“Anti-Art” and “Anti-Music” · 2:25am Aug 30th, 2023
This has… close to nothing to do with what I used to write here. Those were examinations of fanfic as an art medium… this is instead about music. But, I still want to touch on a sentiment I’ve seen expressed around certain types of music.
I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately in fact, and getting into the weirder realms of music. I do not necessarily mean weirder in a bad way, but rather, music you’d literally never hear on the radio, music that’s so unapproachable that’s what it stands for, and music that isn’t really music at all.
My gf likes a certain subgenre of music known as Harsh Noise, more broadly Noise, but Harsh Noise exists too. We’ll get into it later, but I made a cursory mention of this fact to a Music Night and someone mentioned “We like it if you submit actual music.”
This is in reference to an incident that had happened with a different someone I’m really close to (Chiri for those in the loop) submitting Breakcore one night, which almost everyone really did not like. Me implying that my gf likes harsher music than even that probably prompted that response.
But… this is where the issue arises. If you’re thinking about Breakcore, Harsh Noise, as traditional “music”, you’re really going about it wrong. Instead, these genres are part of what’s known as the “anti-music” movement.
There are certain types of art known as “anti-art”. One of the most famous examples of anti-art is Fountain, a piece by Marcel Duchamp where he submitted a urinal to an art exhibition and called it art. This is anti-art, the banana being taped to the wall is another famous example. Anti-art isn’t necessarily ‘anti-art’ as in, it doesn’t hate art. Rather, it’s a unique form of art, one that makes you question what art even is.
Art is a nebulously defined concept that often ties to a higher level of quality, but anti-art challenges the idea that art necessarily has to be of a higher quality. I find anti-art very interesting, as a purveyor of the idea that anyone can really create art. It really reinforces my super loose idea of art. There’s good art, but that’s subjective. Anything that gets put out in any medium, to me, is art. This may devalue the definition of “art”, but who says I can’t do that? Perhaps art is like literature, with “Art” being the really high-quality stuff and “art” being the rest. Or maybe that entire dichotomy is bullshit, the choice is yours!
But anti-art isn’t necessarily restricted to a visual medium either. There’s a very good video I watched on Troll Levels in Super Mario Maker that also defines these levels as a sort of video game “anti-art”. It was a great video I actually highly recommend it. (It’s called “The Genius of Troll Levels”)
But I, being a musician and a music enjoyer, am intrigued by the idea of “anti-music”.
We of course have the genres of Art Pop, Art Rock, and Art Punk— in my opinion all silly genre names— these are usually given to songs or albums that are attempting to make an artistic statement beyond sounding good. Good examples of these genres would be Carousel by Vylet Pony, OK Computer by Radiohead, or perhaps most famously, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. These are all seen as attempting to make a greater artistic statement about music and how experimentation can be used in a sound medium to create new experiences for the listener. These are all very highly-respected genres and usually when something is called “Art Pop” or “Art Rock” they’re speaking to a perceived “higher level” of quality.
And then there’s Noise.
Noise sees this “Art Pop”, “Art Rock” bs and goes out of its way to make music that is deliberately unmusical. The music is harsh, abrasive, throws out common production and musicianship tips to create something so raw and visceral most people cannot stand it.
If you can’t stand the music, then it’s doing its job. If anything, I’d argue that makes it on a higher artistic level than Art Rock or Art Pop. Noise is questioning what music even is, to make you physically recoil, want to turn it off, that’s your response to it asking how bad can music get before it ceases to become music. That’s exactly what it’s trying to do. It’s to the point where if you saw it as traditional “music”, you’d be missing the point.
Noise is just one example of this “anti-music”. There are other examples too, Breakcore is another form of anti-music, I’d say (and remains probably the most famous anti-music genre). Breakcore, and the Digital Hardcore it broke from, are both attempting to push the limits of music in a way where it ceases to become unapproachable. Not unmusical, but unapproachable. Breakcore and Digital Hardcore often still use things such as melody and musicianship to get things done, but it’s deliberately peaked to hell and back, it’s deliberately loud and abrasive, it’s deliberately throwing common music ideas on their head to mess them up and leave the listener utterly bewildered. Again, if you don’t think it’s good music, then it’s doing its job completely correctly.
Closely related to Noise is another “anti-music” genre of the Sound Collage. Well, it would be “anti-music” except Sound Collage is quite literally not music. Sound Collages are collections of samples stitched together to paint a larger picture, more in line with traditional art, Revolution 9 is the most famous example of Sound Collage to give a general idea of what those are.
Despite this however, Sound Collage did actually inspire two genres that are very much “anti-music”. Those genres are the genres of Musique Concrete and Industrial. Musique Concrete is basically just an extension of Sound Collage with the general idea of “what can we do with these new magnetic tape machines”. They’re musical in a certain definition, but a lot of Musique Concrete creators didn’t know anything about music and just wanted to create something that vaguely resembled it. This is in stark contrast to Industrial, in which the musicians understand music, they just decide that they don’t want to create traditional music.
Industrial’s goal is to create a repetitive and mechanical soundscape that emphasizes rhythm over anything else. It’s another genre attempting to question what music can be by removing melody and structure and focusing entirely on rhythm. This rhythm is created with samples and old electronic music equipment, and would actually go on to inspire the entire Post-Industrial movement, which is an entire movement that attempts to dissect just how violent songs can get before they just become too much (that was finally achieved with Digital Hardcore, which is probably why Post-Industrial became a lot less violent after Digital Hardcore hit the scene).
The thing with all these “anti-music” genres is that they’re not music. They’re very obviously not music— in the traditional sense at least. They don’t have melodies, common instruments, structures, but they are merely asking what music is. If you can’t stand this music, that’s actually completely fine. However, it is real music. It’s music that’s just asking to be examined, taken apart, and examined for the kind of artistic statement it is.
Do I want to listen to Instruments Disorder again? No, I’m not insane. But, I can appreciate it because I know it’s art, and I know what statement it’s trying to make. Just how abrasive is too abrasive. Given the Noisecore fanbase, I think that’s a never-ending search.
And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie
Very interesting stuff! I only know of bands like Captain Beefheart and Throbbing Gristle for anti-music bands so hearing there's more out there is cool to hear. The stuff makes my physically ill so I won't be checking any of them out, but it's always cool to hear what people are up to when it comes to pushing boundaries of art.
(I used to hate Duchamps R.Mutt piece but when I learned the history I started to really appreciate it ^^;)
5744538
I love Throbbing Gristle. They’re a lot of my exposure to Industrial actually, once I listened to enough of it, I kinda started seeing what they were doing (this doesn’t mean you have to listen to a Throbbing Gristle album).
5744540
Hahaha, neat!