Final Blog

-consonance-

"At the insistence of Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols were portrayed as musical naifs, barely able to hold their instruments... Their power was to lie in a lack of concern about talent and ability because the message was one of authenticity, albeit in a highly and always already mediated way... The Sex Pistols, though, were close enough to nihilism, first in the hands of Lyndon's lyrics, where everything is to be demolished, then in the capering form of McLaren's manipulable Pistols... The second format of the group can be taken as a logical outcome of the first: having broken down initial resistance, and shown the emptiness of society, and reflected it back, what else was there to do but wallow in the exposed spectacle of collapse...?" Hegarty, 95.

I thought this passage really summed up the amateur aspect of noise that's been attractive to me throughout the course, and the political role I think noise plays well. Noise's position as a great equalizer, disregarding ability or technical skill, makes it an incredible medium for outright statement and pure emotion. Hegarty talks about part of the Pistol's power coming in their ability to usurp the cultural critique of elites as a means of judgement or degradation of their "art" by embracing the aesthetic of failure and destruction as their medium. While he backs off the "authenticity" claim for the second stage of the band, he seems to give the members of the Pistols credit for their behavior outside their onstage performances (if the performance ever truly ended for them) in living the lifestyle of destruction and nihilism that gave them a sense of credibility.

What all this adds up to is my thought that noise is a crucial weapon for the proletarian/uncultured/existentially incensed in society. It serves as a means of expression without equal for accessibility, requiring only a willingness to purge oneself of neuroses or challenge an audience with something boldly, and with abandon. Indeed, the amateur noise artist is the bravest and most profound statement, because it cannot be mediated by their own skill or ability. It becomes pure expression because it can't be controlled, merely stopped or started. Where Merzbow can articulate an oscillation or frequency, the amateur orchestra can only play its heart out, all or nothing. I love that noise provides that opportunity.

The final ellipses I'll touch on in my last section.

-dissonance-

"Smith has complained that Merzbow offers a paradigm of collectablitiy and cultural capital, aided by a rhetoric of extremity. I would argue that Merzbow gets around this by limited editions, releasing on many different labels, in different formats, thus making collecting farcical, extremely effortful and unlikely to succeed - thereby presenting a deconstruction of all collecting." Hegarty, 157-158.

So this probably is petty, and I'm happy to admit that, but I really can't get over Merzbow's position as the ultimate noise. I see how the sonic agony he creates is "ultimate" noise as sound but to me that's far different from the idea of noise. And likewise I respect his work's necessity as an antithesis to "music" and as a philosophical statement on, "what is music?" "what is noise?" but again, this role rings untrue with my idea of noise. Perhaps it can best be summed up as I feel noise is too broad to have a single "kingship" that Merzbow seems to have been crowned with. It comes with a certain hollowness I feel about his music, a shallowness that relies on the esoteric, the feeling of a joke being played on his audience. 

It ties in with Smith's argument at the start of the excerpt. I completely agree with Smith that Merzbow plays into a paradigm of cultural capital. As Hegarty himself admits, it takes commitment to truly process and begin to see a Merzbow album as music, and the ability to lord that over someone must be irresistible to Noise music buffs. I can just see a version of Jack Black's character in High Fidelity ripping on some noobie for only being into entry level shit like Noisembryo, and not having tracked down the tape version of Timehunter yet. Inexplicably, Hegarty fights fire with fire, arguing that Merzbow defeats the "paradigm of collectability and cultural capital, aided by a rhetoric of extremity" by creating a rhetoric of extremity in the content and distribution of his material. The impossibility of the task only increases the level of cultural capital that comes in a collection, only increases the prestige of appreciation. While it could be argued that Merzbow uses volume to increase the likelihood of disconnect, which would prevent the value of the cultural capital (I've heard X obscure album you don't know/Well, I've heard Y obscure album you don't know) with a game of one-ups-manship that ends in stalemate, I would argue that his use of high profile releases like Merzbox, Metamorphism, or the BMW/Mercedes one off (all of which Hegarty uses to defend Merzbow) reinstill the cultural capital. Where 50 hours of independent Merzbow releases loses cultural capital, Merzbox holds it. Where a limited run of Metamorphism confounds access, excessive packaging returns the mystique, and draws attention to the rarity. By publicizing his obscurity and impenetrability, Merzbow defeats any authenticity his releases may have in those veins, and plays into the cultural capital of his work.

