Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
within a
musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of
musical styles and
sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary
aspect.
Noise music can feature acoustically or electronically generated noise, and both traditional and unconventional musical instruments. It may incorporate live machine sounds, non-musical
vocal techniques, physically manipulated audio media,
processed sound recordings,
field recording,
computer-generated noise,
stochastic process
In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that ap ...
, and other randomly produced electronic signals such as
distortion,
feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...
,
static, hiss and hum. There may also be emphasis on high volume levels and lengthy, continuous pieces. More generally noise music may contain aspects such as
improvisation,
extended technique,
cacophony and
indeterminacy. In many instances, conventional use of melody, harmony, rhythm or pulse is dispensed with.
The
Futurist art movement (with most notably
Luigi Russolo's
Intonarumori and
''L'Arte dei Rumori'' (''The Art of Noises'') manifesto) was important for the development of the noise aesthetic, as was the
Dada art movement (a prime example being the ''Antisymphony'' concert performed on April 30, 1919, in Berlin). In the 1920s, the French composer
Edgard Varèse, when
New York Dada associated via
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
and
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
's magazine
''391'', conceived of the elements of his music in terms of
sound-masses; writing in the first half of the 1920s, ''Offrandes'', ''Hyperprism'', ''
Octandre
''Octandre'' is a chamber piece by Edgard Varèse, written in 1923 and published by J. Curwen & Sons in London in 1924 (new edition, New York: G. Ricordi, 1956; new edition, revised and edited by Chou Wen-chung, New York: Ricordi, 1980). It is ...
'', and ''
Intégrales''. Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
", and he posed the question: "what is music but organized noises?"
Pierre Schaeffer's ''
musique concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, wit ...
'' 1948 compositions ''
Cinq études de bruits'' (''Five Noise Studies''), that began with ''Etude aux Chemins de Fer'' (''Railway Study'') are key to this history.
[Alex Ross, ''The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century'' (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p. 369.] ''Etude aux Chemins de Fer'' consisted of a set of recordings made at the train station Gare des Batignolles in Paris that included six steam locomotives whistling and trains accelerating and moving over the tracks. The piece was derived entirely from recorded noise sounds that were not musical, thus a realization of Russolo's conviction that noise could be an acceptable source of music. ''
Cinq études de bruits'' premiered via a radio broadcast on October 5, 1948, called ''Concert de bruits'' (''Noise Concert'').
Later in the 1960s, the
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
art movement played an important role, specifically the Fluxus artists
Joe Jones,
Yasunao Tone,
George Brecht
George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson ...
,
Robert Watts
Robert Watts (born 23 May 1938)Adam Pirani, ''Robert Watts: Secrets of "The Temple of Doom"'', Starlog #94, April 1985, pp 23–26,62. is a British retired film producer who is best known for his involvement with the '' Star Wars'' and ''Indian ...
,
Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ...
,
Dieter Roth,
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
,
Nam June Paik,
Walter De Maria's ''Ocean Music'',
Milan Knížák
Milan Knížák (; born 19 April 1940) is a Czech performance artist, sculptor, noise musician, installation artist, political dissident, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art associated with Fluxus.
Biography
Childhood and ear ...
's ''Broken Music Composition'', early
La Monte Young,
Takehisa Kosugi, and the ''Analog #1 (Noise Study)'' (1961) by Fluxus-related composer
James Tenney.
Contemporary noise music is often associated with extreme volume and distortion. Notable genres that exploit such techniques include
noise rock
Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, artists indulge in extre ...
and
no wave,
industrial music
Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music" that was "initial ...
,
Japanoise, and
postdigital
Postdigital, in artistic practice, is an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being digital, similar to the concept of "undigital" introduced in 1995, where technology and society advances beyond digital limitations to achie ...
music such as
glitch. In the domain of
experimental rock, examples include
Lou Reed's ''
Metal Machine Music'' and
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of t ...
. Other notable examples of composers and bands that feature noise based materials include works by
Iannis Xenakis,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...
,
Helmut Lachenmann,
Cornelius Cardew,
Theatre of Eternal Music
The Theatre of Eternal Music (later sometimes called The Dream Syndicate) was an avant-garde musical group formed by La Monte Young in New York City in 1962. The core of the group consisted of Young (voice, saxophone), Tony Conrad (violin), ...
,
Glenn Branca,
Rhys Chatham,
Ryoji Ikeda
Ryoji Ikeda (池田 亮司 ''Ikeda Ryōji'', born 1966) is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and n ...
,
Survival Research Laboratories,
Whitehouse Whitehouse may refer to:
People
* Charles S. Whitehouse (1921-2001), American diplomat
* Cornelius Whitehouse (1796–1883), English engineer and inventor
* E. Sheldon Whitehouse (1883-1965), American diplomat
* Elliott Whitehouse (born 1993), ...
,
Coil,
Merzbow,
Cabaret Voltaire,
Psychic TV,
Jean Tinguely's recordings of his
sound sculpture
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound ar ...
(specifically ''Bascule VII''), the music of
Hermann Nitsch's ''Orgien Mysterien Theater'', and
La Monte Young's bowed gong works from the late 1960s.
Definitions
According to Danish noise and music theorist Torben Sangild, one single definition of noise in music is not possible. Sangild instead provides three basic definitions of noise: a
musical acoustics definition, a second communicative definition based on
distortion or disturbance of a communicative signal, and a third definition based in
subjectivity (what is noise to one person can be meaningful to another; what was considered unpleasant sound yesterday is not today).
According to
Murray Schafer
Raymond Murray Schafer (18 July 1933 – 14 August 2021) was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book ''The Tuning of the ...
there are four types of noise: unwanted noise, unmusical sound, any loud sound, and a disturbance in any signaling system (such as static on a telephone). Definitions regarding what is considered noise, relative to music, have changed over time.
Ben Watson, in his article ''Noise as Permanent Revolution'', points out that
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
's ''Grosse Fuge'' (1825) "sounded like noise" to his audience at the time. Indeed, Beethoven's publishers persuaded him to remove it from its original setting as the last movement of a string quartet. He did so, replacing it with a sparkling ''Allegro''. They subsequently published it separately.
In attempting to define noise music and its value, Paul Hegarty (2007) cites the work of noted cultural critics
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...
