Noise music is a sub-genre of experimental music constructed from noise as opposed to recognisable sound or pitches. "Noise" music is regarded by some as a contradiction in terms, because "noise" is generally defined as unwanted and undesigned or unintentional sound and music as the opposite. However, "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 (who records under the name Merzbow) 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. 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 outsiders.
Characteristics and influences
Noise music is loosely related to industrial music, sharing its DIY ethos, independence and ethic of using "non-musical" sources. Often described as "punishing and abrasive" by those with a flair for the dramatic, Noise music can be very loud and dissonant, ranging from the free-form extreme electronic music of Merzbow and Masonna to the more sculptured sounds of Boyd Rice and Black Leather Jesus, to the cold haiku sound-scapes of Ryoji Ikeda and 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).
A lesser known release, though perhaps more influential on this sub-genre, is Boyd Rice's 1978 LP, Pagan Muzak.
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.
Influence of Dada and Surrealism on Noise Music
Many noise artists, both the original musique concrete and modern noise artists, share an interest in the ideas of Dada and Surrealism. Merzbow made Dada and surrealism in audio and visual forms. The Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich) was a place where Dadaists gathered for "meetings", which often involved reciting poetry made up of incoherent words, but there were also sessions of "Noise Music" held there. These usually consisted of the participants hitting, throwing, beating, bashing anything that was laying around, along with chanting nonsensical poetry. This was likely the first real Noise Music made for "artistic" purpose.
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".
M.Noisemized