|
Post by mrcpa on Jan 4, 2014 14:57:01 GMT -5
Hey folks. This is my first post here, be gentle. Just wanted to share some thoughts.
I detest the term "noise music" because it's a complete oxymoron, so I'll try not to use it here. I'll just call it "noise" for simplicity's sake, not because I think that's a meaningful term ;D
I'm not new to noise - my first introduction was "Knees And Bones" by Controlled Bleeding about 15 years ago. I've also been a hue fan of Throbbing Gristle for about as long. CB and TG led me to discover other things over the years like Whitehouse, Consumer Electronics, Bastard Noise, etc. I've always been drawn to the sheer sonics. I'm not much interested in the shock value. I am, however, fairly new to Merzbow. It's only been about 6 months; I'm not sure what took me so long.
I've been intrigued by numerous Merzbow recordings, but for whatever reason, the ones that really clicked were/are "Anicca" and "Turmeric". To be honest, it was fairly dramatic. It's a bit hard to explain. I heard things in there that I never really considered before. I found that many of the ideas I've had about music for the last 30 years of my life - and music IS my life - have been reshaped. Noise is no longer just an intriguing curiosity to me. It's not a form of music either. It's almost like a new language for me, independent of music - which is really exciting. Music is sculpted, refined and carefully controlled for maximum satisfaction. Noise on the other hand is pure, raw expression. They don't hit the same parts of the brain. This might sound really cheesy, but I once heard a song called "Music Is Love"... I feel like music is to love as noise is to sex.
Sorry to sound so pretentious here.
Anyway since I really started listening to Merzbow, I've found that certain forms of music I used to love suddenly have much less appeal. Things like guitars, drums, verses and choruses don't move me at all (at least in terms of other people's music; I still like to use acoustic guitar myself on occasion). If I'm not listening to Merzbow or something along those lines, I find myself drawn to contemporary classical/avant-garde stuff like Glenn Branca, Philip Glass, Tony Banks, even some Rachmaninoff or Gorecki... aside from Branca, who I've liked for years, I never had interest in any type of classical/orchestral music before - so that's been equally interesting. But things like rock, pop, etc. suddenly are nothing.
The only potential problem I envision - I've had tinnitus for about 12 years now; it's not a HUGE issue but I do try to avoid things that could make it worse... I was listening to disc 2 of "Turmeric" last night, and my ears weren't pleased but it sounded too good to me to turn off.
I thought this might be worth sharing. I wonder if anyone else has experienced a "shift" like this. And maybe something like this is common after experiencing Merzbow, maybe I'm just being silly, but it's been quite an experience for me.
|
|
|
Post by andypandy380 on Jan 4, 2014 16:50:15 GMT -5
I'm not certain discovering noise was such a profound experience for me. It was quite a long learning curve, but I agree there was sort of a moment where it all 'clicked' and I found a lot of enjoyment out of something that previously didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I think as my tastes in music began to go into areas slightly more extreme than rock/metal etc, there was an inevitability that I'd eventually find something I liked about noise.
I would still regard what Merzbow and others do as music, I wouldn't say they were entirely separate. I listen to lots of music on the basis that I simply like the way it sounds... not a whole lot more, and I personally enjoy noise as just that, a sort of fascination for sound. I do however treat noise a little independently to other forms of music, I don't tend to listen to it in the car or with friends, it's typically something I enjoy alone, on my own terms. Perhaps that's just a given due to the nature of it.
It's hard to say whether discovering something new has made me dislike something I liked previously. My tastes have changed a lot since I was a teenager, I suppose spending an awful lot of time delving into underground music has given me a whole lot of enjoyment in things that I wasn't familiar with before. It's true that I now dislike a lot of stuff I used to like, perhaps the bulk of that's due to 'growing up' I think as a teenager, much of what I listened to was 'marketed' towards someone of my age group, something that I now find a bit of a head-scratcher. But, I don't think noise has changed my perspective on other types of music. It sort of annoys me when I see comments on youtube videos etc relating to noise where people automatically assume that people who listen to noise would despise all other forms of music. It's great to have a wide variety of interests, musically. There's plenty of rock/electronic and even pop music that gets me going. Listening to noise, I admit, has become more important to me in recent years than I ever imagined it would.