Ultimately, I just don't see Merzbow as the noise messiah. There's a vacuousness I can't shake from his work and behavior. Not a vacuousness of nihilism or intention, but an emptiness that defies its true purpose to all but him. A joke only he gets to laugh at.

-future-

Truthfully, I believe the future of noise is boundless. Things I've heard in this class have surpassed not just the bounds of what I thought constituted music, but the bounds of what I would have considered organized sound. Far be it from me to claim a broad direction for the future of noise, I'll instead speak to the future of noise for me personally, tied in with the recently formed BPO noise project. And then, in the end, I'll play Nostradamus anyway.

My academic background is largely in Film theory, and the cultural pondering that goes hand in hand with it. Through many of my courses over the past few years, "post-modernism" as a vast and vague specter has been present as a thought in most of them, and I've grown rather fond of its innate noisiness. Post-modernism seems to celebrate the proliferation of content, but to me, the chaotic torrent of ubiquitous media and mediation can be nothing other than noise. 

Our media landscape is built around impossibly large catalog of information and opinion, be it the internet or the 24 hour news cycle. Further, our demand for an on-demand marketplace encourages a feedback loop of content and confirmation for media companies to generate material and maintain viewership. A clear example of this is the contrasting political dramas of Fox News and MSNBC, simultaneously creating two parallel myths for their viewers to follow. Their cycles of content generation (news stories) and confirmation (spin and punditry) create dueling realities of identical events for their respective viewership. After enough time, their brands of "reality" become reality for their viewership, and content that is outside their "reality" is all noise. For longtime viewers of leaning political coverage, what does not play in concert with their established sense of reality is dismissed as misinformation, ignorance - noise. The result is a society polarized not just by opinion, but by planes of reality. 

The irony of this phenomena is that none of these media spheres on their own actually constitutes the "true" reality - a factual understanding of world events. I believe that the future of noise (if for no one other than myself) will come as a rejection of the new construction of these "realities" as the self-determined fallacies they are, and employ noise as a equally legitimate (if somewhat farcical) analog that presents its own "reality": there is no reality.

The platitude "art is a reflection of the time in which it is created" sometimes holds, and my experience with BPO is one of these cases. The first (spontaneous) BPO jam took place at a rehearsal for the Mee-Ow house band (usually Motown and modern pop covers) in the heat of the NUDivest debate. Refusing to take a position on either side of the issue, as I am both uniformed and unwilling to argue for exercise, I saw the debate as a microcosm of the wider cultural phenomena of selective realities. While both sides have completely legitimate points, equally wrenching arguments of ethos, and can duel reputable articles and reports for days, neither side could budge from their trenches. In real "boots on the ground," "3rd party omnicient narrator" reality, both sides have elements of truth, hyperbole, propaganda in their arguments. But in the "reality" of either side, word is gospel, and the other side is not just wrong, but evil. After being entrenched in a cycle of media leaning one way or the other, there is no unmediated reality, and the other side is harmful, backward, dangerous, noise. The worst noise of all was the spiral of venomous racial, paranoid, and spiteful diatribes from all sides leading up to, and after the debate and decision. To me, if either side is noise depending on your viewpoint, all sides are noise from no viewpoint. And after viewing the lead up and aftermath, I can't help but think outright noise would have been more productive. 

BPO draws on a number of elements we've touched on this quarter that attract me. I love the element of amateurism in the group - Tommy has always wanted to front a band, and has never done vocal work like this, and I've always, always wanted to play drums in a band, but can't play competently in practical drumming situations. I think the outlet for base aggression attracts Tommy and I as well. I cut all the fingers on my right hand from basically punching cymbals our first rehearsal, and Tommy lost his voice in 15 minutes. In part we were expressing our own existential rage, and in part (I'll stop speaking for Tommy here) I was channeling the simmering contempt I felt around Northwestern during the Divest buildup. It felt like it was important to show noise as an unreality to people, a mirror to reflect the untruth of the "truth" provided by one's daily rounds on the internet.