,
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels ...
and
Theodor Adorno and through their work traces the history of "noise". He defines noise at different times as "intrusive, unwanted", "lacking skill, not being appropriate" and "a threatening emptiness". He traces these trends starting with 18th-century concert hall music. Hegarty contends that it is
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
's composition ''
4'33"'', in which an audience sits through four and a half minutes of "silence" (Cage 1973), that represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, "noise music", as with ''4'33"'', is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music from
Erik Satie to
NON to
Glenn Branca. Writing about Japanese noise music, Hegarty suggests that "it is not a genre, but it is also a genre that is multiple, and characterized by this very multiplicity ... Japanese noise music can come in all styles, referring to all other genres ... but crucially asks the question of genre—what does it mean to be categorized, categorizable, definable?" (Hegarty 2007:133).
Writer
Douglas Kahn, in his work ''Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts'' (1999), discusses the use of noise as a medium and explores the ideas of
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...
,
George Brecht
George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson ...
,
William Burroughs,
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
,
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
,
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...
,
Michael McClure,
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
,
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...
,
Luigi Russolo, and
Dziga Vertov.
In ''
Noise: The Political Economy of Music'' (1985),
Jacques Attali explores the relationship between noise music and the future of society by considering noise music as not merely reflective of, but importantly prefigurative of social transformations. He indicates that noise in music is a predictor of social change and demonstrates how noise acts as the
subconscious of society—validating and testing new social and political realities. His disruption of the standard history of music and his inclusion of noise in an attempt to theorize culture cleared the way for many noise music theoretical studies.
Characteristics
Like much of modern and contemporary art, noise music takes characteristics of the perceived negative traits of noise mentioned below and uses them in
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
and imaginative ways.
In common use, the word
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference aris ...
means unwanted sound or
noise pollution
Noise pollution, also known as environmental noise or sound pollution, is the propagation of noise with ranging impacts on the activity of human or animal life, most of them are harmful to a degree. The source of outdoor noise worldwide is mai ...
.
In electronics noise can refer to the electronic signal corresponding to acoustic noise (in an audio system) or the electronic signal corresponding to the (visual) noise commonly seen as 'snow' on a degraded television or video image. In signal processing or computing it can be considered data without meaning; that is, data that is not being used to transmit a signal, but is simply produced as an unwanted by-product of other activities. Noise can block, distort, or change the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication.
White noise
In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines ...
is a random
signal (or process) with a flat
power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed
bandwidth at any center frequency. White noise is considered analogous to
white light
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
which contains all frequencies.
In much the same way the early
modernists were inspired by
naïve art
Naïve art is usually defined as visual art that is created by a person who lacks the formal education and training that a professional artist undergoes (in anatomy, art history, technique, perspective, ways of seeing). When this aesthetic is ...
, some contemporary
digital art
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Since the 1960s, various name ...
noise musicians are excited by the archaic audio technologies such as wire-recorders, the
8-track cartridge
The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, whi ...
, and
vinyl record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts ne ...
s. Many artists not only build their own noise-generating devices, but even their own specialized recording equipment and custom
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
(for example, the
C++ software used in creating the ''
viral symphOny'' by
Joseph Nechvatal).
1910s–1960s
Origins
In "Futurism and Musical Notes", Daniele Lombardi discussed the French composer Carol-Bérard; a pupil of
Isaac Albéniz, who composed a ''Symphony of Mechanical Force''s in 1910, wrote on the problems of the instrumentation of noise music. and developed a notation system.
In 1913
Futurist artist
Luigi Russolo wrote his manifesto, ''L'Arte dei Rumori'', translated as ''
The Art of Noises
''The Art of Noises'' ( it, L'arte dei Rumori) is a Futurist manifesto written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to th ...
'', stating 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
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
to perform with them. Works entitled ''Risveglio di una città'' (Awakening of a City) and ''Convegno d'aeroplani e d'automobili'' (The Meeting of Aeroplanes and Automobiles) were both performed for the first time in 1914.
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 contemporary noise music such as
Japanoise, his efforts helped to introduce noise as a musical
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
and broaden the perception of sound as an artistic medium.
Antonio Russolo, Luigi's brother and fellow Italian
Futurist composer, produced a recording of two works featuring the original ''intonarumori''. The 1921 made
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
with works entitled ''Corale'' and ''Serenata'', combined conventional orchestral music set against the famous noise machines and is the only surviving sound recording.
An early
Dada-related work from 1916 by
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
also worked with noise, but in an almost silent way. One of the
found object Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art".Tomkins: ''Duchamp: A Biography'', page 158. By simply choosing the object (or objects) and r ...
, ''A Bruit Secret'' (With Hidden Noise), was a collaborative work that created a noise instrument that Duchamp accomplished with
Walter Arensberg. What rattles inside when ''A Bruit Secret'' is shaken remains a mystery.
Found sound
In the same period the utilisation of
found sound as a musical resource was starting to be explored. An early example is ''Parade'', a performance produced at the Chatelet Theatre, Paris, on May 18, 1917, that was conceived by
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
, with design by
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, choreography by
Leonid Massine, and music by
Eric Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
. The extra-musical materials used in the production were referred to as ''trompe l'oreille'' sounds by Cocteau and included a
dynamo,
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...
machine, sirens, steam engine, airplane motor, and typewriters.
Arseny Avraamov
Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov (russian: Арсений Михайлович Авраамов) (born Krasnokutsky �раснокутский 1886 died Moscow, 1944) was an avant-garde Russian composer and theorist. He studied at the music school of ...
's composition ''Symphony of Factory Sirens'' involved navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, foghorns, artillery guns, machine guns, hydro-airplanes, a specially designed steam-whistle machine creating noisy renderings of ''
Internationale'' and ''
Marseillaise'' for a piece conducted by a team using flags and pistols when performed in the city of
Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world an ...
in 1922. In 1923,
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably ''Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 t ...
created ''
Pacific 231
''Pacific 231'' is an orchestral work by Arthur Honegger, written in 1923.
It is one of his most frequently performed works.
Description
The popular interpretation of the piece is that it depicts a steam locomotive, one that is supported by the ...
'', a
modernist musical composition that imitates the sound of a steam locomotive. Another example is
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi ( , , ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral su ...
's 1924 orchestral piece ''
Pines of Rome'', which included the
phonographic playback of a nightingale recording.
Also in 1924,
George Antheil created a work titled
Ballet Mécanique with instrumentation that included 16
pianos, 3
airplane propellers, and 7
electric bells. The work was originally conceived as music for the
Dada film of the same name, by
Dudley Murphy and
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as " tubism") which he gradually modified into a more figurative, p ...
, but in 1926 it premiered independently as a concert piece.
