Talking About Noise Music

Ever wanted to try out noise music? Curious? I talk about some of the elements of noise and ways of approaching this seemingly-impenetrable form of music.

Let me know your thoughts on noise in the comments section below.

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[hollywoodraptor]

I love noise music. It's very psychedelic in a way. I love putting on a Merzbow or Prurient record and just walk around with headphones on. It's a super wierd feeling, especially if you got good noise cancelling headphones. It's like the whole world just glitched out. You watch a pigeon fly by and you just hear it's almost like a drug trip. I'd recommend the noise compilation that adult swim put out last year as a starting point to get into noise. They have all aspects of noise represented from noise rap and rock to power electronics.

[bobbys]

You should do a 5 album intro for Noise music.

[liamthemusicreviewer]

Interesting video mate: always thought Noise was ambient music pushed to its extreme since there’s some sort of similarity between the two, glad you pointed that out.

[toolatetocolonize]

I’d say a good introduction into noise music is Sonic Youth. Thurston Moore has done a bunch of recordings and collaborations of noise music. After listening and getting used to the noise walls they implemented in their works. And listen to their SYR Series for an introduction to that scene of improvisational noise and electronic noise.

[gigahertz_]

Some of my favorite noise tracks

Prurient - Greenpoint
Prurient - Pipes and Water
Prurient - Red Poppy Laughter (one of my favorite tracks of all time)
Merzbow - 1930
Merzbow & Xiu Xiu - Merzxiu A
Merzbow & Maurizio Bianchi - Am Symphony

[Nuit.mp]

As a noise artist, I've never considered it music, more so art in an extreme form. It's a sound scape, it's something you experience, not exactly listen to if that makes any sense.

[vleesvlieg]

some noise records make me want to bite into the music and chew it ahhh

[abuslinky]

To me noise was always a social experience. Nearly everyone at a gig was also making noise and performing. You could walk up to a stranger and ask them what kind of instruments or software they were using or building or what concepts they were working with, and nearly always they would have something interesting brewing. If you found the one person there who wasn't a maker they would be the mandatory token "audient" and you could talk about CDs and whatever. I guess that's the case for a lot of other genres too, at least in the early days, but it was great to experience it. We even had a sociologist who would turn up and take notes at gigs.

[thefinkie]

I think the best way to get into noise music is to approach it slowly. People on here recommending their favourite noise record may find that this isn't that helpful. For someone who has listened to, for example, rock music all their life, listening to a Merzbow record is not going to get them interested. The trick is to listen to rock music (or whatever genre you're interested in) with elements of noise music, then slowly delve into more and more extreme and experimental music. Eventually, you will be able to have an appreciation of the arrhythmic harsh noise end of the spectrum that you would not have if you'd tried diving right in. This is based on my own experiences, but I imagine this would be the easier way for MOST people to get into the genre.

[surroundgatari]

Prurient's Frozen Niagara Falls is what got me into noise. The bridge between typical compositions and added abrasion, field recordings and layering made me understand the appeal. Sometimes it's almost like alternative poetry, where the poetry isn't necessarily in words.

[Patricia_Taxxon]

The album that turned me on to noise was Merzbow's Hybrid Noisebloom, it's not an easy listen but it really made me appreciate that timbre alone can be a powerful compositional tool. It's so deeply textured and complex, it made shapes form in my mind.

[OxenoftheSun]

Noise is weird, for me to "enjoy" noise it needs to be, either really textured and rich with a variety of sounds (whitehouse, prurient, merzbow) or mixed with another genre of music (clipping, dreamcrusher, the angelic process, yellow swans, maybe death grips?) Loving these videos man, keep it up

[MMiler]

If Noise was a painting, it would be a Francis Bacon, or Jackson Pollock. It's messy, and violent, and not for everyone.

[RobPaulson]

Atrax Mourge is a great noise artist, and his backstory makes his music even better

[DavidMiller-dtmx]

I fell into noise from industrial. So much of it is the expression of my life.

[godoooo]

This comment section is beautiful, thank you everybody and thank you Oliver

[PirateZ]

As a fan of noise, I have no clue what type of album to recommend as an "intro." Its hard to get the full idea of what noise is while at the same time trying to find a middle ground between conventional music and noise as an introductory step

[cranklabexplosion-labcentr]

Karen: death metal is just *N O I S E*






Merzbow: hold my *O)))*

[mrhenu]

Wonderful video, Oliver. Once I learned to appreciate noise, my musical landscape broadened significantly and I eventually got into free jazz, musique concréte, electroacoustic improvisation and various modern classical subgenres. I would encourage everyone to have an open mind and try out different things without trying to analyze or understand everything.

[phantasmatt.]

PHARMAKON is a great noise/power-electronics act that I feel is a bit more melodious and possibly more accessible to people attempting to "get" the genre. And seeing a noise performance is different from any other genre I've seen live. These shows draw quite a unique crowd, and they're in much smaller "venues." Lots of old school crust punks, some metal heads, a random joe, goths, etc. I've noticed a bit of every scene showing up. Very intense experience overall.