Welcome to the forum! Will be nice having some more people on here to share things with.
|
|
|
Post by neokorosu on Jan 4, 2014 18:00:43 GMT -5
Hi mrcpa! I enjoyed reading your post and I also noticed a very similar effect when I started listening to Merzbow. Before I had started with Merzbow, I already was interested in contemporary classical music. But since I am listening to Merzbow, my whole musical mindset had changed so drastically (of course in a positive way). My ears are much more open for noises of everyday life now, I see (or hear) for example, the sound of a moving freight train from a total different perspective. It is interesting to see, how complex and how much structure there is in such an ordinary sound. Something what is fascinating me about noise as music, is the direct interaction with the listener. Noise(music) is in contradistinction to music very abstract. The listener isn't just only a recipient, he is also interpreter. When I am listening to noise, I am trying in my thoughts to identify elements and to organize them. But this is just my view, I think every fan of this "genre" has a different way of listening. Yes, I seem to know this shift too. It is interesting to hear about the experience of other Merzbow fans.
|
|
|
Post by neokorosu on Jan 4, 2014 19:04:46 GMT -5
I am also annoyed of comments, where people say noise is some kind of "anti music". But I see it like andypandy380, I am also still interested in different kinds of music. It is impossible to create a everlasting music formula, but perhaps this isn't even necessary. Even Akita himself is a passionate music lover and has got a big record collection at his home.
|
|
|
Post by mrcpa on Jan 5, 2014 10:06:01 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies, folks. Very enlightening. I feel like I should clarify - I'm not necessarily seeing other forms of music as invalid... it's just that I'm finding certain things not as meaningful as I once did. I'll always appreciate a good melody; at one point, melodies were the fallback for me. I could listen to something more abstract like Merzbow, but the abstract stuff was always the exception, now it's become the rule.
I hate to get overly philosophical, but I'm not entirely comfortable with calling what Merzbow does (and other like-minded artists do) "music". It's an incredible form of expression with sound, but I'm not sure I can label it music. It's not "anti-music" either. And in line with that, neokorosu, I agree with you. The assumption by some that people who enjoy noise can't like "music" is ridiculous. I like apples best but that doesn't mean I don't want an orange sometimes. Haha.
I guess the most rewarding thing for me, is that I'm finding what Merzbow does as a completely different way to use sound. Not any more or less valid than any other, but something that I really enjoy to listen to that doesn't necessarily have to be music.
|
|
|
Post by neokorosu on Jan 5, 2014 17:41:31 GMT -5
I understand your thoughts. But I would still say that noise is some sort of music. It is just a question about how someone is describing the term "music". I think, that everything what can be perceived by ears and is sounding good/interesting to the listener, can be called music. It just depends on the mind of the listener, if a sound is music or not. And even in the work of Merzbow, there can be found musical elements like melodies, rhythms and so on. The sounds are shaped and organized in a certain way, it is a composition just with a main focus on timbres/tone colors. If I wouldn't categorize Merzbow's work as music, what should it be then? Well, in the end it doesn't matter how each one of us is describing Akita's work. It is what it is. (But I am putting it into the music drawer )
|
|
|
Post by Bucketfel on Jan 6, 2014 5:30:57 GMT -5
I think traditional music and noise music are both equally valid because they both provoke a reaction on the listener. Aside from that, calling one better than the other when we refer to music is also an oxymoron because music genres cant be displayed from top to bottom, they are classified from left to right. They are all on equal plain here and no genre is more deserving than the other
|
|
|
Post by mrcpa on Jan 6, 2014 18:27:45 GMT -5
I'm probably over-thinking here. The only thing I know is that what Merzbow and other "noise" artists are doing is making me appreciate different ways of using sound. I guess labels aren't necessary, all that matters is that it sounds good to me. I'd agree that while one form of music isn't more valid than another in general, certain kinds are more valid to me personally.