I believe the post-modern media landscape is, for better or worse, the dawn of a new era in interpreting the world. And as the landscape progresses, and the commercialization of news, the proliferation of "clickbait" sites like fucking Buzzfeed, and the splintering and sub-genrefication of "truth" continues, noise will be there to rage against the dying of collective reality. Eventually people are going to get to the point where something needs to set them off, where they need something to set them off. And Noise can be the thing to say, 

"I want you to get mad! I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street. All I know is first you got to get mad."

And maybe someone will hear it. Or maybe it will just collapse in a heap on the stage, to the roaring applause of all who missed the point.

The Butt Plug Orchestra:

Glitch and Control

The aesthetic of glitch is a celebration of randomness. Random video errors on encoding, misprints, or the copy errors of Scott Short, the enjoyment of all these things comes from an appreciation of the uniqueness of the random. However, I would argue that artists who work in glitch add intentionality to their art by mediating the randomness into a fixed form. While it takes an appreciation and celebration of the lack of control to consume glitch, producing glitch requires an evaluation and specific control over the randomness. 

The most obvious example is Scott's paintings, which utilize the glitches within repeated copies. While the final product is a copy of the random errors generated by the copier, Scott chooses not just which glitches to purse, but how far to "develop" the errors before moving forward with his paintings. This displays a level of aesthetic evaluation for the errors, but also a definite sense of control over the errors. Scott cannot create the error, but he can choose which to pursue, and how far to take it. Henke takes an even more aggressive level of control over the "uncontrollability" of his Granulator. The precision with which he sets the parameters of his "random" tone generators, and the selectiveness of his samples (choosing between a number of different gongs, glasses, microphones, presumably gain levels and all the other variable elements of a recording) I feel almost entirely eliminates any raku-esque element to his work.

If glitch is a real aesthetic, and there is objectively good or bad glitch, then there's a way to create good glitch. If that's the case, renown glitch artists must have some semblance of control over their product or else they're simply bumbling into beautiful noise and distortion. While I completely agree with the idea that the appreciation of glitch is the embracing of beauty in a lack of control, I cannot see the artists who practice glitch as relinquishing that control in their work. By mediating the uncontrol, they control it, and undermine the idea of a raku in creating glitch.

Merzbow

Upon first hearing Merzbow, I wasn't entirely convinced you're actually supposed to listen to his music. I still don't totally believe that. I certainly see more "content" in Merzbow's music than I did at the start of class, but I see definite differences between his work, and some of the other Japanoise artists we've seen.

The number one thing that strikes me as a damning feature of Merzbow's work is the volume ow work he produces. 400 releases since 1979, many of which are hours long, each largely impenetrable without many multiple listenings. The quantity prohibits true comprehension of Merzbow's work outside of a broad-strokes conceptual reading. To me, this categorizes Merzbow as more of an idea than an actual artifact. Where many of the other artists we've looked at have a focus on performance, to the point of becoming more important than the music itself (the more visceral performances we watched in class come to mind), Merzbow seems far more content with blasting people away from the studio.

To a certain extent, Merzbow feels a little tame after some of the other artists we've seen. While all of the artists we've looked at have similar experimentation in volume (dB) and aggressive sound, when comparing them all at a purely sonic level, they blend together to me. And in comparing a Merzbow to a Masonna, a Hanatarashi, or a Hijokaidan, the violence of Merzbow's sound begins to pale in the face of such physical violence.