In 1930
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
and
Ernst Toch recycled records to create sound montages and in 1936
Edgard Varèse experimented with records, playing them backwards, and at varying speeds. Varese had earlier used sirens to create what he called a "continuous flowing curve" of sound that he could not achieve with acoustic instruments. In 1931, Varese's ''
Ionisation'' for 13 players featured 2 sirens, a
lion's roar, and used 37 percussion instruments to create a repertoire of unpitched sounds making it the first musical work to be organized solely on the basis of noise.
In remarking on Varese's contributions the American composer
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
stated that Varese had "established the present nature of music" and that he had "moved into the field of sound itself while others were still discriminating 'musical tones' from noises".
In an essay written in 1937, Cage expressed an interest in using extra-musical materials
and came to distinguish between found sounds, which he called noise, and musical sounds, examples of which included: rain, static between radio channels, and "a truck at fifty miles per hour". Essentially, Cage made no distinction, in his view all sounds have the potential to be used creatively. His aim was to capture and control elements of the sonic environment and employ a method of sound organisation, a term borrowed from Varese, to bring meaning to the sound materials.
Cage began in 1939 to create a series of works that explored his stated aims, the first being ''
Imaginary Landscape #1'' for instruments including two variable speed turntables with frequency recordings.
In 1961,
James Tenney composed ''Analogue #1: Noise Study'' (for tape) using computer synthesized noise and ''Collage No.1 (Blue Suede)'' (for tape) by sampling and manipulating a famous
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His ener ...
recording.
[Paul Doornbusch, ''A Chronology / History of Electronic and Computer Music and Related Events 1906–2011']
Experimental music
In 1932,
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
artists
László Moholy-Nagy,
Oskar Fischinger and
Paul Arma experimented with modifying the physical contents of record grooves.
Under the influence of
Henry Cowell in San Francisco in the late 1940s,
Lou Harrison and
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
began composing music for ''junk'' (
waste
Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste pr ...
) percussion ensembles, scouring junkyards and Chinatown antique shops for appropriately tuned brake drums, flower pots, gongs, and more.
In Europe, during the late 1940s,
Pierre Schaeffer coined the term ''
musique concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, wit ...
'' to refer to the peculiar nature of sounds on tape, separated from the source that generated them initially. Pierre Schaeffer helped form
Studio d'Essai The ''Studio d'Essai'', later ''Club d'Essai'', was founded in 1942 by Pierre Schaeffer, played a role in the activities of the French resistance during World War II, and later became a center of musical activity.
In 1942 the French composer and ...
of the
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française in Paris during World War II. Initially serving the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
, Studio d'Essai became a hub for musical development centered around implementing electronic devices in compositions. It was from this group that musique concrète was developed. A type of
electroacoustic music, musique concrète is characterized by its use of recorded sound, electronics, tape, animate and inanimate sound sources, and various manipulation techniques. The first of Schaeffer's ''
Cinq études de bruits'' (''Five Noise Etudes''), called ''Étude aux chemins de fer'' (1948) consisted of transformed locomotive sounds.
The last étude, ''Étude pathétique'' (1948), makes use of sounds recorded from sauce pans and canal boats. ''Cinq études de bruits'' was premiered via a radio broadcast on October 5, 1948, titled ''Concert de bruits''.
Following musique concrète, other modernist
art music composers such as
Richard Maxfield,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...
,
Gottfried Michael Koenig,
Pierre Henry,
Iannis Xenakis,
La Monte Young, and
David Tudor, composed significant electronic, vocal, and instrumental works, sometimes using found sounds.
In late 1947,
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...
recorded ' (''To Have Done with the Judgment of God''), an audio piece full of the seemingly random cacophony of
xylophonic sounds mixed with various
percussive elements, mixed with the noise of alarming human cries, screams, grunts,
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
, and
glossolalia. In 1949,
Nouveau Réalisme artist
Yves Klein wrote ''The Monotone Symphony'' (formally ''The Monotone-Silence Symphony'', conceived 1947–1948), a 40-minute orchestral piece that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained chord (followed by a 20-minute silence) — showing how the sound of one
drone
Drone most commonly refers to:
* Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg
* Unmanned aerial vehicle
* Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft
* Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone
Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to: ...
could make music. Also in 1949,
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mo ...
befriended
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
, who was visiting Paris to do research on the music of
Erik Satie. John Cage had been pushing music in even more startling directions during the war years, writing for prepared piano, junkyard percussion, and electronic gadgetry.
In 1951, Cage's ''Imaginary Landscape #4'', a work for twelve radio receivers, was premiered in New York. Performance of the composition necessitated the use of a score that contained indications for various wavelengths, durations, and dynamic levels, all of which had been determined using
chance operations.
A year later in 1952, Cage applied his
aleatoric
Aleatoricism or aleatorism, the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez, but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti, for compositions resulting from "action ...
methods to tape-based composition. Also in 1952,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...
completed a modest
musique concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, wit ...
student piece entitled ''Etude''. Cage's work resulted in his famous work ''
Williams Mix
''Williams Mix'' (1951–1953) is a 4'15" musique concrete composition by John Cage for eight simultaneously played independent quarter-inch magnetic tapes. The first octophonic music, the piece was created by Cage with the assistance of Earle B ...
'', which was made up of some six hundred tape fragments arranged according to the demands of the ''
I Ching
The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zh ...
''. Cage's early radical phase reached its height that summer of 1952, when he unveiled the first art "
happening
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...
" at
Black Mountain College, and ''
4'33"'', the so-called controversial "silent piece". The premiere of ''
4'33"'' was performed by
David Tudor. The audience saw him sit at the piano, and close the lid of the piano. Some time later, without having played any notes, he opened the lid. A while after that, again having played nothing, he closed the lid. And after a period of time, he opened the lid once more and rose from the piano. The piece had passed without a note being played, in fact without Tudor or anyone else on stage having made any deliberate sound, although he timed the lengths on a stopwatch while turning the pages of the score. Only then could the audience recognize what Cage insisted upon: that there is no such thing as silence. Noise is always happening that makes musical sound. In 1957,
Edgard Varèse created on tape an extended piece of electronic music using noises created by scraping, thumping and blowing titled ''
Poème électronique
''Poème électronique'' (English Translation: "Electronic Poem") is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le ...
''.
In 1960, John Cage completed his noise composition ''Cartridge Music'' for phono cartridges with foreign objects replacing the 'stylus' and small sounds amplified by contact microphones. Also in 1960,
Nam June Paik composed ''Fluxusobjekt'' for fixed tape and hand-controlled tape playback head.