Thanks again for the thoughts.
|
|
|
Post by acsenger on Jan 9, 2014 21:10:22 GMT -5
It's always interesting for me to read others' opinions about how they perceive noise/experimental music and how they discovered it. It's obvious how one thinks about this kind of music is very much individual; as for me, I regard the genre noise as music and don't distinguish between genres based on "musicality". I became a music fan by listening to hard rock and metal and in a few years became an extreme metal fan; then, by chance, I discovered Merzbow and after the usual initial "What the hell is this?" reaction, I quite quickly became a fan. I was also lucky enough to become friends with a serious collector of experimental music through whom I got to know other kind of music in this broad category. I remember for a while I was bothered by the questions "Is it music that I'm listening to? How can one listen to such noise and like it?". Then, gradually, these topics lost their importance and I no longer thought about them. For a good while now I've only been interested in whether I like something or not and I judge everything as music, regardless of what kind of music it is. Every kind of music I like has its own "rules" and characteristics, of course, but at the end of the day I only care about whether I like what I hear or not. I assume everyone's taste in music changes over time to at least a certain degree. Mine certainly has over the roughly 20 years I've been actively listening to music and it keeps getting "refined" (I think this is a more accurate term than "change" in my case). Like andypandy380, I've also liked music in high school (and later) that I can't stand now because it was "high school music": once my taste developed, it was natural not to listen to these bands/genres any more. A more overarching development for me has been that I've grown more and more tired of the general rock & metal song structure. This has gotten to a point where I can only listen to rock and metal in small doses (even though I only like a few bands these days to begin with) because it tires me that most songs have pretty much the same structure. This also ties in with another characteristic of how my taste has developed: I listen to what I consider a fairly wide variety of music and this way I don't get bored by any one genre. I can't even imagine listening to one or two types of music because I'd be bored to death. Of course, I'm aware there are people who consider noise and music separate (T. Mikawa of Incapacitants comes to mind as one example). It's worth pointing out though that few noise musicians and fans listen exclusively to noise: listening to many kinds of music is common, regardless of what kind of music a musician makes (Mikawa, for example, is a big fan of psychedelic and progressive rock, Akita likewise, just to give two examples). Huh, I hope my rambling wasn't too boring...
|
|
|
Post by neokorosu on Jan 10, 2014 11:49:20 GMT -5
No,no! This is very interesting!
|
|
|
Post by mrcpa on Jan 21, 2014 14:27:17 GMT -5
Once again, thanks for the replies. It's been interesting. The one thing I regret is titling my thread "Noise becomes more valid than music". I don't know where I came up with that. What I was trying to express was different ways to appreciate expression with sound. Traditional music - characteristically possessing things like structured melody, harmony, rhythm, meter etc. - is one way. What Merzbow and like-minded artists do is another. These days, I'm finding the latter more exciting in terms of expression. And lest someone feels a need to immediately counter what I'm saying, yes I do realize that some of Merzbow's works do have rhythm and even melody. My personal favorite Merzbow recordings are ones that are more abstract and lacking in traditional "musical" elements, so those are the ones I'm referencing. As far as labels go, well... either everything that makes sound is "noise", or nothing is. Incidentally, don't you find it funny how some Merzbow fans are comfortable calling Merzbow's output "noise", but when a non-fan calls it "noise", the fan immediately cries "it's not noise, it's music!" Haha. I haven't seen it happen here, but it has happened elsewhere. I still find the term "noise music" to be a complete oxymoron; I wish there was a better descriptor.
Another great thing I've found in Merzbow's recordings is how much they inspire me in my own recordings (which, although they cover a wide range, are generally nothing like Merzbow). They've given me a renewed focus. Listening to them gives me an urge to create rather than an urge to rush out and buy more Merzbow albums (although I still want more!). For that alone, the experience has been invaluable.
|
|
|
Post by neokorosu on Jul 29, 2014 17:51:15 GMT -5
I am not sure if my post is on the right place here, but I also didn't want to start a separate thread just for one of my thoughts.
Some days ago, I found through Merzbow's Twitter-account this interesting video here:
Beside the fact that I like the video because of the usage of a keyboard/stagepiano in a Merzbow performance, it is interesting to know what kind of musician Eiko Ishibashi is. I have listened to some snippets on YouTube and I was quite surprised how her solo works sounds. Her music goes more into a Jazz/Pop direction. So, in this performance were two artists working together, which were actually coming from two very different "scenes" with different mindsets. I like the result here, it would be cool if they would release together an album.
|
|