The other thing I'm not in love with about Merzbow is a lot of the other artists have just been more sonically interesting to me. The No-Input music (especially No-Input mixer) created something incredible to me, and I thought that Ikeda's data music was an incredible experiment in source material. Ultimately, I've just been more impressed by others' sonic content, abrasiveness, and aggression than Merzbow's work in any of those areas. Again I think it goes back to his quantity of work. It reminds me of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's solo explosion over about 2008-2013 where he released around 30 solo records in addition to his work with The Mars Volta. Some of them were great, others simply existed, and in the end, aside from a few gems, it really didn't amount to much. With so much material, there was little time to assess and evaluate and familiarize yourself with the material, and it worked to the detriment of the body as a whole. I have the same problem stepping into Merzbow's body of work - too many options, too little to latch onto with an even slightly trained ear.

Organized Sound

When I was watching the Fischli/Weiss piece, two elements of the sound really stuck out to me, texture and pacing. With the wide variety of sounds present in the machine, from dripping, scientific bubbling and foaming, to the shrieks of fireworks, and the gentle tap of tires knocking together, I found the pallet of sounds they used to be very dense. While it's minimalism didn't quite constitute the fullness of the potential noise orchestras we've read about, I feel like the breadth of the sound pallet was exactly the type of thing that Attali was thinking about. Indeed, much of the elements that were overtly scientific in nature (the various foaming, bubbling reactions that propelled the machine forward) gave me a boarderline acoustmatic listening experience - simply marveling in the sounds themselves.

The pacing I also felt was quite compelling. While the addition of a video element was helpful to me in reaching this conclusion, I felt that the length was spot on, even at half an hour. The various "instruments" all had a real chance to play themselves out and juxtapose between each other, while still allowing each to shine in a "solo" setting. I especially liked the use of tires and flames, and liked some of the structural elements of the piece, such as returning to the spinning bags which opened the machine later in the piece. The addition of the video element gave a great sense of suspense and expectation to the procession, especially with some of the slower pieces, like the swinging pendulum or the spinning bags. Seeing the next step plainly, while still being forced to wait for it to actually occur gave an interesting effect. I also felt like it spoke to the intention put into each individual component, with the bags being spun so tightly it would take a long time for them to fall, or setting the pendulum on a canted angle and forcing it to work its way around to cue the next piece. It gave a sense of composition to the noise.

Post-Industrial Music

I think one can make an argument for EDM as being a post-industrial style of music. If industrial music was a last breath from the "chemical reactions" of society's decaying corpse, EDM is that angst co-opted, absorbed into mainstream society.

Personally, when I listen to EDM, I hear what I've long referred to as "fucking computer noises." And I feel like that's a fair assessment. Where Industrial music had a strong emphasis on the visceral - percussive pieces based on the banging, scratching, rending of metals, live performance of the overtly sexual and/or violent - EDM is deeply internalized within a laptop. Excluding artists such as Pretty Lights or Daft Punk, who sample existing songs, or record their own instrumental samples, EDM is largely the layered oscillators in FruityLoops. Outside of the studio, the performance aspects of EDM are focused on automated lights shows or laser effects, rather than the actual execution of the music being performed (if it is even being performed). Distribution is also mostly ephemeral for EDM, with Nielsen Music reporting that EDM made up 6.8% of total streaming purchases compared to EDM's 3.4% total market share. All of this points to the sociological shift in a society going from an industrial to post-industrial economy. Where our economy is now information-based, it makes sense that our music should be composed in 0s and 1s, and that our primary means of acquiring it should be over the internet. The rebirth of vinyl I think supports this; with our focus on the cloud and data, physical objects now have the fetish value we associate with LPs.

EDM does share some similarities with Industrial music's angst, though interacts with them differently. EDM culture embraces the sex and violence of Industrial through its fashion (have you seen what people wear to these things?) and the raw volume/power/violence of "the drop," and treats these elements as positives, as opposed to boundaries or buttons to push and alienate the audience (or perhaps its more a matter of the sex and violence moving from the stage to the audience). Further, there's an interesting divide between performer and audience that industrial musicians played with that's also present in EDM. As I mentioned before, some of the main performance aspects of a EDM concert are the lights/lasers, members of the audience doing light gloves/hula-hoops/etc., and of course the music being played, but not the performance of that music. A DJ hunched over a laptop or beat pad, stuck behind a table isn't the point of the show. There's no camera shooting down at them so you can see what the performer is doing to create the music. The performer is largely alienated from the audience. Certain performers challenge this such as Daft Punk or deadmau5, with distinctive styles the performers don in live settings, but even in those cases their personas act as more of a master of ceremonies than as live artist.

