i'm a musician, i enjoy and also sometimes play noise music. your comment is exactly correct. noise as music is totally preposterous. a large part of what i en

i'm a musician, i enjoy and also sometimes play noise music. your comment is exactly correct. noise as music is totally preposterous. a large part of what i enjoy about noise are thoughtful, hilarious critiques like yours. here are some plausible entry points to this bizarre non-genre. any number of these could be interesting to consider: - the opposite of a thing is often part of the thing. think about of how a good illustrator is super conscious of negative space. is noise the opposite of music? - every musical note contains a series of overtones. ask a string player to demonstrate "harmonics" if you're unfamiliar with the concept. i couldn't really hear them until i learned how to listen for them. it's possible the knife-guitar player was doing something with overtones. it's also possible that the people nodding along spend a lot of time playing amplified music, and have suffered hearing loss that changes the threshold at which they can comfortably perceive the overtone series. (or they could've just been entirely deaf) - some people are interested in asking the question "what even IS 'music,' anyway?" noise music is a flippant answer to this question. But it's an answer nonetheless. - "what even IS 'a performance,' anyway?" - if you're a driver, it could be important to get a feel for your vehicle by doing things like flooring it and slamming on the breaks. if you're a painter, it could be beneficial to get to know your paint by making a big goopy pile of it somewhere. if you're a musician? - knife guy almost certainly didn't start out immediately loving unlistenable noise. he probably was exposed via a gateway drug like ambient music, and built up a tolerance over time. same way i learned to love "spicy mustard." - it's all just a big scam, but if you want in on it you have to pretend to be into it. maybe it's a scam we can live with. musicians don't really make much money anymore. - human beings are fucking weird. we tend to like things just because we're familiar with them. the fact that people enjoy noise is a hilarious example. you might enjoy learning a couple of the big noise names (merzbow is a good one, lou reed metal machine music is a classic) and continuing to dunk on noise fans because it's funny and we deserve it.