noise music

Noise music is harnessed sound that can be sonically harsh, painful, nauseating, and generally undesirable under normal circumstances. "Noise" music could be viewed a contradiction in terms. Strictly speaking, "noise" is sound that is not wanted. The definition of music, although highly subjective, usually includes some idea of "wanted" or "desired" sound. Two ways of thinking about this paradox are as follows. Firstly, that "noise" in a more general sense refers to any extremely loud or discordant sound, and that these sounds are often the basis of noise music. Secondly, as famous noise musician Masami Akita said, "If by noise you mean uncomfortable sound, then pop music is noise to me." Noise music is not necessarily "noise" to the listeners, although it is certainly "noisy" in the more general sense of the term.

Musicology

Noise music is loosely related to industrial, sharing its DIY ethos, independence and ethic of using "non-musical" sources. It also shares with early, Throbbing Gristle-era Industrial, a fascination with the hypnotic, and magical qualities of sound. Often punishing and abrasive, Noise music can be difficult listening, ranging from the free-form extreme electronic music of Whitehouse and Merzbow to the more sculptured sounds of Otomo Yoshihide.

History

Early Noise Composers

Luigi Russolo, a futurist painter of the earliest 20th century, was perhaps the first Noise Musician. His 1913 manifesto L'Arte de Rumori (The Art of Noises) stated that due to the industrial revolution modern men had a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. Russolo found traditional melodic music confining and envisioned Noise Music as its future replacement. He designed and constructed a number of noise generating devices called Intonarumori and assembled a noise orchestra to perform with them. A performance of his Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) was met with avid displeasure and violence from the audience, as Russolo himself had predicted. None of his intoning devices have survived. Although Russolo's works bear little resemblance to modern Noise Music, his pioneering creations cannot be overlooked as an essential element of the evolution of this genre, and many artists are familiar with his manifesto. Beginning in the 1920s, composers (in particular Edgard Varse and George Antheil) began to use early mechanical musical instruments--such as the player piano and the siren--to create music that referenced the noise of the modern world. John Cage began composing his Imaginary Landscape series in 1939, which combined elements like recorded sound, percussion, and (in the case of Imaginary Landscape #4) twelve radios. After the second world war, other composers (including Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen) started to experiment with early synthesizers, tape machines and radio equipment to produce electronic music, often with very abstract sounds and structures. Much of this music has proven influential on the creators of noise music.

Boyd Rice

American archivist and writer Boyd Rice has been a seminal influence on Noise music. Starting in 1975, Rice began experimenting with the possibilities of pure sound. In his live performances, he attached an electric fan to an electric guitar and also used an electric shoe polisher as an instrument. He created extremely loud, cascading walls of noise and played pieces of recorded conversations, news reports, and music just beneath the threshold of comprehensibility. Rice has created works that combine brutal soundscapes with various poetics. He has also structured noise elements into harmonious, rhythmic pieces that defy easy categorization.

Japan

The genre became popular in Japan, with a large following in Tokyo and Osaka. Musicians such as the aforementioned Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide and other names like KK Null, Masonna, The Gerogerigegege and Hanatarash (founded by Boredoms frontman, Yamatsuka Eye) have made this nation something of a mecca for this style.

Albums and non-noise influences

Lou Reed's double-LP album Metal Machine Music released in 1975 is an early, well known example of noise music. A lesser known, but perhaps more prophetic release regarding the future of Noise music, is Boyd Rice's 1978 LP, Pagan Muzak. Reed's Velvet Underground cohort John Cale's electronic drone music with artists such as Tony Conrad and LaMonte Young in the mid-60s can also be cited as having been influential. (see the CD release of Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume 1: Day of Niagra).

Mixing of forms

In recent years European musicians associated with jazz, electronica and black metal have been active in the Noise music arena. In Canada the Nihilist Spasm Band has been performing acoustic-based noise music for decades. In the early 1990s, the noise operas of Lisa Crystal Carver and Costes in Suckdog placed a new emphasis on drama and histrionics in noise music. This led, in part, to Chicago's free glam movement adding an emphasis on cultural and social dissonance to the concept of noise music. Another form of music has come out of noise, fusing rock to noise, aptly entitled noise rock. Usually this form uses traditional rock instrumentation, but with varying degrees of atonalism, improvisation and white noise. Some better-known bands included in this genre are Melt-Banana and The Boredoms. This style is quite accessible compared to abstract or electronic noise and sometimes bears a similarity to grindcore. Fans of the genre sometimes distinguish between "harsh noise", the more well-known super-dense and abrasive sounds of Merzbow and similar artists, and other loose sub-genres like "rhythmic noise", "power electronics", "free noise" and so on. Confusingly, the industrial techno sub-genre of power noise - although using some sounds and ideas from noise music, is comparatively conventionally musical, on a par with "noise rock", and should not be confused with the similarly-named power electronics, the synthesizer based subgenre of abstract noise performed by Whitehouse. One possible influence of noise music has been to change the way of thinking about what is "musical" or "unmusical" noise, and recently many different genres, such as techno and hip-hop, include some kinds of sounds that could be viewed as "noise". In New York City, Madame Chao's Chaorin Kombat introduced the concept of competitive noise battles.

Sound sample

I'm coming to the garden..... no sound, no memory (excerpt) - from Merzbow's album Dharma (2001) (Vorbis format, 12 seconds, 94 kB)
Ameracs Sumic - a track by IndusTree, recorded in 1998 (Vorbis, 4:20, 1.4 MB).

Noise Music