Essentially, I feel as though EDM is emblematic of the ephemeral post-industrial society. A society built on information, and distributed through the internet, and a culture more focused on itself than what's going on in front of it.

Improvisation and Composition

I tend to go back and forth on the importance I place on improvisation in music. On one hand, my first great musical love was The Grateful Dead, but on the other hand Progressive rock has been a huge influence to me as well. Ultimately, in considering where and how I value improvisation over composition, especially comparing my experiences within Jam and Prog scenes, I find I land somewhere in the middle.
The Grateful Dead have some shining moments of virtuosity, especially in their first 10-odd years of playing, and their most impressive jams range a variety of structural stabilities - from the relatively straightforward "St. Stephen", to the ambient, mellow, feedback laced "Dark Star" that so often preceded it. It's fair to say that The Dead never limited themselves from total anarchy or generally strict guidelines in their playing, which was part of what made them such a well rounded group. An experience with a version of "Eyes of the World" I had once surprised me however. On The Grateful Dead Movie, there's a 13 minute version of "Eyes" that to me is far and away the best version of that song The Dead ever recorded, if not one of their best live tracks ever. After listening to the song for a few years I came across another version, about five minutes longer, that after two listens (a roughly 18-minute double take) I realized to be an unedited version of the same performance. The extra five minutes are far weaker than the rest of the take, and objectively hurts the track. After doing some research, I found that Jerry was looking to make The Grateful Dead Movie a perfect artifact, and likely cut the offending sections (with surprising seamlessness) in an effort to secure that. For all my love of The Dead, I have to concede that by and large, they were a band of occasional, even frequent, genius that spent much of it's time wallowing in the mediocrity afforded to them by their oft easy to please audience and the supreme difficulty of living up to tracks as incredible as that "Eyes of the World" from 1974. Cutting the track, something that wouldn't have been done without Jerry's approval, feels wrong for the fetishising of improvisation; that the premier jam band would choose post-production perfection over the honesty of an uncut performance always struck me as a cop out and self-conscious mistake, and somehow felt sad - as though Jerry didn't really believe in all that The Deadhead culture made him to be. The track discussed is below in its uncut form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ_0mQLt4jo

On the other hand, I was particularly titillated by the discussion of Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans, another band I spend much time with, and an album I actually liked, but never figured I would get to talk about. For all its excess and ignorance ("half-digested extracts from Swami Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi" comes to mind) it still strikes me as a towering achievement musically, the scope of which still boggles me as much as it did when I was 14 listening to it. The opening chant sends shivers down my spine, which is only increased by the two minutes of quiet wooshing and Steve Howe volume swells that precedes it on the extended version I hunted down in the bowels of the internet. I was happy to see a somewhat favorable (or at least compared to the usual vitriol the album receives) review by Hegarty. It is monumental, for all its faults as much as in spite of them. I think it even gains credibility from being the follow up to the infinitely superior Close to the Edge because they pushed the boundaries even further. Granted, they almost definitely went too far, but I have to give them credit for trying. After all, where would we be if Rush hadn't pushed past Caress of Steel (which I also think is great) to do the even more bold 2112? Returning to the point somewhat, the emphasis on composition cannibalizes Yes in the same way an obsession with improvisation hurt The Dead. Yes's composition fetish led to the excess of Tales, and in some ways the departure of Bill Bruford who just couldn't take the endless debate of compositional masturbation.

