Why Do You Listen To Noise? (I'm writing an opinion article)

[Arvo]

I've read someone say that they worked at a record store for several years (not Ron) and most people who bought noise/experimental stuff were with a group, just kind of hyping the new thing.

This applies to anyone who listens to PE, Noise, Drone, and other such "Non Music".

I don't care about conceptual remarks, philosophical background, artistic reactionism, and etc.

I'm asking why it is that people listen to it personally, inside their home or in transit. What function it serves, especially as it applies to the idea of being apart or separate from music.

What factors are you looking for? Is production quality an issue? If not, what is it that takes its place?

What makes a noise release something that gets repeat listens?

This could also include live performance, why a noise show is something you're interested in going to.

I've read Boyd Rice say something like "It helps me get in touch with my more reptilian part of my mind" and etc. Is that really it?

I also remember someone saying somewhere that they started by listening to Wolf Eyes, and after a while they got more of an ear for it, started putting contact mics on their turntables for long periods of time. I can appreciate that, but what makes a noise release one worth buying?

I know it's subjective but I want to get a variety of competent answers where ever possible.

If this has been discussed before, I could not find it in the search engine.

This is genuine curiosity, but I do intend to compile the results formally and publish them somewhere, giving proper credit to any contributions I use. That said, if any one sharing could also add their name and link this would be good.

I "discovered" making noise on accident, I didn't listen to it at all before I happened to end up making it. It was the result of total music failure, but I started refining what happened as a result, instead of trying to get back to music. I was kind of out of my head and at that time it seemed like what I was doing was perfectly dancable even though in hindsight it was totally out there. I'm saying this because I'm no newbie, but I really have only been listening to noise for 6 or 7 years, and very selectively at that. It's only a fraction of what I have in my collection. While I'm no expert on the history of it, my regular day involves listening to some locked grooves mixed with drones on my computer mixed with 5 radios and/or any combination etc. I have nothing to prove, but I'm a reclusive person and I'm no scenester by any stretch.

I expect a lot of smartass remarks and that's fine, but I'm trying to be totally respectful here. I'm just very curious why more seasoned people listen to it, especially people that have been at it for a very long time.

I am going to finish this article by the end of November. This will be in a major Chicago weekly paper. Please feel free to add to it! I will contact you privately for your name, location and project name/label/history if I decide to quote you.

[icepick method]

I listen to hear new sounds, and new clever ways of using sounds. I'm not a fan of genrefied "me-too" bands that make up every music scene, doing their hero worship and coverband act. Some rise above that, most don't. I'm only really interested in the ones who do. That's why i'd say i'm not really a fan of noise, but of artists who can make aggressive music and do it in new ways, with new sounds.

Sound design is more important to me than composition. I'd prefer to hear something new than to hear a perfectly played melody. Composition still needs to play a role though. I get bored of meandering sound experiments that have no drive, no payoff. That's what brings me back to a release, the money shot. Just like film, create an engrossing  environment, a stage for your audio tale, then fill it with your characters and have the events of your story play out, tension, anticipation, longing, to action, violence, death, resurrection(?)/resignation. There is one aspect of noise i don't like, artists who distill one part, basically the payoff part, into one long sustained moment. It takes it out of context, and as a listener nullifies its impact. I do see the need for stuff like this, it has its place, but when an entire micro-genre is created around it, it becomes stale. Not being able to tell one artist from the next.

I don't think noise is something you like to listen to at first. You just kind of ween your way into it. At least that's how it worked for me. I bought TG: 3rd annual report when i was 13 and hated it, didn't understand it. Same with Laibach - M.B. December 21, 1984, which i remember thinking was completely non-musical. Looking back now it's very much composed, my 13 year old mind just wasn't ready to comprehend.