On May 8, 1960, six young Japanese musicians, including
Takehisa Kosugi and
Yasunao Tone, formed the Group Ongaku with two tape recordings of noise music: ''Automatism'' and ''Object''. These recordings made use of a mixture of traditional musical instruments along with a vacuum cleaner, a radio, an oil drum, a doll, and a set of dishes. Moreover, the speed of the tape recording was manipulated, further distorting the sounds being recorded. Canada's
Nihilist Spasm Band, the world's longest-running noise act, was formed in 1965 in London, Ontario, and continues to perform and record to this day, having survived to work with many of the newer generation which they themselves had influenced, such as Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of t ...
and Jojo Hiroshige of
Hijokaidan. In 1967,
Musica Elettronica Viva, a live acoustic/electronic improvisational group formed in Rome, made a recording titled ''SpaceCraft'' using contact microphones on such "non-musical" objects as panes of glass and motor oil cans that was recorded at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin. At the end of the sixties, they took part in the collective noise action called ''Lo Zoo'' initiated by the artist
Michelangelo Pistoletto.
The
art critic
An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogu ...
Rosalind Krauss
Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a cr ...
argued that by 1968 artists such as
Robert Morris,
Robert Smithson, and
Richard Serra had "entered a situation the logical conditions of which can no longer be described as modernist."
Sound art found itself in the same condition, but with an added emphasis on
distribution Distribution may refer to:
Mathematics
* Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations
*Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...
.
[ Joseph Nechvatal & ]Carlo McCormick
Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. He is the author of numerous books, monographs and catalogues on contemporary art and artists.
Pedagogic and art writing activities
McCormick was Senior Edito ...
essays in ''TellusTools'' liner notes (New York: Harvestworks ed., 2001). Antiform
process art became the terms used to describe this
postmodern post-industrial culture and the process by which it is made. Serious
art music responded to this conjuncture in terms of intense noise, for example the
La Monte Young Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
composition ''89 VI 8 C. 1:42–1:52 AM Paris Encore'' from ''Poem For Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc.'' Young's composition ''Two Sounds'' (1960) was composed for amplified percussion and window panes and his ''Poem for Tables, Chairs and Benches, Etc.'' (1960) used the sounds of furniture scraping across the floor.
Popular music
''
Freak Out!
''Freak Out!'' is the debut studio album by American rock band the Mothers of Invention, released on June 27, 1966, by Verve Records. Often cited as one of rock music's first concept albums, it is a satirical expression of frontman Frank Zappa's ...
'', the 1966 debut album by
The Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention (also known as The Mothers) was an American rock band from California. Formed in 1964, their work is marked by the use of sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows.
Originally an R&B ban ...
made use of avant-garde
sound collage—particularly the closing track "
The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet". The same year, art rock group
The Velvet Underground made their first recording while produced by
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
, a track entitled "Noise".
"
Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
' 1966 studio album ''
Revolver
A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating firearm, repeating handgun that has at least one gun barrel, barrel and uses a revolving cylinder (firearms), cylinder containing multiple chamber (firearms), chambers (each holding a single ...
''; credited as a
Lennon–McCartney song, it was written primarily by
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
with major contributions to the arrangement by
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
. The track included
looped tape effects. For the track, McCartney supplied a bag of -inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to
Stockhausen's ''
Gesang der Jünglinge
''Gesang der Jünglinge'' (literally "Song of the Youths") is an electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog. The v ...
''. By disabling the
erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly
overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in
musique concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, wit ...
. The Beatles would continue these efforts with "
Revolution 9", a track produced in 1968 for ''
The White Album''. It made sole use of
sound collage, credited to
Lennon–McCartney, but created primarily by
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
with assistance from
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
and
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
.
In 1975,
Ned Lagin
Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.Ned Lagin interview with David Gans, August 2001 in: Gans, David. Conversations with the Dead, The Grateful Dead Interview Book, Da Capo Pre ...
released an album of electronic noise music full of spacey rumblings and atmospherics filled with burps and bleeps entitled ''
Seastones
''Seastones'' is an album by American composer and musician Ned Lagin.
In 1975 Lagin released the quadraphonic album of electronic music, (composed between 1970–1974), a small part of the complete ''Seastones'' composition, on Round Records and ...
'' on
Round Records. The album was recorded in
stereo quadraphonic sound and featured guest performances by members of the
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, world music, ...
, including
Jerry Garcia playing treated guitar and
Phil Lesh playing electronic
Alembic
An alembic (from ar, الإنبيق, al-inbīq, originating from grc, ἄμβιξ, ambix, 'cup, beaker') is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distillation of liquids.
Description
The complete dis ...
bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
.
David Crosby,
Grace Slick
Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing; October 30, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter, artist, and painter. Slick was a key figure in San Francisco's early psychedelic music scene in the mid-1960s. With a music career spanning four decades, ...
and other members of the
Jefferson Airplane also appear on the album.
1970s–present
Noise rock and no wave
Lou Reed's double LP ''
Metal Machine Music'' (1975) is cited as containing the primary characteristics of what would in time become a genre known as noise music. The album, recorded on a three speed
Uher machine and mastered/engineered by
Bob Ludwig
Robert C. Ludwig (born c. 1945) is an American mastering engineer. He has mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists including Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Que ...
,
Alan Licht
Alan Licht (born June 6, 1968) is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.
Biography
Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968. His earliest musica ...
, ''Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020'', Blank Forms
Blank Forms is a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City. It was founded by Lawrence Kumpf in 2016 as a platform for the preservation and presentation of experimental and time-based performance practices. Blank Forms frequently wo ...
Edition, ''Interview with Lou Reed'', p. 163 is an early, well-known example of commercial studio noise music that the music critic
Lester Bangs has sarcastically called the "greatest album ever made in the history of the human
eardrum". It has also been cited as one of the "
worst albums of all time". In 1975, RCA also released a
Quadrophonic version of the ''Metal Machine Music'' recording that was produced by playing the master tape back both forward and backward, and by flipping the tape over. Reed was well aware of the
drone music of
La Monte Young and cites him as a major influence on ''Metal Machine Music''.
Young's
Theatre of Eternal Music
The Theatre of Eternal Music (later sometimes called The Dream Syndicate) was an avant-garde musical group formed by La Monte Young in New York City in 1962. The core of the group consisted of Young (voice, saxophone), Tony Conrad (violin), ...
was a proto-
minimal music noise group in the mid-60s with
John Cale
John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various sty ...
