profile FYF Fest set this Sunday, and it could be the start of a new, creatively-testing era for the duo.

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Much has been made of the fact that No Age took the premise of “An Object� really seriously – they made a point to hand-assemble, package and ship all 10,000 vinyl and CD copies of the album themselves (even though they’re signed to a label, Sub Pop, that would have happily done it for them). It’s the latest example in a long line of thought, from Walter Benjamin to Andy Warhol, about how industry informs artistry.

“I’ve never been of the mind that I’m making an album for iTunes,� Randall said. “This thing being in our hands was important.�

But as much as the band was interested in assembling “An Object� themselves, they were just as focused on disassembling their sound. Where past No Age records were built off brief, punky blasts soaked in pedalboard ambience, “An Object� is their purest noise record yet.

The tracks feel less like traditional songs and more like ideas presented as-is. “An Impression� uses weird clanks and blips in lieu of Dean Spunt’s drumming; “Running From A Go-Go� takes the amber glow of Phil Spector and scuffs it up with raw sound experiments and a sad, deadpan delivery. They upended many of their recording techniques, preferring contact microphones and treated speakers to get at one-of-a-kind sounds built by hand.

“Some of this is going to be impossible to play live,� Randall said. “But we decided to just write what we feel and then cannibalize it later.�

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Fans used to thoughtful moshing at No Age warehouse shows will find “An Object� a hard record to move around to (except for the howler “C’mon, Stimmung�). Sometimes, there’s a sense that the songwriting took a backseat to the high concepts on the album.

But it’s a rare and hard thing for a band to so thoroughly challenge the premises it’s built on, especially after No Age vaulted from skate-rat warehouse shows to a full spread in the New Yorker, scoring for the high-fashion line Rodarte and a reputation forged at the vanguard of L.A. music and art scenes. “An Object� is the precise opposite of the stereotypical mid-career pop record that experimental bands are prone to delivering. But it does imagine a whole new space for No Age to make music in.

“We wanted to challenge what a song can be,� Randall said. “We wanted to make it more of a pure feeling.�

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