Noise Music

Can silence be "noisy"? Why do punk banks downplay their musical abilities? What do 37 minutes of ceaseless feedback and squawking birds tell us about the human experience? Calling upon the work of noted cultural critics like Jean Baudrillard, George Bataille and Theodor Adorno, philosophy and visual culture professor Paul Hegarty delves into these questions while tracing the history of "noise" (defined at different times as "intrusive, unwanted," "lacking skill, not being appropriate" and "a threatening emptiness") from the beginnings of the 18th century concert hall music to avant-garde movements like musique concrete and free jazz to Japanese noise rocker Merzbow. Ironically, it is John Cage's notorious 4'33", in which an audience sits through four and a half minutes of "silence," that represents the beginning of noise music proper for Hegarty; the "music" made up entirely of incidental theater sounds (audience members coughing, the A/C's hum), represents perfectly the tension between the "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that makes up all noise music, from Satie to punk. Hegarty does an admirable job unpacking diverse genres of music, and his descriptions of the most bizarre pieces can be great fun to read ("clatters and reverbed chickeny sounds...come in over low throbs"). Though his style tends toward the academic (the "dialectic of Enlightenment" and Heidegger appear frequently), Hegarty's wit and knowledge make this an engaging read. * Publishers Weekly *
In this rigorously researched deconstruction of noise, Paul Hegarty explains how the concept is entirely contingent upon social norms and how its inevitable emergence into music, which is simply organized noise, unfolded. Hegarty begins by arguing for the concept of noise as a socially undesirable them to the musical elites us. He then leads us on a dense yet speedy tour of pivotal moments in the evolution of noise into a component of music, focusing on salient benchmarks the Italian Futurists, recording technology, Fluxus, John Cage, Merzbow and hip-hop. By the time Hegarty arrives at modern manifestations of noise, genre neophytes will consider themselves experts. But be warned: This is not a pop history. It's an academic survey with a distinct poststructuralist ?avor, an informative read, but not a particularly fun one, unless of course you read Derrida for giggles. -- P * Paste Magazine / July 2007 *
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 concrète 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 *
Fear of music "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 through the form itself." Any disruption, in other words, can be noise - such as Eric Satie's tranquil pianos works - when considered as "a rebellion against the growing complexity of classical music in the late 19th and early 20th century." Noise, as music, is any moment when all structure and notions of beauty are called into question. As a whole we need noise, and any adventurous listener needs Hegarty's book. Wonderfully written, even the footnotes are a treasure trove (like this great working definition of prog: "the narcissism of brilliance signifying itself") and more than just another music theory book, it acts as a secret philosophical treatise on the calamities of the 20th century and the intensities of now. * Eye Weekly *
...a personal meditation on how various aesthetic, socio-political and philosophical approaches and ideas can be applied to music and sound. Noise/Music is a brave attempt to grapple with an impossible subject as one could reasonably hope for. There's some brilliant writing linking notions of 'ineptitude' and late 70s punk, and Hegarty if one of very few writers able to get to grips with Merzbow's work without simply dwelling on its sonic extremity. * The Wire *
A brave attempt to grapple with an impossible subject as one could reasonably hope for...Some brilliant writing. -- The Wire, October 2007
In his book Noise/Music: A History, Irish philosopher and educator Paul Hegarty examines the phenomenon of noise as music. Aimed at anyone interested in the avant-garde (and especially modern music that's dissonant and challenging), this book provides a historical overview that begins with the Italian Futurist movement, touches on composers from Edgard Verese to Pauline Oliveros, and progresses to bands like Throbbing Gristle and Severed Heads. Although Hegart's approach is musically (and geographically) all over the map, it's a fascinating read and offers a wealth of information and perspective on the subject. -- Geary Yelton, Electronic Musician
Mention in Today's Books / BookweekThe A-List
Paul Hegarty's Noise/Music is one of the more provocative books I've read this past year. When I first encountered the book, I assumed-like many readers-that it would be a book about a genre that has come to be known as "noise music," which evolved in Japan in the 1990s but has subsequently become a world-wide phenomenon. While "noise music" does in fact get addressed in the latter part of the book, Hegarty's book is actually about something much larger; it is a socio-musicological examination of the ever-changing threshold of tolerance between music and noise in a wide variety of musical genres during the 20th century. * newmusicbox.com *
An interesting historical look at the interplay of the two, from the avant-garde compositions of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros to the ear-scraping experiments of Merzbow and the Boredoms, and the technology that empowers and hinders music making. -- Roy Christopher, author of Follow for Now: Interviews with Frieneds and Heroes.
Review in Oxford Journal, May 2010. 
A fascinating read from an exhaustive expert on the subject, Noise/Music is incredibly appealing. * Under the Radar Magazine *
Noise/Music is a provocative historiography of noise's contribution/damage to music. -- Adam Green * The Slow Review *
There's some brilliant writing... Hegarty is one of the few writers able to get to grips with Merzbrow's work. -- Keith Moline * The Wire *
The dad cliche 'that's not music, that's just noise' gets a thorough intellectual going-over in this fascinating book. * Record Collector *
The author writes eloquently and with considerable insight about progressive rock, industrial music, power, electronics, Japanese Noise (Merzbow gets an entire chapter), and Public Enemy. Not only does he present an airtight café for that last's inclusion in the noise canon, in lamenting raps' passage from instrument of confrontation to tool of capital, he mirrors the feelings of countless hip-hop heads in their late teens and early twenties...the book works well as an introduction to 20th-century philosophy for noise fiends. -- Rod Smith * Rain Taxi *
In his book Noise/Music: A History, Irish philosopher and educator Paul Hegarty examines the phenomenon of noise as music. Aimed at anyone interested in the avant-garde (and especially modern music that's dissonant and challenging), the book provides a historical overview that begins with the Italian Futurist movement, touches on composers from Edgard Varèse to Pauline Oliveros, and progresses to bands like Throbbing Gristle and Severed Heads. Although Hegarty's approach is musically (and geographically) all over the map, it's a fascinating read and offers a wealth of information and perspective on the subject. * Electronic Musician *