[Arvo]

Thanks for this response!  It's one of my favorite ones so far.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I'm sometimes slightly confused about why would it be THAT different from listening music in general? Of course, some people do not "get it", just like some people don't "get" abstract art, or controversial art, concept art, etc. But it requires very little of explanation in the end.
Perhaps the difficulty of understanding is how modern music is nowadays, and especially how "youth culture" music is. Very much reduced to specific standard instruments and sound quality (in mainstream) all the time made into very artificial. And suddenly the rhythms you hear are triggered drums, heavily compressed crunchy guitars. Nothing "noisy" really. Just loud, clear and smooth balance.
If you listen to any other type of music, from classical to jazz, to tribal to whatever, it's always the vivid textures of sound interacting. You listen to any slightly advanced music, they go beyond the triggers template sounds. They find the textures of rhythm and sound patterns from whatever usable. Be it negroes stomping floors of recording studio or crew of Santana banging wooden logs together.. to much more exciting & experimental sounds. Most people wonder why did some 70's band sound so great, while now the band doing cover sounds like shit. It is most of all the elements of "noise" and "experimental", I strongly believe.
You could ask it from guy who listens for example classical music. Why you don't listen melodic classical, but contemporary art music? And he might tell there's so much more than "melody" in music. That asking why you insist some melody, when you got dozens of other qualities that create piece interesting? Why would the old standard of guitar riff or violin melody define is music worth listening to?

Anyway, I know this was exactly the kind of babble you mentioned you don't want to hear, but rather ask why person listens noise himself. But answer is really that above. I often wonder why would I listen some stupid riff played on guitar? Why I would listen 40 minutes of someone beating drum kit consisting snare, bass drum, couple tomtoms and cymbals? If there is just about everything what would make rhythm section more interesting. Suddenly I wonder what is this "drum kit" thing anyways? Who started to sell people standard kits as "instrument" used by default and why should I care?

To listen to "noise", to me, is not different from listening music. I listen what inspires and satisfies myself. And lets say, that there are really periods of months, when I listen nothing else but "noise"/"experimental". In my home stereos that is. There comes periods when I "catch up" with metal, punk or rock'n'roll, but then often return for weeks of nothing but noise. To listen noise, I don't need to justify it to myself. It nowadays tends to happen with music. Why would I listen music that sounds uninteresting. Focus in word SOUNDS. I guess this could be key word in listening noise. You focus most of all into sound and specific details.   Riffs, songs, melodies, etc they're ok, but only if sound is inspiring. Without interesting sound and atmosphere, those musical qualities are worth nothing. For sake of good atmosphere and sound, those musical qualities can be simply rejected and it does no harm. You actually are not distracted from good crunchy distortion and complex sound waves of percussion and it's various shades by some ongoing pop tune infecting the ear.

[Ashmonger]

As a rather amateurish listener of noise/pe (have been listening to it only a couple of years and still listen to a lot of other stuff), for me it started with listening to Ambient. Then I heard some acts having having harsher parts, which I started to like. Such as Steel Hook Prostheses, not really harsh, but their stuff sounds too me often as ambient, while for other people (like my father) who like ambient, SHP is just noise (trying to explain him that it was even far away from really harsh noise, was a difficult task, hahaha). From there it went into extremer stuff.
So, what started me into noise/pe, was my interest in ambient and other related genres, coupled with my liking of extreme music.

I have to agree with FA though, that I've never really understood the question: "what do you like about this or that music?" Years ago a lot of people asked it about Black/Death Metal, now people ask me about noise. While it is an understandable question, the first thing that always pops into my mind is "why do you listen to the music you like?".
The answer for one part is of course the feeling you get from listening to music/noise. In noise/pe you can get aggression, or you can get a feeling of despair (like with parts of The Vomit Arsonist's Reason tape), or parts of a dark beauty, as with Gospels of the Gash of NTT. Think I can go on for a while... That's what I like, that good noise/pe can move me.
On the other hand, it's also the sound. There's extreme metal bands, where I can think: "ok, this guitar sound is soo fucking great, even apart from what they are playing" And that's what you get with noise as well. But then focused on the sound only. I also keep being amazed at what can be done with relative simple means. There's no real instruments, no melody, just a numer of sounds and still you can strucutre them and make 'songs', though not in the classical sence.

A bit off-topic, but writing this, just reminds me of it: One of my grandfathers always complains that in modern pop music there's no melody. So, I always think it would be fun to let him listen to some really Harsh Noise and say "Listen, this doesn't even have rythm". Must be total terror for the man, hahaha...

