No-Fi

No-Fi is music or media created outside conventional technical standards.

Name

Where "Hi-fi" and "Lo-fi" are short for "High Fidelity" and "Low Fidelity", respectively, "No-fi" is a play-on-words intended to be interpreted as meaning "No Fidelity".

Sound

No-Fi is an extraordinarily diverse aesthetic, covering many mediums other than just music, though the music holds a central role in the foundation, definition and formation of the genre. It has been suggested that No-Fi music is: on the edge of losing control or collapsing into non-music, nihilistic to the standards of acceptable composition, bastardizing, mocking of convention, unclean, containing "natural" noises and various sonic artifacts, such as natural reverb and echoes, distortion, tape-hiss and/or feedback, lack of sound-picture clarity, improvisation suggesting the lack of a separate "truth" behind the origins of a piece, and the use of noise as an "instrument" (Similar to Noise artists).

Though according themselves other stylistic titles the bands Slicing Grandpa, Eric's Trip, Bone Awl, The TV People, Nailed Down, Black Light Brigade, Sonic Youth's early work, much of Darkthrone's work (particularly Transilvanian Hunger and F.O.A.D.), and the more "raw" forms of punk especially the crust punk scene would exemplify some or all of No-Fi's aesthetic.