Ironing Credit: Chris Miller

“I  feel like it’s a compulsion, it just kind of scratches an itch,” Andrew Chadwick says of Ironing’s experimental sounds. “It’s like a chaos flow.” 

For this Gainesville-based, noise-obsessed turntable-balancer — who’s now been performing as Ironing for over two decades — the start of his eclectic creative practice was born on his family’s backyard-built sailboat. 

When he was 9, Chadwick’s family decided to up and sell everything and move aboard for a year. Taking to the seas, four family members lived on a 28-foot sailboat, cruising up to Canada, along the East Coast and the Bahamas before eventually settling in Palm Bay, Florida. 

Chadwick says that aboard their floating home, he discovered that radio waves traveled farther and more clearly on water. Nurturing his love for radio by experimenting with his father’s shortwave, Chadwick listened intently to ghostly stations and signals fading in and out, feeding his nascent fascination with “beeps and numbers.” 

This early immersion in beeps and numbers (and static) would decades later form the backbone of Chadwick’s vibrant and unpredictable Ironing project. (So named because he stacks all his arcane gear on a teetering ironing board to perform.)

Chadwick, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, defines Ironing’s sound as “party violence,” a lighthearted poke at the usual stern-faced poses of much harsh noise. But also an apropos description of audience reactions to an Ironing set.

When asked what food would correspond to his sound, Chadwick says it would have to be something spicy, like a chili — a vegetarian one.

We’ve attempted to break Ironing’s sound down to three essential elements. Feel free to verify in the flesh this week.

Part I: Chaos flow radio 

Chadwick has a phrase he uses to explain his Ironing technique: “chaos flow.”

“It’s kind of like surfing, where you can kind of steer but you can’t control what’s pushing you,” Chadwick says. 

Chadwick’s unique sound comes in part from meshing live sounds from radio stations in the cities he performs in, paying special attention to international-language and dance stations.

“With radio you can’t really choose,” Chadwick says “There’s a lot of chance operations going on.” 

Ironing Credit: Matthew Moyer

Part II: Slapstick turntablism

“Slapstick like the comedy style, it’s a descriptive element but not an overall description,” Chadwick says. 

Meshing his harsher sounds with a lighthearted attitude, Chadwick can be seen at shows balancing a record player on top of his head while smiling beatifically, or throwing two records on top of each other and letting the needle jump and scratch an unhinged tune. 

Chadwick also tends to place objects like his beer, lit candles or even a glittery high-heeled shoe on the spinning discs, always pleasantly surprised by what sounds the hopping needle conjures. Typically a distressed noise will ensue as he places these objects on the vinyl grooves, like sacrificial offerings to the noise-gods. 

“If I practice, I’ll practice techniques, but not ever try to recapture exactly what happened a certain way when I was practicing, because it’ll never happen the same way twice,” Chadwick says. 

Longtime friend of Chadwick and fellow Gainesville noise-enjoyer Chris Miller, who first met Chadwick back when he sported a beard that protruded several inches off both sides of his jaw, says that he couldn’t believe that he really practiced any of his sets. 

“You know, when you see it you’ll be like, ‘Is this a song, did he plan this?’” Miller says. “It seems all improvised to me.”

Part III: Field recordings and tapes 

The final piece of Ironing’s collaged symphonies are tapes. Whether field recordings, damaged loops of ambient noise, prerecorded commercial cassettes or tapes he recorded himself, for Chadwick these are chunks of texture that feel natural and often personal. 

Typically, Chadwick will not only mix these tapes into his sound, but he often pitches them faster or slower as the mood takes him. 

To Chadwick, the field recording tapes in particular make for a somewhat autobiographical element, enhancing the sonic chili’s flavor with captured instances that remind him of certain memories in his life. 

“These are moments from my life and my environment and things that I associate with a time and place, and now it’s being recontextualized with all the rest of the sounds,” Chadwick says. “It brings the meaning from those times and places with it for me.” 

With a noise artist like Chadwick — who often veers into deranged dancehall and fried freestyle — encapsulating his sound under one genre descriptor is tricky, but Miller finds this type of experimental work quite … folky. 

“I love it,” Miller says. “Seeing these musicians using instruments in the way that they’re not supposed to be used or just experimenting — this is truly folk music.” 

Reflecting that typical folk music has been done and redone for decades, homogenizing the sound, Miller cites blues firebrand guitarist Bo Diddley building a cigar-box guitar as a pioneering step for this alternative universe of folk. Reimagining instruments and re-creating very specific sounds, to Miller, is current folk music.

Ultimately, it was 2005 — when Chadwick had the opportunity to attend the International Noise Conference in Miami — when he realized what he wanted to do with his sound. 

Ironing’s first live show was in Orlando later that same year at the now-mythical Peacock Room in Mills 50.

In satisfyingly nostalgic (and also not) fashion, he’s set to bring the noise back to Orlando two decades later, playing this week at new DIY venue My Sister’s House along with Putrid Fauve, Shania Pain, Innocence Lost, Noise Induced Hearing Loss and other noise lovers. 

6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 26, My Sister’s House, 925 S. Semoran Blvd., Winter Park, $10

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This article appears in March 25-31, 2026.