Anti-Music
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Anti-Music rejects ordinary expectations of melody, harmony, virtuosity, authorship or entertainment. It can be silence, noise, chance, feedback, instruction, conceptual provocation or deliberately unlistenable sound, asking the listener to question what counts as music in the first place. The sound may be minimal, chaotic or brutally repetitive, but the central gesture is conceptual pressure against musical habit.
History
Anti-music impulses run from Futurist noise manifestos and Dada performance through John Cage's silence, Fluxus actions, AMM's non-idiomatic improvisation, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and punk/no wave refusals of competence. It is not one scene but a recurring strategy: using musical space to attack musical habit. Later noise, conceptual sound art, harsh electronics and glitch all inherit parts of its argument.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Pitchfork review of Lou Reed Metal Machine Music
- Pitchfork interview with Lou Reed on Metal Machine Music
- histories of John Cage and Fluxus
- Discogs noise style page