Noise music is music composed of non-traditional musical elements, and lacks musical structure like harmony and rhythm. A noise musician may incorporate, for example, tape hiss, manipulated recordings (e.g. intentionally scratched or skipping vinyl recordings), machine noise, feedback of various sorts, non-musical vocal elements, etc.

Practitioners themselves do not generally refer to it as "Noise Music"; they just call it "Noise", tacking the term "music" on the end is an explanatory device only necessary among those unfamiliar with the genre.

History

Luigi Russolo

Luigi Russolo, a Futurist painter of the very early 20th century, was perhaps the first Noise artist. His 1913 manifesto L'Arte de Rumori (The Art of Noises) stated that the industrial revolution had given modern men 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 strong disapproval and violence from the audience, as Russolo himself had predicted. None of his intoning devices have survived, though recently some have been reconstructed and used in performances. Although Russolo's works bear little resemblance to modern noise music, his pioneering creations cannot be overlooked as an essential stage in the evolution of this genre, and many artists are now familiar with his manifesto.

Other early composers

Composer Arnold Schoenberg's proclaimed "Emancipation of the dissonance" (the idea that music could just as well be based upon dissonance as consonance) in the early 20th century was probably the origin of noise music. By the 1920s, composers (in particular Edgard Varèse 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. In the 1930s, under the influence of Henry Cowell in San Francisco, Lou Harrison and John Cage began composing music for "junk" percussion ensembles — scouring junkyards and Chinatown antique shops for appropriately tuned brake drums, flower pots, gongs, and more. Cage started 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 G.M. Koenig, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen) started to experiment with sound synthesis, tape machines and radio equipment to produce electronic music, often with very noisy sounds. Much of this music has proven influential on the creators of noise music.

With the advent of the radio, Pierre Schaeffer coined the term musique concrete to refer to the peculiar nature of sounds on tape, separated from the source that generated them initially. His ideas about non-referential sounds take their most extreme form in noise music, which often blurs or obscures the actions which produced the sounds while also suggesting the physicality of sound itself.

The sudden affordability of home recording technology in the 1970s with the simultaneous influence of punk rock established a new aesthetic and instigated what is commonly referred to as noise music today. When anyone could produce noise, and anyone could record and distribute it, then noise music provided a way for any person (artist or non-artist) to experiment with sound as a painter might with visual material.

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

Originally influenced by the sounds of European bands like Whitehouse and the Italian non-musician Maurizio Bianchi/M. B., Japanese noise artists pushed this approach to an extreme of loudness and density, which in turn became a major influence on western noise bands. Sometimes known as "Japanoise" (a pun not just in English, but even in Japanese: ジャパノイズ ), it is usually associated with "harsh" characteristics including walls of white noise, non-linear pulses, arrhythmic beats, distorted sound loops, unintelligible dialogue, and sirens.

Since the late 1980s this Japanese style has been probably the most prolific and noticeable part of the Noise Music scene. Likewise the popularity and prolific output of musicians such as the aforementioned Noise Music figurehead/posterboy Merzbow, C.C.C.C. and other names like KK Null, Masonna, The Gerogerigegege and Hanatarash (founded by Boredoms frontman, Yamatsuka Eye) have made Japan something of a Mecca for many noise fans. In terms of sales, Noise music is not particularly more popular in Japan than in Europe or America. However, there is perhaps a higher level of recognition from crossover with mainstream genres and events, such as fashion shows or dance performances with music by noise artists, and a comparatively large number of live noise performances are held in Tokyo.

Recently the noise scene has given birth to a form of freely improvised electronic music known by the press as onkyo-kei, with leading lights including the aforementioned Sachiko M.

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.

It is very likely that Reed was aware of the electronic drone music produced in the mid-60s by his Velvet Underground cohort John Cale with artists such as Tony Conrad and LaMonte Young (see the CD release of Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume 1: Day of Niagara).

In 1988, RRRecords released a series of anti-records in which ordinary vinyl LPs and, in some cases, flexidiscs were physically transformed into noise records.

Mixing of forms

In Canada the Nihilist Spasm Band has been performing acoustic-based noise music for decades. The aptly named noise rock fuses rock to noise, usually with recognisable "rock" instrumentation, but with greater use of distortion and electronic effects, varying degrees of atonalism, improvisation and white noise. One of the best-known bands of this genre is Boredoms. This style is more like a "traditional" band compared to abstract or electronic noise and sometimes bears a similarity to grindcore. The name noisecore is also used to refer to noise-influenced hardcore techno or rock.

Fans of the genre sometimes distinguish between "harsh noise", the more well-known super-dense and abrasive sounds of Merzbow, Masonna and similar artists, and other loose sub-genres like "rhythmic noise", "power electronics", "free noise" and so on. Confusingly, some industrial techno sub-genres have very similar names, i.e. power noise. Power noise is comparatively conventionally musical, and is not to be confused with power electronics, the synthesizer based subgenre of abstract and experimental 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".

