Noise rock

This article is about the specific genre. For the general application of noise in rock music, see Noise in music § Rock music, and Noise music § Noise rock and no wave.

Not to be confused with hard rock.

Noise rock
Flipper at the 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C., 1984
Other names	Noise punk
Stylistic origins	Experimental rock punk rock noise acid rock minimal psychedelic rock industrial hardcore punk
Cultural origins	c. Mid-1960s to 1980s, New York City, United States
Derivative forms	Grunge post-hardcore
Other topics
Alternative rock avant-punk indie rock noise pop post-punk no wave mathcore grindcore

Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, artists indulge in extreme levels of distortion through the use of electric guitars and, less frequently, electronic instrumentation, either to provide percussive sounds or to contribute to the overall arrangement.

Some groups are tied to song structures, such as Sonic Youth. Although they are not representative of the entire genre, they helped popularize noise rock among alternative rock audiences by incorporating melodies into their droning textures of sound, which set a template that numerous other groups followed. Other early noise rock bands were Big Black, Swans and the Jesus Lizard.

Characteristics

Noise rock fuses rock to noise, usually with recognizable "rock" instrumentation, but with greater use of distortion and electronic effects, varying degrees of atonality, improvisation, and white noise. One notable band of this genre is Sonic Youth, who took inspiration from the no wave composers Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore has stated: "Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it."

History

The Velvet Underground have been credited with creating the first noise rock album in 1968.

See also: Experimental rock, Punk rock, and Grunge

Forerunners

While the music had been around for some time, the term "noise rock" was coined in the 1980s to describe an offshoot of punk groups with an increasingly abrasive approach. An archetypal album is the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat (1968). Treblezine's Joe Gross credits White Light/White Heat as the "cult classic" with being the first noise rock album, accordingly, "perhaps it's an obvious starting point, but it's also the starting point. Period." Influenced by the free jazz of Ornette Coleman Reed stated that:

"I thought, you put Hubert Selby with Burroughs or Ginsberg lyrics against some rock with these kind of harmonic [ideas] going in … wouldn't you have something?"

The 1960s groups Red Krayola, Cromagnon, and Nihilist Spasm Band are other bands that were later assessed by some music critics and journalists to be early pioneers of what would become noise rock.

However, most notably were Les Rallizes Denudés who quickly adopted the more abrasive elements developed by the Velvet Underground in White Light/White Heat as well as expanding towards an increasingly noise based sound in the 1970s, influencing a great number of artists in the Japanese noise and psychedelic rock scene. Additionally, proto-punk bands such as the Stooges and MC5 would also have an influence on the noise rock genre. In Germany, groups emerging out of the influential krautrock scene such as Can, Faust, Amon Düül II and Neu! routinely entwined abrasive, free-improvised noises within their brand of rock music. Subsequently, American groups such as the Residents and Half Japanese began veering their sound into similar territories.

Origins

Sonic Youth in a publicity photo issued by SST to promote their fourth album, Sister (1987). Left to right: Shelley, Ranaldo, Moore, Gordon.

During the advent of punk rock and post-punk in the late '70s, many bands began adopting a more abrasive approach to rock music, influential amongst these artists were Chrome and Pere Ubu. However, most notable of these groups were Nick Cave's experimental post-punk band the Birthday Party. Inspired by the Pop Group, they went on to influence "a generation of US noise-rock groups, from Sonic Youth to Big Black and the Jesus Lizard".

Guitarist Steve Albini of noise rock band Big Black stated in a 1984 article that "good noise is like orgasm". He commented: "Anybody can play notes. There's no trick. What is a trick and a good one is to make a guitar do things that don't sound like a guitar at all. The point here is stretching the boundaries." He said that Ron Asheton of the Stooges "made squealy death noise feedback" on "Iggy's monstruous songs". Albini also mentioned John McKay of Siouxsie and the Banshees, saying: "The Scream is notable for a couple of things: only now people are trying to copy it, and even now nobody understands how that guitar player got all that pointless noise to stick together as songs". Albini also said that Keith Levene of Public Image Ltd had this "ability to make an excruciating noise come out of his guitar". Leeds-based post-punk group Gang of Four would incorporate drawn-out feedback on their song "Love Like Anthrax".

In an article about noise rock, Spin wrote that the US compilation album No New York, produced by Brian Eno and released in 1978 was an important document of the late '70s New York no wave scene that acted as an influence to bands like Sonic Youth and Swans. It featured several songs of Lydia Lunch's first band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks along with material of other groups Mars, DNA and James Chance and the Contortions.

Music

In the 1980s, Big Black, Sonic Youth and Swans were the leading figures of noise rock. Sonic Youth were the first noise rock band to get signed by a major label in 1990. Other influential groups were Scratch Acid, Dinosaur Jr. and No Trend. The Jesus Lizard emerged in the early 1990s as a "leading noise rock band" in the American scene with their "willfully abrasive and atonal" style. Later notable bands of the noise scene were Cows, Brainbombs, Liars, Season to Risk and Unsane.

While noise rock has never had any mainstream popularity, the raw, distorted and feedback-intensive sound of some noise rock bands had an influence on shoegaze, which enjoyed some popularity in the 90s, especially in the UK, and grunge, the most commercially successful. Among them are Wisconsin's Killdozer, Chicago's Big Black, and most notably San Francisco's Flipper, a band known for its slowed-down and murky "noise punk". The Butthole Surfers' mix of punk, heavy metal and noise rock was a major influence, particularly on the early work of Soundgarden.

Starting in the 1990s, noise punk developed mostly as a form of party music, with the band Lightning Bolt serving as key players in the 2000s noise punk scene in Providence, Rhode Island, although Brian Gibson, the band's bassist, is dismissive of the noise punk label, stating "I hate, hate, hate the category "noise-punk" I really don't like being labeled with two words that have so much baggage. It's gross."

See also

• List of noise rock bands
• List of noise musicians

Sources

• Blush, Steven (2016). New York Rock: From the Rise of The Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-08361-6.
• Felix, Stanford (2010). The Complete Idiot's Guide Music Dictionary. DK Publishing. ISBN 978-1-101-19809-4.