The real shame is that when either group focused in the other direction even briefly the results were incredible. Yes, Yes's first album (granted with a vastly different lineup than the progressive Yes) had some raucous Jazz-Rock tracks like the Beatles cover "I See You" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPKp4lLLMu4) or the groove based outro of "Starship Trooper." Likewise The Dead's Blues For Allah features some great tracks with involved structure and complex changes, and Bob Weir's "Weather Report Suite" or "Terrapin Station" entered the realm of Progressive rock with strong results. In the end, the answer, as always, is everything in moderation. While improvisation can have the flair of technical superiority, composition can be just as difficult and impressive (if deemed try-hard by critics and the general public). And both disciplines can hurt a group's output if the other is ignored, as was the case with Yes and The Dead.

Acousmatics

Schaffer's idea of obscured sound sources reminded me of my first brush with modern Progressive Rock music in high school. De-loused in the Comatorium by The Mars Volta was a huge moment for me musically, when I began to move away from the over-composed hyper-precise world of 70's British Prog which had dominated most of my listening since I fell out with The Grateful Dead. One track in particular "Cicatriz ESP" completely changed the way I viewed the possible spectrum of "rock" tonality, specifically thanks to an extended break in the middle of the track built from delayed guitar noises and other sound manipulations. While I was somewhat familiar with the idea of a spacey, noisy, break from some of The Grateful Dead's improvisations, the Dead's dissonance was still familiar, identifiable sources: feedback, stoned noodling, etc. This track is radically different, more like the pulsating wubs of electronic music than tones created from a guitar and largely analog manipulation from guitar pedals. I didn't know how the guitarist, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, was able to create sounds like that at the time, but the mystery behind their source drove me into a deep study of his career, techniques, and approach to art and music. The result was a change in my musical tastes from one of strict structure and an interest in form (though it still exists today) to a taste for the sonic possibility and extremes of the guitar as an instrument. Rodriguez-Lopez in his early career was often quoted as saying he "hated" the guitar as an instrument, and just sought to bury it in obscuring effects and tones. While I can't ascribe to the same distaste, I have certainly found that extreme sounds have entered my repertoire with a vengeance, largely because of the possibilities shown in "Cicatriz ESP" and much of the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez catalog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5BM0Tln7cM

I suppose this would also qualify as my "deep listening" moment, though in looking at the Deep Listening website linked on the blog, my moment of holistic rejuvenation and healing would definitely be A-ha's "Take On Me" from Dance Marathon my freshman year, at the end of the 6th three hour block, comprised mostly of garbage pop music, and the last of my Tylenol-3 that was saving me from the pain of torn ligaments in my shoulder. I probably would have died without that song. It was like a breath of fresh air.

Bataille

Thus at the present stage of development the automatic rectitude of a soldier in uniform, maneuvering according to orders, emerges from the immense confusion of the animal world and proposes itself to the universe of astronomy as its' highest achievement. If, on the other hand, this mathematical military truth is contrasted with the excremental orifice of the ape, which seems to be its inevitable compensation, the universe that seemed menaced by human splendor in a pitifully imperative form receives no other response than the unintelligible discharge of a burst of laughter...

This passage was a great example of why I have a hard time with Bataille, and really most "scholarly" "philosophical" essays. It's both my example of something I agree with and something outrageous, so I'll start with why I agree.

It seems to me that Bataille's point is largely that the origin stories or mythos that humans create for themselves is mostly self-flattering bunk meant to either enslave the proletariat to a higher power, or give us a false sense of superiority over the rest of life on Earth. And here he finally gets to the crux of it. Bataille prefaces this point with the little girl who has a bit of a crisis over a monkey taking a crap in front of her and has some kind of awakening of her own because of it. The anecdote gives us a demonstration of the superior "man" being disrupted, and strangely enlightened by the base vulgarity of an inferior life form. By comparing the conquering of our animal instincts on the battlefield to the shit-epiphany of this little girl I think he makes a strange, if compelling argument to the futility of our superiority complex. The soldier in battle is a whole section of our collective myth, made an emblem of bravery, control, and strength. Bataille argues that this myth is nothing but a varnish over a much more powerful force that ties us to the other life on Earth we so seek to distance ourselves from.

