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Noise/Music: A History
by: Paul Hegarty

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.64
EAN: 9780826417275
ISBN: 0826417272
Label: Continuum
Manufacturer: Continuum
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 221
Publication Date: August 15, 2007
Publisher: Continuum
Sales Rank: 150024
Studio: Continuum

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Noise/Music looks at the phenomenon of noise in music, from experimental music of the early 20th century to the Japanese noise music and glitch electronica of today. It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde.

While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Academic, but accessible with lots of useful information
Paul Hegarty does a good job jumping into the world of experimental/noise music headfirst. Up to now, this has been a whole area of music largely ignored by the musicological community. There is a distinct emphasis on Japanoise with a whole chapter on Merzbow alone, but then again, I think it's deserved.

We can forgive many of the book's faults because it is essentially the first of its kind. It's probably as comprehensive as possible considering that there's next to nothing to build upon. Hegarty has done a great service to future scholars.

The writing is scholarly and theoretically sound, but it's also approachable to those outside the field of musicology. It's a bit more dense than, say, an article on Wire or Pitchfork, but it's also structured so that a casual reader can simply skip over the more theoretically robust sections, while still getting a lot of useful information.

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Rating:

- Where's the musician?
First off, this book is long overdue; however, what undermines Hagerty's project is his theoretically dry and unconvincing writing (something the editor should have caught, unless the press wanted to publish the philosophical meanderings of the author). Thus, the reader is bombarded with concepts at the expense of offering insights into the production of noise (by actually interviewing the artists in question). This is a major problem with ethnomusicology and musicology in general-waxing and waning about the supposed post-modern qualities about music at the expense of the musician in favor of a totalizing reading of the subject.

Here's some examples: If Japanese noise is zen, then it is also rope bondage (134). -That's really academically lazy, I might add.

On John Zorn, "If he and others are some sort of neo-anthropologists, or exorcists, they are ethnographers of a future culture, and ... Read More

Rating:

- Good noise theory;not too hard,not too soft.
Hegarty's book is not a dry,excessively detailed history but rather a work much more usefull to myself and perhaps all noisicians and sound artists.It tries very well to reason why we make noise.If you make or dig noise,even if you are a philosophical novice,read this book.

Rating:

- Great Background and Analysis
Hegarty comes at the topic from the standpoint of an avid listener and performer, explaining and exploring what the various artists are trying to achieve. His coverage of historical and contemporary performers/composers is exceptionally broad and adds a invaluable context for the work -- even if some influences are only mentioned in passing.

The chapters on Japanese noise and Merzbow are spot on and alone make the book a worthy purchase. I have been listening to this stuff for over ten years and found the discussions both accurate and enlightening.

I only give it four stars since while reading other parts of the book I kept wishing that he would describe what the music sounds like rather than engage its theory. One other minor point: the font on the paperback is a small narrow sans serif which increased the reading effort (although given the topic this might have been a design decision)

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