,
Marian Zazeela,
Henry Flynt,
Angus Maclise,
Tony Conrad, and others. The Theatre of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification had influenced Cale's subsequent contribution to
The Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback. Cale and Conrad have released noise music recordings they made during the mid-sixties, such as Cale's ''Inside the Dream Syndicate'' series (''The Dream Syndicate'' being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with Young).
The aptly named
noise rock
Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, artists indulge in extre ...
fuses
rock to noise, usually with recognizable "rock" instrumentation, but with greater use of distortion and electronic effects, varying degrees of
atonality, improvisation, and
white noise
In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines ...
. One notable band of this genre is
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of t ...
, who took inspiration from the
No Wave composers
Glenn Branca and
Rhys Chatham (himself a student of
La Monte Young). Marc Masters, in his book on the No Wave, points out that aggressively innovative early dark noise groups like
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...
and
DNA drew on
punk rock, avant-garde
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...
and
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
. Important in this noise trajectory are the nine nights of noise music called ''
Noise Fest'' that was organized by
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Mo ...
of
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of t ...
in the NYC art space
White Columns
White Columns is New York City’s oldest alternative non-profit art space. White Columns is known as a showcase for up-and-coming artists, and is primarily devoted to emerging artists who are not affiliated with galleries. All work submitted i ...
in June 1981 followed by the ''Speed Trials''
noise rock
Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, artists indulge in extre ...
series organized by
Live Skull
Live Skull is a post-punk/experimental rock band from New York City, formed in 1982.
In an overview of their abrasive no wave-influenced music, ''Trouser Press'' said, "As part of the same New York avant-noisy scene that spawned Sonic Youth, Lyd ...
members in May 1983.
Industrial music
In the 1970s, the concept of art itself expanded and groups like
Survival Research Laboratories,
Borbetomagus and
Elliott Sharp embraced and extended the most dissonant and least approachable aspects of these musical/spatial concepts. Around the same time, the first postmodern wave of industrial noise music appeared with The Pop Group,
Throbbing Gristle,
Cabaret Voltaire, and NON (aka
Boyd Rice). These
cassette culture
The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground) refers to the practices associated with amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in the mid-1970s. The cassett ...
releases often featured zany tape editing, stark percussion and repetitive loops distorted to the point where they may degrade into harsh noise. In the 1970s and 1980s, industrial noise groups like
Killing Joke
Killing Joke are an English rock band from Notting Hill, London, England, formed in 1979 by Jaz Coleman (vocals, keyboards), Paul Ferguson (drums), Geordie Walker (guitar) and Youth (bass).
Their first album, '' Killing Joke'', was released ...
,
Throbbing Gristle, Mark Stewart & the Mafia,
Coil,
Laibach,
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, abbreviated as TOPY, was a British magical organization, fellowship and chaos magic network founded in 1981 by Genesis P-Orridge, lead member of multimedia group Psychic TV. The network, including later members of ...
,
Smegma,
Nurse with Wound and
Einstürzende Neubauten
(, 'Collapsing New Buildings') is a German experimental music group, formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals; guitar; keyboard) and N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments; pe ...
performed industrial noise music mixing loud metal percussion, guitars, and unconventional "instruments" (such as jackhammers and bones) in elaborate stage performances. These industrial artists experimented with varying degrees of noise production techniques.
Interest in the use of
shortwave radio
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 m ...
also developed at this time, particularly evident in the recordings and live performances of
John Duncan. Other
postmodern art movements influential to post-industrial noise art are
Conceptual Art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called ins ...
and the
Neo-Dada use of techniques such as
assemblage,
montage,
bricolage
In the arts, ''bricolage'' ( French for " DIY" or "do-it-yourself projects") is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media.
The term ''bricolage' ...
, and
appropriation. Bands like
Test Dept,
Clock DVA,
Factrix
Factrix was an American pioneering industrial group from San Francisco, formed in 1978 by Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph T. Jacobs, and was praised by Carlo McCormick as "one of the great bands of their era, prescient and influential."' ...
,
Autopsia,
Nocturnal Emissions,
Whitehouse Whitehouse may refer to:
People
* Charles S. Whitehouse (1921-2001), American diplomat
* Cornelius Whitehouse (1796–1883), English engineer and inventor
* E. Sheldon Whitehouse (1883-1965), American diplomat
* Elliott Whitehouse (born 1993), ...
,
Severed Heads, Sutcliffe Jügend, and
SPK soon followed.
The sudden post-industrial affordability of home cassette recording technology in the 1970s, combined with the simultaneous influence of
punk rock, established the
No Wave aesthetic, and instigated what is commonly referred to as noise music today.
[Media.hyperreal.org](_blank)
''Prehistory of Industrial Music'' 1995 Brian Duguid, esp. chapter "Organisational Autonomy / Extra-Musical Elements".
Japanese noise music
Since the early 1980s, Japan has produced a significant output of characteristically harsh artists and bands, sometimes referred to as ''
Japanoise'', with names such as
Government Alpha, Alienlovers in Amagasaki and Koji Tano, and perhaps the best known being
Merzbow (pseudonym for the Japanese noise artist
Masami Akita
is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by , best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.
The name Merzbow comes from the German dada ...
who himself was inspired by the
Dada artist
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, paint ...
's ''Merz'' art project of
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries bet ...
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...
).
[ Young, Rob (ed.), ''The Wire Primers: A Guide To Modern Music'' (London: Verso, 2009), p. 30.] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Akita took ''Metal Machine Music'' as a point of departure and further abstracted the noise aesthetic by freeing the sound from guitar based feedback alone. According to Hegarty (2007), "in many ways it only makes sense to talk of noise music since the advent of various types of noise produced in Japanese music, and in terms of quantity this is really to do with the 1990s onwards ... with the vast growth of Japanese noise, finally, noise music becomes a genre". Other key Japanese noise artists that contributed to this upsurge of activity include
Hijokaidan,
Boredoms
Boredoms () (later known as V∞redoms) is a rock band from Osaka, Japan formed in 1986. The band's sound is often referred to as noise rock, or sometimes Japanoise (Japan’s noise music scene), though their more recent records have moved towar ...
,
C.C.C.C.,
Incapacitants
are a Japanese noise music group formed in 1981. Initially a solo project of Toshiji Mikawa, Fumio Kosakai joined upon the project's relocation to Tokyo. The duo's stated aim is to produce "pure" noise, uninfluenced by musical ideas or even hu ...
