Noise. Sound. Media. Revaluing noise in the media-age

Most discourse on noise still considers it in opposition or juxtaposition to ‘sound’ and ‘music:’ an abject, transgressive, disruptive or subversive element. Contrary to this view, I argue noise is essential in recorded music. Noise is present in the attack of each sound, shaping its overtones and defining its specific sonic identity. This ‘noise-logic’ – noise determining sonic identity – became pivotal in recorded music, since recordings record specific sounds: noisy constellations of frequencies unique to a specific time and place. Gradually, the paradigm of written music was replaced by a media-paradigm, insisting on specific sonorities, defined by this noise. Based on the work of various authors that have dealt with the subject, the paper focuses on this changed position of noise in recorded music. It takes the The Velvet Underground, who’s ‘Sister Ray’ was almost entirely based on blurry noise textures, as main case. Through band member John Cale it touches upon John Cage’s ‘emancipation of sound,’ the ‘drones’ and amplification of the Theatre of Eternal Music and the unhinging sound effects of Cale’s own solo records. Furthermore, Lou Reed’s Metal Music Machine (1975) – an hour of pure feedback – stands as a hyperbolic example of the emancipation of noise in music and the discursive shift toward a media paradigm in sound and music