Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (Sign, Storage, Transmission) - Softcover

Novak, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082235392X ISBN 13: 9780822353928

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Noise, an underground music made through an amalgam of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects, first emerged as a genre in the 1980s, circulating on cassette tapes traded between fans in Japan, Europe, and North America. With its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances, Noise has captured the imagination of a small but passionate transnational audience. For its scattered listeners, Noise always seems to be new and to come from somewhere else: in North America, it was called "Japanoise." But does Noise really belong to Japan? Is it even music at all? And why has Noise become such a compelling metaphor for the complexities of globalization and participatory media at the turn of the millennium? In Japanoise, David Novak draws on more than a decade of research in Japan and the United States to trace the "cultural feedback" that generates and sustains Noise. He provides a rich ethnographic account of live performances, the circulation of recordings, and the lives and creative practices of musicians and listeners. He explores the technologies of Noise and the productive distortions of its networks. Capturing the textures of feedback-its sonic and cultural layers and vibrations-Novak describes musical circulation through sound and listening, recording and performance, international exchange, and the social interpretations of media.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Novak is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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JAPANOISE

MUSIC AT THE EDGE OF CIRCULATION

By David Novak

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5392-8

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
vii
Introduction...............................................................
1
1 Scenes of Liveness and Deadness..........................................
28
2 Sonic Maps of the Japanese Underground...................................
64
3 Listening to Noise in Kansai.............................................
92
4 Genre Noise..............................................................
117
5 Feedback, Subjectivity, and Performance..................................
139
6 Japanoise and Technoculture..............................................
169
7 The Future of Cassette Culture...........................................
198
Epilogue: A Strange History................................................
227
Notes......................................................................
235
References.................................................................
259
Index......................................................................
279

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SCENES OF LIVENESS AND DEADNESS

There are about forty-five people in here, bathing in the blast of Noise rightnow: a group of older fans, some college kids already holding CDS they'vepurchased from the merchandise table, a handful of foreigners (mostlyCanadian and American), and a lot of familiar faces among the regulars,local performers, and store and label owners here for the show. These all-Noiseconcerts usually happen about once a month in Tokyo, in differentvenues. The livehouse, 20,000V, is set up like any small hole-in-the-wallrock club, a poorly maintained, boxy room in the basement—actually, twofloors down in the subbasement—of an anonymous building on the mainshopping street in Koenji. It's about a hundred square feet, and there arehuge black wooden speaker enclosures chained to the ceiling on either sideof the stage; flyers on the walls for both current and past hardcore, scum,punk, and Noise shows; a tiny bar in the back by the toilets selling cupsof beer; and a little table near the door where recordings by the evening'sperformers are sold.

I stand about halfway toward the front of the room, slightly to the sideof the stage, in line with one of the huge towers of speakers. MSBR ison stage now, and he is very interesting to watch. His body movementsare much more conservative than those of the energetic eighteen-year-oldLong Islander Viodre, whose thrashing set preceded MSBR, but his handsare always moving: constantly adjusting pots and faders, starting and stoppingsounds, changing them, pushing against pedals, and switching themoff and on with the base of his hand. In comparison with tonight's otherperformers, MSBR's Noise is more multilayered and rhythmic, and he isalmost completely still as he sits in the center of an earsplitting whirlwindof sound. He cuts in and out of an analog delay, shuttling through a spaceyblur as he shifts out of one timbre and into another, never letting any texturelinger for more than five or ten seconds. Everyone is rapt, falling intothe steady flow of sound. No one talks; no one could talk if they wantedto.... Besides, it costs ¥4,000 (about US$50) to get in, so you can't affordnot to get it—you just listen.

Indeed, everything about this audience shows that they already knowwhat they are doing here, as they stand scattered about the floor of theclub, now watching the next band, Nord, blasting through the speakers,two huge thickets of incense burning on stage as blue light illuminates theperformers from behind. The low-end vibrations are inside my chest, forcingmy lungs to compress as I exhale slightly, involuntarily, along with theblasts of sound. Nord is so heavy, pounding deep drum sounds, droningmoans with electric clatter over it all, and as the atmosphere intensifies,growing louder, the lights begin to come up—white, glaring spots in myeyes as their set crashes to an end.

Finally, the famous harsh Noise duo Incapacitants takes the stage. It'sso loud I can't breathe—they vibrate the air inside my mouth, in the backof my windpipe, as the volume grows and grows. I fear for my eardrumsdespite the wadded-up balls of wet toilet paper I stuffed in my ears as theset began, and I retreat a few meters to the back of the tiny room whereit's slightly—barely—quieter. Two or three others have done the same, butmost press closer to the center as Mikawa and Kosakai crash their soundsagainst us. One Noise musician I recognize is right up in front, directly infront of a speaker, bouncing his head and shoulders back and forth, andoccasionally thrusting his arms out in front of his body toward the musicians,vibrating tautly in place.

Mikawa is crushing a contact mic under a bent square of steel, tilting itback and forth to shift the oscillating loops of feedback emerging from hissystem. Kosakai shakes the mic in his hand in front of his Marshall amp,his entire body rattling and jerking as if he is holding onto part of somepowerful being that is trying to escape his grip, as a quaking stream ofhigh-pitched noise spins out of the speakers. Mikawa leans over in frontof a smaller Roland amp, each of their heads down on either side of thestage, faces to their tables now, leaning on them, shaking them—or arethey being shaken? Kosakai crashes to the floor in a jumble of electronicparts as his table collapses—the lights come up harsh and bright, shiningright at us. Suddenly the sound is cut, the lights switch off a second later,and we are left in a strange void of darkness and silence, soon broken bysporadic applause and shouts of approval, as the performers shut off theiramps and abruptly stumble off stage, exhausted, tripping over the morassof wires on the floor.

* * *

Noise is about liveness and deadness, both in performance and in the technologicallymediated sound of recordings. Live Noise performances canproduce extraordinarily powerful embodiments of sound that help audiencesimagine a community of Noise listeners, both locally and as a global"scene." How can we understand these experiences of sound as part ofNoise's circulatory context? Listeners most often encounter Noise throughindividual experiences with recordings, and even the liveness of Noise concertsis geared toward isolated receptions of sound. The feedback loop betweenliveness and deadness, then, is about the co-constitutive relationshipbetween performance and media in the lives of listeners. But this loopruns parallel to another kind of feedback—between making sound andfeeling its effects. Liveness is about the connections between performanceand embodiment, which transform passing moments into repeatable encountersof listening. Deadness, in turn, helps remote listeners recognizetheir affective experiences with recordings as a new aesthetics of soundand listening in the reception of Noise.

In this chapter, I illustrate Noise's liveness and deadness in several differentcontexts of experience. I describe liveness in the places of Noiseperformance, in the embodied practices of Japanese...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 082235392X
• ISBN 13: 9780822353928
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 306
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland