Becoming noise music : style, aesthetics, and history

Becoming Noise Music uses a broad and agile music-analytical lens to dive deep into noise music; in doing this, it is the first book to focus exclusively and comprehensively on the music of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions of politics, history or sociology. Using technical description and a range of visualisation tools in analyzing musical shape and organization, this book applies various hermeneutical lenses to draw meaning out of that analysis. Each chapter begins by setting out the context of the music under discussion and uses a variety of analytical techniques from inside and outside semiotics – the analytical breadth befitting the unusual collection of musics being analyzed. The book takes a descriptive approach that seeks to unite theoretical, technical and conceptual domains in interpreting noise music as style and structure. Relevant to both musicology and noise audiences, this book investigates a vital but analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice. Becoming Noise Music tells the story of noise music in its first 50 years, using a focus on the music's sound and aesthetics to do so. Part One focuses on the emergence and stabilization of noise music across the 1980s and 1990s, whilst Part Two explores noise in the twenty-first century. Each chapter contextualizes – tells the story – of the music under discussion before describing and interpreting its sound and aesthetic. Stephen Graham uses the idea of 'becoming' to capture the unresolved 'dialectical' tension between 'noise' disorder and 'musical' order in the music itself; the experiences listeners often have in response; and the overarching 'story' or 'becoming' of the genre that has taken place in this first fifty or so years. The book therefore doubles up on becoming: it is about both the becoming it identifies in, and the larger, genre-making process of the becoming of, noise music. On the latter count, it is the first scholarly book to focus in such depth and breadth on the sound and story of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions of politics, history or sociology. Relevant to both musicology and noise audiences, Becoming Noise Music investigates a vital but analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice. "The Music of Noise uses a broad and agile music-analytical lens to dive deep into noise music; in doing this, it is the first book to focus exclusively and comprehensively on the music of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions of politics, history or sociology. Using technical description and a range of visualisation tools in analysing musical shape and organisation, this book applies various hermeneutical lenses to draw meaning out of that analysis. Each chapter begins by setting out the context of the music under discussion and uses a variety of analytical techniques from inside and outside semiotics - the analytical breadth befitting the unusual collection of musics being analysed. The book takes a descriptive approach that seeks to unite theoretical, technical and conceptual domains in interpreting noise music as style and structure. Relevant to both musicology and noise audiences, this book investigates a vital but analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice."-- Provided by publisher Cover Contents Acknowledgements Preface Chapter Chronology Noise Music Timeline Introduction: Becoming noise music? Part 1 Noise music then 1 Shouty and clangy credos: Power electronics and industrial music 2 Anti-music? 3 Global harsh power 4 Harsh noise in Japan 5 Harsh noise in the United States and Europe Interlude: The story so far and to come Part 2 Noise music now 6 Harsh noise in the twenty-first century 7 Noise walls and atmospheric chambers 8 Noise erotics: Traumatic bodies and desires 9 Hybrid noisebloom Part One: Noise and ... 10 Hybrid noisebloom Part Two: Noise music now Conclusion Bibliography Index