While I see what he's saying and think the argument he's making is a valid one, the way he goes about arguing it is infuriating. My problem is not the vulgar, visceral, orgasmic language, but the meandering pointlessness of that language. Bataille makes the mistake it seems so many cultural writers make of writing from within the fury of their own imagination. We are left on the outside as Bataille digresses into orgy and sacrifice, leaving threads flapping in his wake. The anal digression that prefaces this quote has some bearing on the point he finally makes, but he still manages to bungle his translation of thought to words. "...contrasted with the excremental orifice of the ape, which seems to be its inevitable compensation..." What is inevitable about that contrast? It may be self evident to Bataille, but by no means has he delivered me to the same conclusion. And yet he merely casts it offhand, assured of his own correctness by the echo-chamber of his brain. Bataille's ideas are compelling, and his language evocative, but his vacuous pontificating is frustrating at best.

Feldman and Kath

"Noise is something else. It does not travel on these distant seas of experience. It bores like granite into granite. It is physical, very exciting, and when organized can have the impact and grandeur of Beethoven." - Feldman

The physicality that Feldman describes reminds me of Terry Kath's wrestling match with a Fender Stratocaster on the debut Chicago Transit Authority album. The track, "Free Form Guitar," is wildly out of place on the album; almost seven minutes of feedback and divebombs and screeching, dissonant, noodling with one brief breath in the middle, and maybe two distinguishable chords, seated between "Poem 58" and "Southern California Purples," a Kath solo vehicle, and a standard blues song respectively. But the power that it carries in its "otherness" is astounding. Regardless of your opinion of the track, it's not easily forgotten by the listener, and makes a grand and impactful statement.

I think what drew me to the track so much is what Feldman touches on, physicality. It really sounds as though Kath is battling with the sound, fighting with it for control and supremacy. What's most exciting about the track is that it seems like the noise can win half the time, with the second of silence in the middle almost acting as a surrender by Kath - needing to take a breath before resuming the fight.

While one could argue there's not much "organized" about "Free Form Guitar" (setting aside our expansive definition of 'form' from class the other day - i.e. there's a beginning and end) I would say that the mere intention of it is enough to give it order. Looking at the track not as a track, but as a segment of a continuous album, the noise gains order, having been placed specifically, deliberately, and for a set duration. The content of the noise is less important than its existence, though in this case, both the existence and the content are greatly compelling.

Noise from the Slums

"R. Murray Schafer writes that the perception, which heightens in the nineteenth century, is that' the street had now become the home of non-music, where it mixed with other kinds of sound-swill and sewage.'"

The class elements of noise that Hegarty brings up are interesting on their own, but I was mostly drawn to this passage from a personal experience I had being categorized as "noise." My buddy and I were (and still are) in a progressive rock band together back in high school (as prog-rock as you can be in high school) and practiced in his garage in the suburbs. One day in early spring was particularly nice, so we decided to play with the garage door open. While we were playing (some inoffensive, classic-rock-esque noodling at a restrained volume) a middle aged woman we did not know approached the door with an incredulous look on her face, regarding the inside of our humble abode as though she were coming to grips with The Twilight Zone. We stopped and asked if we could help her with something, at which point she started a tirade against us for playing with the door open, which began with the horrified query: "Are you from the SLUMS?"

"Is this what you people do there? This is a neighborhood," she continued. Caught off guard by her reaction (we typically either received a curt but polite "please stop," or just a visit from the police who would give the same) we allowed her to finish, apologized, and shut the door behind her.

I find it interesting that this woman's reaction hinged so heavily on the ideas of class and "other." The way she said the word "slums" with horror and disgust, or the dichotomy she raised between where people "do this," and here, where "we don't do this," are so loaded in their condescension that they can't help but call upon the political divides between her middle-class suburban lifestyle and the "other" she perceived us as. It was interesting to see how this horror she felt (it may read hyperbolic to say horror, but she seemed to be legitimately shaken to her core) was a well established cultural reading of "noise" as a political idea, that it could work its way into the mind of a woman who (I can only assume) had no formal education in culture of this nature. While not the most interesting evaluation of "noise" Hegarty gets into, the visceral quality that I've seen his thoughts on "noise" and class presented with is evidence enough to show their merit.