,
KK Null
, known by his stage name KK Null, is a Japanese experimental multi-instrumentalist active since the early 1980s. He began as a guitarist but learned how to compose, sing, play drums, and create electronic music. He also studied Butoh dance at M ...
,
Yamazaki Maso
, better known by his stage name Masonna, is a Japanese noise musician. He was born on November 16, 1966, in Miyazu, Kyoto, Japan.
was started in 1987 in Osaka as Maso Yamazaki's noise project. The name is a combination of the Japanese wor ...
's
Masonna,
Solmania, K2,
The Gerogerigegege and
Hanatarash
Hanatarashi (), meaning "sniveler" or "snot-nosed" in Japanese, was a noise band created by later Boredoms frontman Yamantaka Eye and featured Zeni Geva guitarist Mitsuru Tabata. The outfit was formed in Osaka, Japan in 1984 after Eye and Taba ...
.
Nick Cain of ''
The Wire'' identifies the "primacy of Japanese Noise artists like Merzbow, Hijokaidan and Incapacitants" as one of the major developments in noise music since 1990.
Post-digital music
Following the wake of industrial noise, noise rock, no wave, and harsh noise, there has been a flood of noise musicians whose
ambient,
microsound, or
glitch-based work is often subtler to the ear.
Kim Cascone refers to this development as a
postdigital
Postdigital, in artistic practice, is an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being digital, similar to the concept of "undigital" introduced in 1995, where technology and society advances beyond digital limitations to achie ...
movement and describes it as an "aesthetic of failure." Some of this music has seen wide distribution thanks to
peer-to-peer file sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program t ...
services and
netlabels offering free releases. Steve Goodman characterizes this widespread outpouring of free noise based media as a "noise virus."
[Goodman, Steve. "Contagious Noise: From Digital Glitches to Audio Viruses", in Parikka and Sampson (eds.) ''The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture''. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press. 2009. pp. 129–130.]
Compilations
* ''
An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Volumes 1–7''
Sub Rosa, Various Artists (1920–2012)
* ''Bip-Hop Generation'' (2001–2008) Volumes 1–9, various artists, Paris
* ''Independent Dark Electronics Volume #1'' (2008) IDE
* ''Japanese Independent Music'' (2000) various artists, Paris ''Sonore''
* ''
Just Another Asshole'' #5 (1981) compilation
LP (CD reissue 1995 on Atavistic #ALP39CD), producers:
Barbara Ess
Barbara Ess (born Barbara Eileen Schwartz; April 4, 1944 – March 4, 2021) was an American photographer. She often used a pinhole camera and was known for her No Wave musical and editorial work.
Education
Ess earned a B.A. at the University of ...
and
Glenn Branca
* ''New York Noise, Vol. 1–3'' (2003, 2006, 2006)
Soul Jazz B00009OYSE, B000CHYHOG, B000HEZ5CC
* ''Noise May-Day 2003'', various artists, ''Coquette'' Japan CD Catalog#: NMD-2003
* ''
No New York'' (1978)
Antilles
The Antilles (; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy; es, Antillas; french: Antilles; nl, Antillen; ht, Antiy; pap, Antias; Jamaican Patois: ''Antiliiz'') is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mex ...
, (2006) Lilith, B000B63ISE
* ''$un of the $eventh $ister 80 hour disc'' (2013) venting gallery SLV DC 780.905 SU7S
* ''Women take back the Noise Compilation'' (2006) ubuibi
* ''
The Allegheny White Fish Tapes
''The Allegheny White Fish Tapes'' is a collection of Tobacco's early tapes from 1996-1999 released on July 7, 2009, described as "over 70 minutes of mostly unreleased/unheard songs. warped drum machines, purple noise, Black Flag-esque tracks, r ...
'' (2009),
Tobacco
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
, Rad Cult
* ''The Japanese-American Noise Treaty'' (1995) CD, Relapse
* ''
New York Noise
''New York Noise'' is a one-hour indie-rock music video television program which aired from 2003–2009 on NYC Media in New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. It was created, produced, and edited by Shirley Braha and funded by New ...
'' hour music video television program
See also
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References
Sources
*
Albright, Daniel (ed.) ''Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Source''. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2004.
*
Attali, Jacques. ''
Noise: The Political Economy of Music'', translated by
Brian Massumi
Brian Massumi (; born 1956) is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, cultural studies, political theory and philosophy. His work explores the intersection between power, perception, a ...
, foreword by
Fredric Jameson, afterword by
Susan McClary. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
Press, 1985.
* Atton, Chris (2011). "Fan Discourse and the Construction of Noise Music as a Genre". ''Journal of Popular Music Studies'', Volume 23, Issue 3, pages 324–42, September 2011.
*
Bangs, Lester. ''Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic'', collected writings,edited by
Greil Marcus. Anchor Press, 1988.
* Biro, Matthew. ''The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
*
Cage, John. ''Silence: Lectures and Writings''.
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...
Press, 1961. Reprinted 1973.
* Cage, John.
The Future of Music: Credo (1937). In John Cage, ''Documentary Monographs in Modern Art'', edited by
Richard Kostelanetz, Praeger Publishers, 1970
* Cahoone, Lawrence. ''From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology''. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1996.
* Cain, Nick "Noise" in ''The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music'', Rob Young, ed., London: Verso, 2009.
*
Cascone, Kim.
The Aesthetics of Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.''Computer Music Journal'' 24, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 12–18.
*
*
Cowell, Henry. ''The Joys of Noise'' in ''Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music'', edited by Christoph Cox and Dan Warner, pp. 22–24. New York: Continuum, 2004. (hardcover) (pbk)
''Ocean Music''by
De Maria, Walter (1968)]
*
Charlie Gere, Gere, Charles. ''Art, Time and Technology: Histories of the Disappearing Body''. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005.
*
* Goodman, Steve. 2009. "Contagious Noise: From Digital Glitches to Audio Viruses". In ''The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture'', edited by
Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson, 125–40.. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.
* Hecht, Eugene. ''Optics'', 4th edition. Boston: Pearson Education, 2001.
*
Hegarty, Paul. 2004. "Full with Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music". In ''Life in the Wires'', edited by
Arthur Kroker
Arthur Kroker (born 1945) is a Canadian author, editor, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture.
Life and career
He earned a PhD in political science from McMaster University in 1975. In addition to being a profess ...
and Marilouise Kroker, 86–98. Victoria, Canada: NWP
Ctheory Books.
*
Hegarty, Paul. ''Noise/Music: A History''. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007.
