noise music

is not transgressive, for no one shockable is ever within earshot of it. There's no disruption or challenge in these scenes, because these practitioners are screeching to the converted.

The concept of 'noise' has made a big come- back in recent years . the irritating end of it is all those artist aiming for ye old ‘shock effect,' their pure noise laden with content of tediously ‘transgressive' nature (all the old cliched faves of vileness and violation: serial murder, neo-Nazis, yawn. The blindingly obvious fact is that no one shockable is within earshot; there's no disruption or challenge in these scenes, because they're screeching to the converted.

is not so much radical in the sense of rendering the ears into ‘wounds'. Rather, it stands for the reservoir of invention from which more mainstream music draws as it advances by incorporating non-musical sounds, aestheticizing mistakes, deploying randomness, and asserting the percussive and the textural over the melodic and harmonic.

If anything should be salvaged here, it is that noise is always a relational concept, and Reynolds persuasively argues that the concept is actually least radical in the ears-are-wounds sense. Instead, for Reynolds, noise stands for the reservoir of invention in those “popular but un-pop sounds [that] have echoed the trajectory of twentieth-century avant-garde classical music, which advanced through incorporating non-musical sounds, aestheticizing mistakes, deploying randomness, and asserting the percussive and the textural over the melodic and harmonic.”

Simon ReynoldsThinkers

Simon Reynolds