Methods and Inspirations

In much the same way the early modernists were inspired by primitive art, some contemporary noisicians are excited by the archaic audio technologies, such as wire-recorders, the 8-track cartridge, and vinyl records. For instance, some still choose to release their work on vinyl. Many artists not only build their own noise-generating devices, but even their own specialized recording equipment^{[citation needed]}.

Many performances by noise artists are extremely loud and can be near-deafening. The frequencies used by many are both shrieking and overpowering.

David Jackman said his first noise performance, albeit unintentional, was when he was 14 years old. He and his father demolished an old piano using an axe and hammer. Jackman called it "a huge racket".^{[citation needed]}

An outburst of emotion is the effect given by the performances of the group C.C.C.C., headed by former Japanese porn-star Mayuko Hino. One senses a socio-political fetishism with the work of Con-Dom, formed by Mike Dando to explore the many sides of personal faith. In a sensuous merging of body and machine, the French sound-composer Manon Anne Gillis gives birth to her noise. Intimately demonstrated by a 1995 performance, in which she kept pulling out, from under her dress, strands of audio tape accompanied by the sound of recorded material being yanked over the playback heads of a tape-deck.

Many noise artists are fixated on either one sound, or one type of sound. A.M.K. uses, as his only sound source, the montage. His montages are flexi-discs that he cuts up and recombines and then plays on regular turntables. Even his CD releases sound just like broken records. A.M.K. started to cut up readymade flexi-discs in 1986. Eleven years later he would start to record and release his own limited-edition flexi-discs for the sole purpose of montaging them.

Zipper Spy is an avid collector of zippers. She also loves the sound zippers make. Amplified zippers may not be the only sound source she plays with, but zippers are nearly always the dominant ingredient in her compositions. When asked why she loves zippers so much, she simply replied; "I hear zippers in everything."^{[citation needed]}

Others base their sound on the type of audio equipment they build for themselves. Both Chop Shop and Speculum Fight are examples of this approach. Chop Shop was formed by Scot Konzelmann. Konzelmann builds speakers. Since '87 he's been developing his speaker constructions to focus the listener into linking physical sounds through visible sources. Konzelmann thinks of it as a kind of ventriloquism.

Speculum Fight, otherwise known as Damion Romero, deals with tones and frequencies that are seductive^{[citation needed]} to the listener. To achieve these soundscapes, Romero builds a variety of custom-made devices. These include microphones that look like small wooden boxes, and antique audio test-equipment re-wired as feedback generators.

The noise-poet blackhumour, who has been active since the mid-80's^{[citation needed]}, uses only recordings of human voice. Some noise critics^{[citation needed]} have described blackhumour's work as a hybrid of noise and literature. However, blackhumour has stated on many occasions that he sees his noise as an extension of literature. Godzilla, not literature, is the inspiration for Daniel Menche's recent interest in human voice. Since 1988 Menche has carefully crafted noise from sound sources like his heart, lungs, chest, and fist.

Kimihide Kusafuka, better known as K2^{[citation needed]}, originally came onto the scene in 1984, just to disappear from it a few years later. He returned in 1993 after graduated as a pathologist. K2 sees no difference between the act of making noise and the act of science. K2 says he practices a kind of alchemy through his noise. He aims to metamorphosize himself with both the insight he gets from his scientific experiments, and the emotional strength he gains from performing and listening to noise. "Noise..", as K2 puts it, "can not be refused by either ears and heads!"^{[citation needed]}

GX Jupitter-Larsen had always enjoyed listening to the scratches etched across the grooves of a record much more than the recorded material stamped onto it.^{[citation needed]} In fact, his first real creative success with noise was with the self-titled vinyl record "The Haters", which he released in 1983. It's a silent record that comes with instructions that informs the holder that he must first complete the record by scratching it before he can listen to it on his stereo.

Sound samples

• Three audio MP3 files by Luigi Russolo (Serenata, Corale, Risveglio di una città) at Thereminvox.com
• Smell the Stench
• 9revolt's noise clips
• Umbrella Noize
• Maurizio Bianchi-Mokushi XVI, XVI
• Noisemp3.com
• I'm coming to the garden..... no sound, no memory (excerpt) - from Merzbow's album Dharma (2001) (Vorbis format, 12 seconds, 94 kB)
• Endless list of online noise clips
• Tada Recordings

See also

• Harsh noise
• Noise rock
• List of noise musicians
• Japanoise
• List of Japanoise artists
• Free improvisation
• Sonic artifact
• Made one shot

External links

• alphamanbeast's noise directory An information base with links to artists and labels of the broader noise music genre, as well as miscellaneous related resources.
• The Noise FAQ at BostonNoise.com A thorough and useful overview of noise music.
• Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music Essay about Japanese noise and the theory behind noise.
• Torben Sangild: "The Aesthetics of Noise"
• Noiseweb
• Russolo's Intonarumori
• Deathbomb Arc A growing network of avant-garde noise punk artists, centered in Los Angeles
• Infinite Sector Collective A non-profit collective and netlabel dedicated to sharing and promoting free experimental music, noise music, and electronica.

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