[Arvo]

Mikko,
I was already going to quote what you said in the troniks board a couple years ago on this subject now, but this is better.  I still think that if you listen to a recording of 5 turntables being played at full volume on huge speakers, you're going to get a different reaction (mental reaction, perhaps metaphysical reaction, a jarring) that doesn't happen if you listen to death metal at full volume, I think it has different physical properties, it does something different.  I mean if you blare 5 radios tuned to static very loudly in your apartment, people are not going to say that it is music, or that it's just the same as music.   I believe that noise caters to a different part of the brain, it triggers something that is different from an emotional/sentimental/sense of beauty reaction that music triggers.   That is my personal opinion, but I agree about sound, I'm going to mention that, that certain favorite bands of mine that I love deeply, when they are remastered they sound like shit and I hate it.  So sound is part of it, I'll say that much. 

Ashmonger,
Another part of my discourse has been about the definition of "noise", when jazz became weirder and rock n roll came about, people said it was "noise" or "racket", so I am exploring peoples' definition of "noise" as something unwanted, an interference, and how it has become part of the musical tapestry (at least to some people). 

[Arvo]

Mikko,

You said that until 2009, you hardly listened to any music at all, and you didn't understand why people would listen to typical sounds like drums and things like that.   How did that happen?   How did you come to ignore music to such an extent?

[dfylr]

Personally I think noise music leans more on experimentation and emotion rather then being a drive behind mere substance,such as looking at artists who create heavy fields of abstract sounds are building somewhat of a canvas used for the listiner to paint their own picture with what ever vision may be created by that individual.I have often leaned twords darker sounds that carry various nuances and a genuine rawness within the production and material as a whole,early Slaughter House Productions/Cold Meat Industry being the most obvious.Most however never understand the art behind noise music or P.E,and they shouldnt either,such aggression isnt meant for the open ear,rather people or individuals who can relate to such with either the enviroments they may live in,or are fed up with the restraints/limits founds within wider genres,includeing but not limited to Dark Ambient/Metal/Industrial etc.

After a while the emotion once found within the use of modern instruments as guitars,drums,vocals become replaced with a feeling of sounding familiar,where as noise shifts and changes and depending on its creater can truely move the listiner in ways unattainable within other outlets of music.Alot of people however are listing to noise for the aggression factor and not understanding the big picture,sure one can drown them selves out in ambient,metal,experimental music,but what about the intelligence factor?Think about how often a guitar sounds like a guitar no matter how many effects one chooses to use to where seething sounds tend to penitrate alot further and really leave a stain on ones mental,as well as physical well being.

Noise isnt always about creating the harshest most intolerable sounds out there,as Iam noticing many projects seem to think this works,and to some it may,but what about createing harsh sounds that pin point an experience for the listiner,something that openes up ones mind to embrace what the artist himself may be feeling or experienceing.Then again noise doesnt have to always be saturated to tend such a favored reaction,theres many musicians I have listened to who have impacted my comfort zone useing a hand full of sounds accompained with minimal effects but done in such a way I was moved and compeled to further my experiences within their workings.Personally I believe in seeking music that reflects an artists personality,who that individual may be away from the musical medium and what that person may be dealing with,maybe its something I can relate to,maybe their aspects are something I can personally grasp.

Plain and simple Noise is one of the purest forms of art if approached as such,just like one cherishes their Monet,or their Mona Lisa,most of us into noise experimentation cherish the realness behind it,and how ones mere work of such art can be carried over into something heart felt and meaningful....

Now nothings wrong with a good dark Black Metal album once in a while lol, but we all know that at the end of the day it wont be long until someone creates the same sounds found on what ever disk may be in your cd player at the time,noise and P.E will always change,and open up diffrent methods from its creation to its responce.......

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Mikko,

You said that until 2009, you hardly listened to any music at all, and you didn't understand why people would listen to typical sounds like drums and things like that.   How did that happen?   How did you come to ignore music to such an extent?

Where did I say it?  E-mail? No, I have meant like "regular music". I've always listened to "underground music", but I never really owned or listened much of normal pop/rock etc. until later. Only isolated cases of hardrock bands at best.
Then I started to investigate what is out there, simply to see should I care about some more famous rock'n'roll band, or be satisfied in low level underground substitutes. It's undeniable fact that whatever "Iron Bonehead" evil heavy metal you buy, they are horrendously inferior to bigger names, such as Ratt or Accept for example. I would hear "neo-classical bands" with lame synths, but didn't have single REAL classical album some years ago. I would hear plenty of "neo-folk", but with no actual folk records. So I consciously investigated what is out there and often would realize there's no point to waste your time to neo folk scenester bands for example. If there's whole world of better folk out there.

