Resonances Noise and Contemporary Music

Resonances is a compelling collection of new essays by scholars, writers and musicians, all seeking to explore and enlighten this field of study. Noise seems to stand for a lack of aesthetic grace, to alienate or distract rather than enrapture. And yet the drones of psychedelia, the racket of garage rock and punk, the thudding of rave, the feedback of shoegaze and post-rock, the bombast of thrash and metal, the clatter of jungle and the stuttering of electronica, together with notable examples of avant-garde noise art, have all found a place in the history of contemporary musics, and are recognised as representing key evolutionary moments. Noise therefore is the untold story of contemporary popular music, and in a critical exploration of noise lies the possibility of a new narrative: one that is wide-ranging, connects the popular to the underground and avant-garde, fully posits the studio as a musical instrument, and demands new critical and theoretical paradigms of those seeking to write about music.

Michael Goddard is Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Salford, UK. He has published research in media and aesthetic theory, Eastern European film and visual culture and anomalous forms of popular music.

Ben Halligan runs the Graduate Programme for the School of Media, Music and Performance at the University of Salford, UK, teaching in the areas of Critical Theory, Media Studies and Performance at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Nicola Spelman is Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Salford, UK.

part one Noise, Rock and Psychedelia
1 ‘Kick Out the Jams’: Creative Anarchy and Noise in
1960s Rock
Sheila Whiteley
2 Recasting Noise: The Lives and Times of Metal
Machine Music
Nicola Spelman
3 Shoegaze as the Third Wave: Affective Psychedelic Noise,
1965–1991
Benjamin Halligan
4 To Be Played at Maximum Volume: Rock Music as a
Disabling (Deafening) Culture
George McKay

part two Punk Noise: Prehistories and Continuums
5 Sounds Incorporated: Dissonant Sorties into Popular
Culture
Stephen Mallinder
6 Stairwells of Abjection and Screaming Bodies:
Einstürzende Neubauten’s Artaudian Noise Music
Jennifer Shryane
7 Make a Joyous Noise: The Pentecostal Nature of
American Noise Music
Seb Roberts
8 Roars of Discontent: Noise and Disaffection in Two Cases
of Russian Punk
Yngvar B. Steinholt
9 Noise from Nowhere: Exploring ‘Noisyland’s’ Dark, Noisy
and Experimental Music
Michael Goddard

Archive: Indestructible Energy: Seeing Noise
Julie R. Kane

part three Noise, Composition and Improvisation
10 Xenakian Sound Synthesis: Its Aesthetics and Influence on
‘Extreme’ Computer Music
Christopher Haworth
11 Sound Barriers: The Framing Functions of Noise and
Silence
Alexis Paterson
12 Listening Aside: An Aesthetics of Distraction in
Contemporary Musi
David Cecchetto and eldritch Priest
13 Using Noise Techniques to Destabilize Composition and
Improvisation
Eric Lyon
14 Noise as Mediation: Adorno and the Turntablism of Philip
Jeck
Erich Hertz

part four Approaching Noise Musics
15 Noise as Music: Is There a Historical Continuum? From
Historical Roots to Industrial Music
Joseph Tham
16 Noise as Material Impact: New Uses of Sound in Noiserelated
Movements
Rafael Sarpa
17 Into the Full: Strawson, Wyschnegradsky and Acoustic
Space in Noise Musics
J.-P. Caron
18 Gossips, Sirens, Hi-Fi Wives: Feminizing the Threat of
Noise
Marie Thompson
19 Beyond Auditive Unpleasantness: An Exploration of Noise
in the Work of Filthy Turd
James Mooney and Daniel Wilson

Bibliography
Index