Resonances is a compelling collection of new essays by scholars, writers and musicians, all seeking to explore and enlighten this field of study. Noise seems to stand for a lack of aesthetic grace, to alienate or distract rather than enrapture. And yet the drones of psychedelia, the racket of garage rock and punk, the thudding of rave, the feedback of shoegaze and post-rock, the bombast of thrash and metal, the clatter of jungle and the stuttering of electronica, together with notable examples of avant-garde noise art, have all found a place in the history of contemporary musics, and are recognised as representing key evolutionary moments. Noise therefore is the untold story of contemporary popular music, and in a critical exploration of noise lies the possibility of a new narrative: one that is wide-ranging, connects the popular to the underground and avant-garde, fully posits the studio as a musical instrument, and demands new critical and theoretical paradigms of those seeking to write about music.
This collection is a massive achievement in laying the groundwork for a new way of thinking about things musical. Its scope is large - Hendrix, Xenakis, deafness, production aesthetics, pleasure, Russian punk - and essays impress in both their attention to detail and the breadth of their conceptual scope as we move from questions of aesthetics to detailed close reading. It is a study which succeeds as both music scholarship and cultural contextualization, particularly in relation to artists in other media (Ballard, Artaud) and key scholars (Attali, Adorno, Benjamin). And although it is hard to photograph noise, the book's photos find some excellent visual analogues.