But, at some point, as I mentioned, I became very annoyed about normal band music, especially when it was modernized. I can't listen to radio. I can't listen to modern metal or rock. Each band sounds atrocious. Even if music could be tolerable, often sound isn't. This includes also most of the supposedly "extreme" bands.

I think what happened, was simply that while others asks "why I listen distorted metal percussion", I simply was asking, why I listen drum beat what at the same time often sounds the same - especially with modern recordings. With same set up. Same polished & plasticized sound. Why I listen some stupid crunchy extra compressed guitars picking nonsense jump rhythms with same chord? etc etc.. People very easily question listening noise, while a lot of people don't see any reason to question normal music. But personally, to me that's how it goes nowadays.

I think it is most of all that my interests in listening has progressed all the time more and more to texture and detail. Where it's not only texture created by instruments or sound objects, but textures of the object/instrument itself. And if it is missing the feel of micro level activity and organic/spontaneous interaction, it can be boring. I mean, keyboard tone? It may be ok'ish. But most of all, nowadays it is digital sound, repeating the exact same sound. Listening drone music made of supposedly strong, heavy and clean keyboard drones is ultimately very boring for me. Listening just about same composition, same height of tone, but for example source being ventilation fan, whistles, horns, some location field recording. It almost always carries the micro level activity and spontaneous interaction of sound elements. It appears as if nothing happens, but EVERYTHING happens. The same element you can hear in old rock music. Where bands actually play together and sound is captured from space where physical sound waves happens. Where techniques and skills of playing effect the end result.
In moden music, it has often transformed into showcase of individual instrument holders technical performance. You don't even listen to specific drum beat, but actually more like each separate drum alone. Modern rock, where everybody plays their stuff separately, possibly in-line, with digital effects removing all life there used to be. Often real instrument is more like control-pad of lifeless electronic sound (most of all in rhythm section). While in traditional music, drum kit was the "instrument". Now each separate drum or cymbal is the "instrument". The real interaction on textural level is flattened into utmost boredom.

To me, the sound is crucial. It doesn't mean it would have to be something very specific, a'la "filthy" or "elegant". It needs to be suitable. The best noise, is all about killer sounds. Not only about how "brutal" or how "fierce" it is, but there is the real creative and interesting element to it. If there isn't, it's probably pretty lame noise. Which unfortunately is quite high amount of material out there...  But I still rather reject rough guitar sound with average riff, if I can get the rough yet interesting sound alone. It's very rare occasion when molody or "riff" contributes something vital to noise.

These are among the reasons why I never liked bands like Sunn o))) or Wicked King Wicker for example. For many people it appears to be quality what makes noise listenable - to have doomy guitar riffs inserted there. For me it makes this stuff unlistenable. Noise sounds appear only as cheap spices of music, but not interesting textures alone - in context of noise.

[heretogo]

I mean if you blare 5 radios tuned to static very loudly in your apartment, people are not going to say that it is music, or that it's just the same as music.   I believe that noise caters to a different part of the brain, it triggers something that is different from an emotional/sentimental/sense of beauty reaction that music triggers.

But isn't looking at a painting by van Gogh also different from viewing a piece by Beuys, for example? Both can be great and share the same context of 'visual art'. And listening to Sibelius's first symphony triggers very different sentiments than something by Luc Ferrari. Actually, I tend to think of noise as the modern music. It's just that most people haven't realised it yet. And the great thing is that it spans the whole spectrum from utter low-brow to the loftiest high-brow, using basically the exact same set of tools & instrumentation. The same gear (conceptually, at least) - and result might be either filth & violence or deep cerebral exploration.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

What IS music, is already so close to noise, it seems quite strange to consider that final step to be anything too radical.
I look for interesting sound, interesting texture, interesting emotion, interesting subject matter expressed within the material (either really expressed, or merely pasted on...). In that sense, noise is not so different.
Of course one could say that every unusual form of sound has people just lurking out of curiosity, but not sure if its much more in noise? At least compared to amount of listeners?

[GEWALTMONOPOL]

Derailing the thread perhaps but one thing that's been on my mind for a while is the prevailing idea of underground (add noise to that) as somehow more genuine and honest than mainstream or pop music. While that may have been the case years ago a quick visit on Facebook will reveal that it's as full of desperately needy whores screaming for attention and with as little to offer as the average X-Factor contender. It's quite depressing.