* Piekut, Benjamin. ''Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
*
Kahn, Douglas. ''Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
*Kelly, Caleb. ''Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction'' Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2009.
*
Kemp, Mark. 1992. "She Who Laughs Last:
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
Reconsidered". ''Option Magazine'' (July–August): 74–81.
*
Krauss, Rosalind E. 1979. ''The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths''. Cambridge: MIT Press. Reprinted as ''Sculpture in the Expanded Field''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.
*LaBelle, Brandon. 2006. ''Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art''. New York and London: Continuum International Publishing.
*Landy, Leigh (2007),''Understanding the Art of Sound Organization'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, xiv, 303p.
*
Lewisohn, Mark. 1988. ''The Beatles Recording Sessions''. New York: Harmony Books.
*Lombardi, Daniele. 1981.
Futurism and Musical Notes. ''Artforum'' January 1981
*
*
*
* Masters, Marc. 2007. ''No Wave'' London: Black Dog Publishing.
* Mereweather, Charles (ed.). 2007. ''Art Anti-Art Non-Art''. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
*
*
Joseph Nechvatal, Nechvatal, Joseph. 2012.
Immersion Into Noise'. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. .
*
Joseph Nechvatal, Nechvatal, Joseph. 2000. ''Towards a Sound Ecstatic Electronica''. New York:
The Thingbr>
Post.thing.net*
* Pedersen, Steven Mygind. 2007.
on
Joseph Nechvatal: Viral SymphOny''. Alfred, New York: Institute for Electronic Arts, School of Art & Design,
Alfred University
Alfred University is a private university in Alfred, New York. It has a total undergraduate population of approximately 1,600 students. The university hosts the New York State College of Ceramics, which includes The Inamori School of Engineeri ...
.
* Petrusich, Amanda.
Interview: Lou ReedPitchfork net. (Accessed 13 September 2009)
* Priest, Eldritch. "Music Noise". In his ''Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and The Aesthetics of Failure'', 128–39. London: Bloomsbury Publishing; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. ; (pbk).
* Rice, Ron. 1994. ''A Brief History of Anti-Records and Conceptual Records''. ''Unfiled: Music under New Technology'' 0402
.e., vol. 1, no. 2 Republished online
Ubuweb Papers(Accessed 4 December 2009).
*
Ross, Alex. 2007. ''The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Sangild, Torben. 2002.
The Aesthetics of Noise'. Copenhagen: Datanom. . Reprinted at
UbuWeb
UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.
Phi ...
*
Sanouillet, Michel, and Elmer Peterson (eds.). 1989. ''The Writings of
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
''. New York: Da Capo Press.
* Smith, Owen. 1998. ''Fluxus: The History of an Attitude''. San Diego: San Diego State University Press.
*
*
Tunbridge, Laura. 2011. ''The Song Cycle''. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. .
*
Watson, Ben. "Noise as Permanent Revolution: or, Why Culture Is a Sow Which Devours Its Own Farrow". In ''Noise & Capitalism'', edited by Anthony and Mattin Iles, 104–20. Kritika Series. Donostia-San Sebastián: Arteleku Audiolab, 2009.
*Watson, Steven. 2003. ''Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties''. New York: Pantheon.
*Weiss, Allen S. 1995. ''Phantasmic Radio''. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
*
Young, Rob (ed.). 2009. ''The Wire Primers: A Guide To Modern Music''. London: Verso.
*Van Nort, Doug. (2006), Noise/music and representation systems, ''Organised Sound'', 11(2), Cambridge University Press, pp 173–178.
Further reading
*
Álvarez-Fernández, Miguel.
Dissonance, Sex and Noise: (Re)Building (Hi)Stories of Electroacoustic Music. In ''ICMC 2005: Free Sound Conference Proceedings''. Barcelona: International Computer Music Conference; International Computer Music Association; SuviSoft Oy Ltd., 2005.
* Thomas Bey William Bailey, ''Unofficial Release: Self-Released And Handmade Audio In Post-Industrial Society'', Belsona Books Ltd., 2012
*
Barthes, Roland
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...
. "Listening". In his ''The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation'', translated from the French by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Reprinted Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. (pbk.)
*
Brassier, Ray. "Genre is Obsolete". ''
Multitudes'', no. 28 (Spring 2007
Multitudes.samizdat.net
* Cobussen, Marcel. "Noise and Ethics: On Evan Parker and Alain Badiou". ''Culture, Theory & Critique'', 46(1) pp. 29–42. 2005.
*
Collins, Nicolas (ed.) "Leonardo Music Journal" Vol 13: "Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music" 2003.
* Court, Paula. ''New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978–88''. London: Soul Jazz Publishing, in association with Soul Jazz Records, 2007.
* DeLone, Leon (ed.), ''Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music''. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
* Demers, Joanna. ''Listening Through The Noise''. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.
* Dempsey, Amy. Art in the Modern Era: A Guide to Schools and Movements. New York: Harry A. Abrams, 2002.
*
Doss, Erika. ''Twentieth-Century American Art''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002
* Foege, Alec. ''Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
*
Gere, Charlie. ''Digital Culture'', second edition. London: Reaktion, 2000.
* Goldberg, RoseLee. ''Performance: Live Art Since 1960''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
* Goodman, Steve a.k.a.
kode9. ''Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear''. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2010.
* Hainge, Greg (ed.). ''Culture, Theory and Critique'' 46, no. 1 (Issue on Noise, 2005)
* Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood. ''Art in Theory, 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas''. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992.
* Harrison, Thomas J. ''1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
* Hegarty, Pau
''The Art of Noise'' Talk given to Visual Arts Society at
University College Cork
University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh) is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, and located in Cork.
The university was founded in 1845 as one o ...
, 2005.
* Hegarty, Paul. ''Noise/Music: A History''. New York, London: Continuum, 2007. (cloth); (pbk).
* Hensley, Chad. "The Beauty of Noise: An Interview with Masami Akita of Merzbow". In ''Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music'', edited by C. Cox and Dan Warner, pp. 59–61. New York: Continuum, 2004.
*
Helmholtz, Hermann von. ''On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music'', 2nd English edition, translated by Alexander J. Ellis. New York: Longmans & Co. 1885. Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1954.
* Hinant, Guy-Marc. "TOHU BOHU: Considerations on the nature of noise, in 78 fragments". In ''Leonardo Music Journal'' Vol 13: ''Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music''. 2003. pp. 43–47
* Huyssen, Andreas. ''Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia''. New York: Routledge, 1995.
