Noise Music

Noise and its relationship to music - and noise as music - is asuitably chaotic and mercurial subject with much hissing feedback.According to author Paul Hegarty in Noise/Music, A History (Continuum, 232 pages, $22.95), noise is defined by what it is not and a resistance, but also defined by what society resists.

In his phenomenal study, he provides a history and a sense ofthat contradiction. Until now, most investigations into noise and musichave been chiefly concerned with chronicling early innovators like JohnCage or Karlheinz Stockhausen, but usually at the cost of the last 30years being framed as aftershocks of modernism and not developments intheir own right. Noise, in Hegarty's estimation, has evolved farbeyond, as a resource and into an aesthetic philosophy.

This could placate all denominations - from beardedimprovisers to black-clad nihilists - and feels more correct than anylinear conception of successive avant-gardes following one another.Exhaustive without being exhausting, Hegarty lucidly works his waythrough the last 100 years of music and untangles dogmas and ideologiesranging from Theodor Adorno's immensely flawed approach to jazz to thevalorization of ineptitude by punks and composers alike. Hegartyrefreshingly places his history around recent noise - as he says noiseitself constantly dissipates ... noise music must also be thought of asconstantly failing - failing to stay noise or acceptable practice. This approach is open enough for sudden leaps and insight. For everyobsessive exegesis on Merzbow, there's his consideration of PublicEnemy as an industrial band or his original take on the minimalist jamsof garage and Kraut-rock bands: the long tracks of proto-punk are adirect erasing of the meandering 'expressions' musicians were doingmore and more, live and on album. It is not enough just to reject thelong form (as the Ramones would do); it is far more effective to wreckthe purpose of it through the form itself. Any d

An intertwined crash course in outsider music and cultural studies, Paul Hegarty's dense new survey, Noise/Music: A History , traces noise music's avant-garde and experimental roots from Futurism, Fluxus, and musique concrete to 1970s progressive rock and punk and examines its more recent incarnations.

One noise-engaging genre is jazz, the subject of Hegarty's most compelling chapter, in which he investigates Adorno's infamous dismissal of the form in a 1936 essay...Hegarty also offers a fresh analysis of free jazz's abstractions, tying the subgenre's oscillation between form and content, its 'attack on tonality, ' and its 'introduction of non-musical noises' to Bataille's concept of the 'formless.'

The book's selected discography..should satisfy both the curious and the extreme enthusiast...it's a reminder that there's 'no sound, no noise, no silence, ' without our active participation. -Bookforum Sept. 2007

Noise and its relationship to music - and noise as music - is a suitably chaotic and mercurial subject with much hissing feedback. According to author Paul Hegarty in Noise/Music, A History (Continuum, 232 pages, $22.95), noise is defined by what it is not and a resistance, but also defined by what society resists.

In his phenomenal study, he provides a history and a sense of that contradiction. Until now, most investigations into noise and music have been chiefly concerned with chronicling early innovators like John Cage or Karlheinz Stockhausen, but usually at the cost of the last 30 years being framed as aftershocks of modernism and not developments in their own right. Noise, in Hegarty's estimation, has evolved far beyond, as a resource and into an aesthetic philosophy.

This could placate all denominations - from bearded improvisers to black-clad nihilists - and feels more correct than any linear conception of successive avant-gardes following one another. Exhaustive without being exhausting, Hegarty lucidly works his way through the last 100 years of music and untangles dogmas and ideologies ranging from Theodor Adorno's immensely flawed approach to jazz to the valorization of ineptitude by punks and composers alike. Hegarty refreshingly places his history around recent noise - as he says noise itself constantly dissipates ... noise music must also be thought of as constantly failing - failing to stay noise or acceptable practice. This approach is open enough for sudden leaps and insight. For every obsessive exegesis on Merzbow, there's his consideration of Public Enemy as an industrial band or his original take on the minimalist jams of garage and Kraut-rock bands: the long tracks of proto-punk are a direct erasing of the meandering 'expressions' musicians were doing more and more, live and on album. It is not enough just to reject the long form (as the Ramones would do); it is far more effective to wreck the purpose of it thro