Personal reasons for listening to noise. Initially the sensation of broken sound. Somewhere along the line something broke in me and the need for broken sound appeared. I like the destruction and ultimately the despair.

[Goat93]

I see it like Mikko. If you hear Pop Music, you can easily see thats just some Lego Stone Parts, which can changed. The Pop Music is the Basic Rythm Feeling of real Composings, so i would say it is all just Soundelements. Of Course its easier to listen to Rythm Music, since its Bass Basics. But for example, not even 20 Years ago Piano were a Common Music Instrument in nearly all Popular Music like Rock, Hardrock, Pop, Jazz ect ect. Nowadays there are not really much Interprets with this Instrument.

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q3H2UQYLzM

So, the Music Instrument are not more Common, the Culture Changed, so the Music. But it is not all just Sounds in the End?

And what you said about the Feeling. Its not the Music itself, its the Common Sense in the Actual Time you listen to it. Death Metal make the same reaction for a Nowaday Listener like Hard Rock an Age ago. Or Heavy Metal. Where do you think came all this Chlichees about Heavy Metal Animals, Destruction and Hardlining Violence? Cause they made it. Long forgotten nowadays that a Band Like Metallica results in Brutal Violence at Concerts.Also nicely forgotten that Type o Negative where brandet as hell for Nazi in germany incl. European Tour cancelling and Destruction of Equickment.
First time i hear Iron Maiden same feelings came like hearing some Death Metal Stuff some Years later...
Or Power Electronics makes the same Feelings to me like primitive Black Metal...I listen to Noise cause i like it and i find it mostly really relaxing to hear it :)

[tiny_tove]

I may go sliglthy off topic since I will talk more about my education/predisposition to noise, than why I listen to it now.
The answer could be very simple: I like it, it is absorbing, and helps me focus.

But there is more. Since I was a kid I have felt attracted by certain mechanical/metallic induced noises.
My education to noise started with trains, my family had been working on railways for over 3 generation, and most of my relatives on my father side still work on that, so I spent plenty of time on them.
The idea of a train-trip was associated to holidays or week end out, and the specific rhythm the train "played" on the Como-Milano line was pleasing me as much as the kids' music played on TV. During the years I have grown very fond of other sort of noises, which I enjoyed listening to and I also like to repeat by voice, during games, etc. Something that made my parents and relatives laugh a lot. Every kid does and I do not feel special because of this, but apparently I was doing it MUCH more than my friends at the playground.
At the end of the day, I believe my acceptance of noise in my life depends on association to positive memories, a Pavlovian reflex. I noticed noises and accepted them in my life since I was witnessing them when discovering life, the world and my building my own perception of the world.
I have discovered noise/industrial/experimental when I discovered also other kinds of radical sounds, even if more "musical", and I accepted it immediately as a very powerful form of expressions, although it took some years to get fully into it, since I needed more codes to interpret and understand WHY noise worked for me as much as other expressions.
If I think about my favourite forms of noises , they are the exact same of when I was a kid: engines, trains, water, chains, metallic sourfaces, etc., usually with repetitive patterns involved.

[Nil By Mouth]

First of all, sorry for my english. I know that I can't speak it so properly but I'm trying to be undestandable to everyone. Well, probably most of my close friends know my impairment of hearing, so can be really hard to know that I'm listening noise and PE all the days and all the hours, expecially for the 'normal' people (this is the motivation I keep this 'hobby' so secret). I was introduce to listening noise since I was child, during hearing exams around Italy. Bangs noises, heavy bass sound, high pitched ringing and hisses through headphones, sometimes also vibrations with a strange instruments putted directly on a small part of my shaved head. Well, this kind of stuff maybe have created a sort of background never deleted from my mind, in fact sometimes I hear my 'brain' generate some long and indefinable hiss, everytime with a different frequency. Maybe someone can labeled me mad ;)

Depla with his child experiences remind me this kind of old memory, sometimes think on it and during this thoughts session I make an idea on why I listen non conventional music as noise, PE, extreme metal. I don't was introduced by other people, just read it on rock newspapers and searching the most particular type of noise because I need to be away from the masses, in a cultural and above all purely sound. Probably to inform other peoples that it's important to hear sound and noises with the brain and not only with the auditory organ.