noise rock

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.[http://kalvos.org/chatham.html "Rhys Chatham"], Kalvos-Damien website. (Accessed October 20, 2009). 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."{{cite web|url=http://www.spin.com/2004/12/art-noise/|title=The Art of Noise|date=December 2, 2004|website=Spin|last1=Sisario|first1=Ben}}

File:Velvet Underground 1968 by Billy Name.png have been credited with creating the first noise rock album in 1968.]]

{{See also|Experimental rock|Punk rock|3=Grunge}}

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.{{cite web|last1=Terich|first1=Jeff|title=Hold On To Your Genre : Noise Rock|url=http://www.treblezine.com/hold-on-to-your-genre-noise-rock/|website=Treblezine|date=February 25, 2013 |access-date=March 29, 2021}} An archetypal album is the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat (1968).{{cite journal|last1=Gross|first1=Joe|title=Essentials: Noise Rock |journal=Spin|date=April 2007|volume=23|issue=4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AuTSBJnG06YC&pg=PA94}} 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:

{{quote|"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?"{{Cite magazine |last=Shteamer |first=Hank |date=2019-05-22 |title=Flashback: Ornette Coleman Sums Up Solitude on 'Lonely Woman' |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ornette-coleman-lonely-woman-lou-reed-837918/ |access-date=2023-04-20 |magazine=Rolling Stone |language=en-US}}}}

Les Rallizes Denudés quickly adopted the noise elements developed by the Velvet Underground in White Light/White Heat and The Velvet Underground & Nico by creating long improvisational songs based on feedback and the use of heavy distortion. The band moved toward an increasingly noise based sound in the 1970s, influencing a great number of artists in the Japanese noise and psychedelic rock scene.{{cite web | url=https://medium.com/@matthewpenner21/les-rallizes-d%C3%A9nud%C3%A9s-japans-noise-pioneers-25f0ddab3644 | title=Les Rallizes Dénudés: Japan's Noise Pioneers | date=January 21, 2020 }}{{self-published source|date=July 2023}}

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.{{cite web | url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-parable-of-arable-land-mw0000274607 | title=The Red Crayola, the Red Krayola - the Parable of Arable Land Album Reviews, Songs & More | AllMusic | website=AllMusic }}{{cite web | url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/orgasm-mw0000619006 | title=Cromagnon - Orgasm Album Reviews, Songs & More | AllMusic | website=AllMusic }}{{Cite web |title=No Record - Record Collector Magazine |url=https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/record |access-date=May 4, 2023 |language=en}}{{cite web |date=February 10, 2017 |title=The Nihilist Spasm Band invented noise rock in 1965 |url=https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_nihilist_spasm_band_invented_noise_rock_in_1965}}

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

Guitarist Steve Albini of noise rock band Big Black stated in 1984 in an 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."Albini, Steve. (September - October 1984). "Tired of Ugy Fat ?". Matter [a Music Magazine] (10). 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".

In an article about noise rock, Spin wrote that a US compilation album titled No New York, released in 1978 on an independent label called "Antilles", was important as it documented the no wave New York scene. 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.

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.{{cite web|url=https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6199-sonic-youth/|title=Sonic Youth|publisher=Pitchfork|first=Julianne |last=Escobedo Shepherd |date=November 19, 2005|access-date=March 29, 2021}} 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.{{cite web|url=http://allmusic.com/artist/the-jesus-lizard-p13331|title=The Jesus Lizard – AllMusic|author=Erlewine, Stephen Thomas|website=AllMusic|access-date=September 5, 2012}} Later notable bands of the noise scene were Liars, Season to Risk{{cite web | url=https://www.digmeoutpodcast.com/episode/505-in-a-perfect-world-by-season-to-risk | title=Dig Me Out 505: Season to Risk - in a Perfect World }} and Unsane.{{cite web|url=https://thequietus.com/articles/19929-the-best-noise-rock-albums-reviewed|title=Quietus Writers' Top 40 Noise Rock Tracks|publisher=The Quietus |date=March 29, 2016|access-date=March 29, 2021}}

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.{{cite book | last =Azerrad | first =Michael | author-link =Michael Azerrad | title =Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 | publisher =Little, Brown | year =2001 | pages=439 }}

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."{{cite web|last1=Sisario|first1=Ben|title=The Art of Noise|url=http://www.spin.com/2004/12/art-noise/|website=Spin|date=December 2, 2004}}{{cite web|url=http://web.mac.com/labann/Ri_Arts_Review/Bolt_on_Bolt.html|access-date=April 11, 2009 |last=Labaan |title=Lightning Bolt: Interview with the Brians}}{{dead link|date=November 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

• List of noise rock bands
• List of noise musicians

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Blush|first=Steven|author-link=Steven Blush|title=New York Rock: From the Rise of The Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ezTpDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA266|year=2016|publisher=St. Martin's Press|isbn=978-1-250-08361-6}}
• {{cite book|last=Felix|first=Stanford|title=The Complete Idiot's Guide Music Dictionary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lJ_Ql1fOCuwC&pg=PT172|year=2010|publisher=DK Publishing|isbn=978-1-101-19809-4}}

{{wikiquote}}

{{Punk rock}}

{{Experimental music}}

{{Alternative rock}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Noise Rock}}

Category:Punk rock genres

Category:Alternative rock genres

Category:Noise music

Category:1980s neologisms

Category:American styles of music

Category:Rock music genres