Noise
Located in 2 routes
Noise treats distortion, feedback, saturation, volume, static, signal overload, mechanical scrape, microphone abuse, and unwanted sound as the main musical material. Its sound can be explosive and improvised, monolithic and static, industrial and ideological, punk-speed chaotic, ritual-dark, or digitally shredded; melody and pulse may be absent, buried, or violently implied. The point is not simply loudness but a changed listening contract: texture, pressure, and threshold become form.
History
Noise’s ancestry includes Luigi Russolo’s futurist noise instruments, Dada performance, prepared piano, feedback experiments, free jazz, rock distortion, early electronics, and industrial music, but the modern underground coalesced through cassette networks, small labels, mail art, and extreme live performance from the late 1970s onward. Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse shaped industrial and power-electronics violence, Merzbow, Hijokaidan, Masonna, Incapacitants, C.C.C.C., and Hanatarash made Japanese noise internationally central, and American and European scenes later developed harsh noise, HNW, death industrial, noisecore, and noise-rock crossings. The family influenced extreme metal, industrial techno, experimental electronics, performance art, drone, sound art, and the aesthetics of overload in digital culture.
Sub-genres in this family
6 sub-genres · 6 written up
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music
- David Novak, Japanoise
- AllMusic
- Discogs