Noise Matters

Note: This is a blog post I did on my Old Website. Copied over because I still think it's important for people to see.

When someone doesn't like music, often the first thing you'll hear out of their mouths is "that's just noise". Which IS pretentious...but technically true. All music is noise though, and personally, I believe almost all noise can be music.

When you work in radio, you get exposed to a lot of different sounds. Whether through stockholm syndrome or random curiosity when you do show prep you eventually get an appreciation of at least some of the music you hear on the job. But most of the time its a surface level enjoyment. I like going deeper. While I love what I hear on the radio it's only a part of my musical identity, over the years I've grown to love not just Pop and Rock (and eventually Country) but also Indie, Metal, Electronic, and Progressive Music. The latter are gateways to much more extreme soundscapes, from Lo-fi, Ambient, and Post-Rock, to Industrial, Black/Death Metal, and eventually...Noise Music.

No matter what alternative subgenre I explore, Noise Music almost always pops up when I dive deep enough into an artists influence. So I'd find a random Noise track on the internet...and a minute later turn it off because I couldn't stand it.

Then I forgot about it for a bit...until I saw a Youtube video that really put it all into perspective.

The short of it: treat Noise like an Abstract Painting, before looking at it as a whole, closely examine the layers.

So I put on Pulse Demon one afternoon and sat through the whole thing. It was a very difficult listen, and to this day the only music I have turned down to properly listen to (seriously, I thought if I listened at a regular volume my speakers would be destroyed because it was so loud). But I kept a close ear on as much as I could, and eventually not only could I hear the differences between each track, I started to enjoy the harsh monotony of Pulse Demon.

Then afterwards, I noticed something else...regular music sounded better. Not that I still thought Noise was garbage, but it acted as a Pallet cleanser for my ears. Even a couple days after the experience music just sounds brighter and more beautiful, and I can hear all different layers of songs with a fresh perspective.

I'm not telling you to immediately go spend hundreds of dollars on some Noise Artists back catalog on Bandcamp. But if you're feeling really open minded and want to take a crack at blurring the lines between between what is and isn't music maybe give it a try.

If you want to ease yourself into Noise first, check out these artists:

Sunn O))))

Lou Reed (Specifically Metal Machine Music)

Lingua Ignotta

The Body

Full of Hell

Swans

These artists at least have some semblance of regular music for listeners to latch onto.

Happy listening, and remember; all music is real music.