Can music get any more abrasive than noise?
 

I mean whats the next level? As far as audio goes (not the live aspect) theres not much more that can be done. Until people start recording murder & rape to beethoven. Where will it go?

Coco Rosie and Joanna Newsom.

Ice-T laughs in the face of noise.

But really, I have no idea.



Cupcake?

?

Nah. The problem with things that utterly change the way we think about music is that you can't really predict what/ how our perceptions are going to change. Remember the F# intro to Beethoven's first? Sacrilegious that was.

Unnaccompanied animal noises. The sound of cats fighting will be the new punk, birdsong will be the new trance, cows mooing will be the new Celine Dion.

I sympathize with the plight of the abrasive music scene. What will they do next, you cant get any harsher than maybe Hair Police and the likes of them. I mean people thought metal was harsh 15 yrs ago and look at the aggresive music scene now.

You've heard that David Toop field recording of the vultures eating the corpse, I assume? I can't remember what the record is, but it won awards and is quite exquisitely brutal-sounding.

But do people feel that kind of stuff sounds nasty because they know it's birds eating a carcass, which might lead to connotations of other things related to, for example, violent death. Is it really abrasive, if this about the physical effect of music on people, which is often caused by the using of high volumes and/or certain frequencies etc.

david toop, now there's someone who needs a bloody good slap

I haven't even heard of him. Who is he? The vulture thing sounds remotely interesting (if it's not just sounds of vulturess eating corpses).

Umm... it is just a straight recording. It's disconcerting for a few reasons. The first being that David Toop, although needing a slap, is a fucking great engineer. He manages to get the scrapes and picking at bones down brilliantly. It's natural for humans to react to the sound of bones breaking. Whether it's more effective for knowing the source is kind of a moot point - I doubt anyone would get the CD unless they knew what it was.

The high volumes frequency thing of noise is often a subterfuge hiding the lack of abrasion - Part of the reason Merzbow is good is because he uses dynamics to brilliant/ devastating effect, rather than relying upon one feedback trick for 20+ years (hello Whitehouse). I think noise is pretty dull as a musical genre unless people get over the 'shock' value and treat it as a valid artform.

music can get more abrasive than noise, brittany spears cuts through my head like a chainsaw and she should be slaughtered along with all of her cronies.

he writes this is culture theory stuff that is mostly excedingly dull, tenuous and irrelevent, but it's also apparent in his writing that he thinks he's very clever. and, he is one of the most talentless hack improv musicians ever to set foot on a stage.

just read this blurb from one of his books:

Digital technology has changed the ways in which music is perceived, stored, distributed, mediated and created. The world of music is now a vast and complex jungle, teeming with CDs, MP3s, concerts, clubs, festivals, conferences, exhibitions, installations, websites, software programmes, scenes, Ideas and competing theories. In the eye of the storm stands David Toop, shedding light on the most interesting music now being made - on laptops, In downtown bars in Tokyo, wherever he finds it. Haunted Weather is part personal memoir and part travel journal, as well as an intensive survey of recent developments in digital technology, sonic theory and musical practice. Along the way Toop probes into the meaning of sound (and silence), offering fascinating insights into how computers can be used for improvisation. His wealth of musical knowledge provides inspiration for anyone interested in music.

I love how in silence is in parentheses.

haha, my Masami Akita quote is perfect for you!

I don't know who this david toop guy is, but it was chris watson who did the vulture thing, I have an issue of the wire where he talks about it.

i think harcore (hxe! hxe!) and grindcore are harsher than noise because of the aesthetic i associate with them.

chris watson also does sound for david attenborough i believe

depends on what are you talking about.

granted, in theory those are very abrassive kinds of music. but you have bands from all those genres who aren't noisy or intense. for example, there are bands like 16 bitch pile up or graveyards who are noise but their stuff isn't scorching, there's hardcore bands that are very much melodic and toned down (which can be a good thing, like with adolescents or descendents, or plain awful like the crap that gets past today as hardcore). grindcore bands that mix death metal with their sound are usually sissies.

it's all subjective.

you're very right.

isn't it kind of physically impossible to go "beyond noise?" i mean, you could have this insane screeching consisting of the simultaneous emission of sound at every Hz audible to the human ear, on top of hyenas screeching and a classical symphony played backwards with this massive wall of percussion in the background, but that would still be . . . noise. we can only have music, noise, and silence. you could, in theory, be more abrasive than the noise that's currently being put out, but you'd still be producing noise. that's just the way the word functions in the language -- any sound that is neither music nor silence (though the latter is not, strictly speaking, sound) is, by definition, noise.

damn, literary theory!

I feel that some of Steve Reich's recordings are more unlistenable than many noise artist due to the fact it is a more about the experiment in his recordings then the actual aesthetics of it. The first time I listened to "Piano Phase", 25 minutes of repetitive loops of a 4 second sample, I felt like I got hit by a train...

Duh, Nsync.

I think you're underestimating the combined powers of the Backstreet Boys.

Microchip music is where it all ends.

i enjoy the backsteet boys in a most unironic way. just sayin...

Bollocks, you're absolutely right and I hang my head in shame. The only question now is quite what my defence of David Toop is... I'm sure there's some reason I don't dislike him as much as T & B, but I'm utterly buggered as to what that is...

You should all bow to David Toop.If it wasn't for him sound would never be described they the way it was meant to be described.Go read 'Rap Attack' and cry.

..or 'an ocean of sound'.

Chris Watson is amazing.
It's very hard to make field recordings that stand out at all, let alone field recordings that evoke serious unease.

i haven't read that book but everything i've heard about it sounds like he knows nothing about hiphop but took it upon himself to write a book about it. i've decided not to read it to save myself some irritation..

Don't read interviews with him either.
Just sayin'.

Again,have you read the book?

no, i already said i haven't, i'm going to charing cross road now, so i'll have a look at it in one of the book shops, i'm sure it will vex me.

Read it first,then form your own opinion about it.There are enough people without a stable and concise sense of judgement on this board already.I'd say 'An Ocean of sound' is even better.

fine... i've heard from reliable sources the book/toop really has no idea when it comes to hiphop and from reading his other writing i can believe it.

Quote.

Wont the shops in charing cross be closed by the time you get there?;)