Noise Matters

by Greg Hainge

Everyone knows what noise is. Or do they? Can we in fact say that one man's noise is another teenager's music? Is noise in fact only an auditory phenomenon or does it extend far beyond this realm? If our common definitions of noise are necessarily subjective and noise is not just unpleasant sound, then it merits a closer look (or listen).

Greg Hainge sets out to define noise in this way, to find within it a series of operations common across its multiple manifestations that allow us to apprehend it as something other than a highly subjective term that tells us very little. Examining a wide range of texts, including Sartre's novel Nausea and David Lynch's iconic films Eraserhead and Inland Empire , Hainge investigates some of the Twentieth Century's most infamous noisemongers to suggest that they're not that noisy after all; and it finds true noise in some surprising places. The result is a thrilling and illuminating study of sound and culture.

Genres: Music

308 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[Zach Minuto · Rating 4 out of 5]

it makes sense that a book about noise would itself be as noisy as this one. hainge presents an onslaught of competing ideas, colliding into and clanfing off of each other, resulting in a cloudy soup of references and jargon. but the assertion threaded through each of these essays—that noise only makes sense when we view objects as Essentially related to each other (rather than inert, sterile, always there but waiting for a push into motion)—is worthwhile and has wide implications outside the confines of music criticism. i wonder how different our lives might be if we understood the very nature of matter to be relation instead of individuation.