Noise music

Lore & Background

Elements were later explored by artists in the Dada and Fluxus movements, as well as through electroacoustic music, modern classical, and musique concrète. Composers such as John Cage, Edgard Varèse, and James Tenney explicitly used the term 'noise' to describe some of their experimental practices.

Reader's Guide

Noise music's significance lies in its radical expansion of what can be considered music, drawing from early 20th-century avant-garde movements and later influencing industrial and electronic music. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emergence of industrial music and commercial synthesizers encouraged non-musicians to experiment with strictly noise-oriented styles, leading to genres such as power electronics, dark ambient, death industrial, and power noise. The 1980s cassette underground facilitated most of these releases. In Japan, the Japanoise scene produced influential acts such as Merzbow, Hijokaidan, Hanatarash, C.C.C.C., and Incapacitants, who contributed to the emergence of harsh noise and harsh noise wall into the 1990s. During the 2000s and 2010s, the American noise underground blended kosmische Musik, progressive electronic, ambient, drone, and new age into a style known as post-noise, catalyzed by the Skaters and including artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Pocahaunted, Zola Jesus, Laurel Halo, Sun Araw, Yellow Swans, and Emeralds.

Did You Know?

• John Cage's composition 4'33" is considered by some to represent the beginning of noise music proper.
• The English group Whitehouse coined the term 'power electronics'.
• The Japanoise scene stemmed from the Kansai no wave movement in Japan.