Dear Jessica Brennan,
Do you know that there is a genre of music called Noise Rock? I don’t think I like it. This is what Wikipedia says about it:
“Noise rock is developed from early avant-garde music, sound art, and rock songs featuring extremely dissonant sounds and electronic feedback.”
Now, don’t judge sweetie, let’s give this a chance and see what we get. First a few definitions for clarity.
Avant-garde – unorthodox and experimental
Sound Art – sound is utilized as a medium (like in music?)
Rock Songs – got it
Extremely Dissonant Sounds – disagreeing or harsh in sound
Electronic Feedback – the feedback of sound from a loudspeaker to a microphone, often resulting in a whistling noise caused by electrical oscillations.
I know it is hard not to be skeptical when you read these definitions because it doesn’t sound like a very appealing combination of ingredients, but maybe this is like when someone tells you to make chocolate cake with mayonnaise and you think, “No way is that going to be good”, but then it is. Before we write this off, we have the recipe now, let’s put it all together.
So, thinking purely from the song standpoint, we have unorthodox and experimental sound that is atonal, sort of like rock music – but it’s art -of course it is art, that is disagreeing and harsh, plus it is distorted with feedback. Yes, I get it. That does sound like Noise rock. Well named.
One thing that I have noticed about the Noise Rock bands is that they haven’t given a lot of thought to transitioning their brand to the mainstream. The names of their bands, which for the sake of good taste, I shall not list here, are not the sort of thing you would want to say out loud in polite company.
Anyway, I don’t want to be that person who says they don’t like a movie when they haven’t seen it or don’t like calamari when they’ve never tasted it, so I took to YouTube to see what Noise Rock has to offer.
Oh my.
I listened to part of a song by a band called Unsane. It was an Un-usual experience. I felt the band sounded – just my opinion of course – a little..um…well……angry. However, I have to say, “well done”, as I can agree that it was unorthodox, dissonant, disagreeable and harsh, and there was a significant amount of feedback…and screaming. First them screaming in the song and then me screaming when I was racing around arms flailing like I was being chased by a wooly beast, trying to find the mute button.
I don’t like it.
Love Mum xo