* Iles, Anthony & Mattin (eds) ''Noise & Capitalism''. Donostia-San Sebastián: Arteleku Audiolab (Kritika series). 2009.
* Juno, Andrea, and Vivian Vale (eds.). ''
Industrial Culture Handbook
RE/Search No. 6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook from RE/Search Publications, 1983 is a book about industrial music and performance art edited by V. Vale and Andrea Juno. It features interviews and articles with Throbbing Gristle, Mark Pauline, Ca ...
''.
RE/Search 6/7. San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1983.
*
Kahn, Douglas, and
Gregory Whitehead Gregory Whitehead (Nantucket, MA) is a writer, radio program maker and audio artist based in Lenox, Massachusetts. Allen S. Weiss considers him to be a major figure in the fields of audio art and radio art.Allen S. Weiss, ''"Lost Tongues and Disar ...
(eds.). ''Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-Garde''. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 1992.
* Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung. ''Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985''. Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
* LaBelle, Brandon. ''Noise Aesthetics'' in ''Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art'', New York and London: Continuum International Publishing, pp 222–225. 2006.
* Lander, Dan. ''Sound by Artists''. Toronto:
Art Metropole
Art Metropole is an artist run centre that publishes, promotes, exhibits, archives and distributes artists' publications and other materials. Art Metropole was founded in 1974 by the Canadian artist collective General Idea as a division of Art ...
, 1990.
*
Licht, Alan. ''Sound Art: Beyond Music, between Categories''. New York: Rizzoli, 2007.
* Lombardi, Daniele. ''Futurism and Musical Notes'', translated by Meg Shore. ''Artforum'
* Malaspina, Cecile. Introduction by Brassier, Ray. ''An Epistemology of Noise''. Bloombury Academic. 2018.
* Malpas, Simon. ''The Postmodern''. New York: Routledge, 2005.
* McGowan, John P. ''Postmodernism and Its Critics''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
* Miller, Paul D. .k.a._DJ_Spooky.html"_;"title="DJ_Spooky.html"_;"title=".k.a._DJ_Spooky">.k.a._DJ_Spooky">DJ_Spooky.html"_;"title=".k.a._DJ_Spooky">.k.a._DJ_Spooky(ed.)._''Sound_Unbound:_Sampling_Digital_Music_and_Culture''._Cambridge,_Ma.:_MIT_Press,_2008.
*_Morgan,_Robert_P.
A_New_Musical_Reality:_Futurism,_Modernism,_and_'The_Art_of_Noises'
,_''Modernism/Modernity''_1,_no._3_(September_1994):_129–51._Reprinted__at_''UbuWeb_
UbuWeb_is_a_web-based_educational_resource_for__avant-garde_material_available_on_the_internet,_founded_in_1996_by_poet_Kenneth_Goldsmith._It_offers_visual,__concrete_and__sound_poetry,_expanding_to_include_film_and__sound_art__mp3_archives.
_Phi_...
''.
*_Thurston_Moore.html" ;"title="DJ_Spooky">.k.a._DJ_Spooky.html" ;"title="DJ_Spooky.html" ;"title=".k.a. DJ Spooky">.k.a. DJ Spooky">DJ_Spooky.html" ;"title=".k.a. DJ Spooky">.k.a. DJ Spooky(ed.). ''Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture''. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2008.
* Morgan, Robert P.
, ''Modernism/Modernity'' 1, no. 3 (September 1994): 129–51. Reprinted at ''
''.
* Thurston Moore">Moore, Thurston. ''Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture''. Seattle: Universe, 2004.
*
Open Humanities Press in conjunction with the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. Ann Arbor. 2011.
* David Novak, ''
: Music at the Edge of Circulation'', Duke University Press. 2013
*
. ''Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond'', 2nd edition. Music in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. (cloth) (pbk)
*
.
from Apollonio, Umbro, ed. ''Documents of 20th-century Art: Futurist Manifestos''. Brain, Robert, R.W. Flint, J.C. Higgitt, and Caroline Tisdall, trans. New York: Viking Press, pp. 31–38. 1973.
*
. ''From Technological to Virtual Art''. Cambridge: MIT Press/Leonardo Books, 2007.
* Popper, Frank. ''Art of the Electronic Age''. New York: Harry N. Abrams; London: Thames & Hudson, 1993. (New York); (New York); (London); Paperback reprint, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997. .
* Ruhrberg, Karl, Manfred Schneckenburger, Christiane Fricke, and Ingo F. Walther. ''Art of the 20th Century''. Cologne and London: Taschen, 2000.
*
. ''The Art of Noises''. New York: Pendragon, 1986.
* Samson, Jim. ''Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977.
*
.
. ''Le Solfège de l'Objet Sonore'' (''Music Theory of the Sound Object''), a sound recording that accompanied ''Traité des Objets Musicaux'' (''Treatise on Musical Objects'') by Pierre Schaeffer, was issued by ORTF (French Broadcasting Authority) as a long-playing record in 1967.
*
. ''The Soundscape'' Rochester, Vt: Destiny Books, 1993.
* Sheppard, Richard. ''Modernism-Dada-Postmodernism''. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2000.
* Steiner, Wendy. ''Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art''. New York: The Free Press, 2001.
* Stuart, Caleb. "Damaged Sound: Glitching and Skipping Compact Discs in the Audio of
and Oval" In ''Leonardo Music Journal'' Vol 13: ''Groove, Pit and Wave: Recording, Transmission and Music''. 2003. pp. 47–52
*
. ''A History of "Consonance" and "Dissonance"''. White Plains, New York: Excelsior; New York: Gordon and Breach, 1988.
* Thompson, Emily. ''The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933''. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 2002.
* Voegelin, Salome. ''Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art''. London: Continuum. 2010. Chapter 2 ''Noise'', pp. 41–76.
* Woods, Michael. ''Art of the Western World''. Mandaluyong: Summit Books, 1989.
* Woodward, Brett (ed.). ''Merzbook: The Pleasuredome of Noise''. Melbourne and Cologne: Extreme, 1999.
*
(ed.) ''Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music''. London: Continuum Books. 2002.
.
A short noise music documentary film by N.O. Smith
's ''89 VI 8 c. 1:42–1:52 AM Paris Encore'' (10:33) on
Paul Hegarty, ''General Ecology of Sound: Japanese Noise Music as Low Form'' (2005)
's spatiodynamic sculptures sourced from the DVD of an exhibition at Espace Gantner, France, 2004, titled ''Précurseur de l'art cybernétique''.
*