In the preface to his new book, Stephen Graham explains that his aim is to address certain things that have been neglected in noise theory: namely, the aesthetic dimension and ‘style’ of noise, as well as noise as a ‘genre story’. In terms of style, Graham suggests that there is something in noise – what he takes to be its perpetual dialectical movement of ‘musical norms and idiosyncrasies’ (ix) – that many key noise theorists (he lists the likes of Greg Hainge, Paul Hegarty, and Alexander Reed) overlook. In addition, Graham turns his attention to what he feels is a broader range of noise styles and genres that existing literature has tended to exclude. His book therefore has a dual focus: it is about style and genre, manifesting both as an exploration of the experience of listening to noise and as a more diverse map to a vast history of noises spanning the past 50 years. It is this expansive scope that gives the book its distinctive quality but also contributes to some of its limitations.

Structurally, the book follows a somewhat linear chronology. It is split into two parts, with the first covering twentieth-century noise from the 1970s to the 1990s followed by twenty-first-century noise. Dividing these two parts is an interlude that summarises the history he has presented up to that point, as well as pointing to the story to come. While the book does not promise to be exhaustive, the scope is impressive. Geographical locations and genres structure the chapters, with music from Britain, Europe, the USA, and Japan, and styles encompass industrial music, power electronics, harsh noise wall, Japanese noise music, dark ambient music, and contemporary hybrid styles where noise is seen to be merging more and more with ‘broader musical ecosystems’ (204). Even for readers already familiar with this music, the breadth and detail will likely expose them to unfamiliar noisy territories.

What connects Graham’s interest in the aesthetics of noise with its story is the notion of ‘becoming’. The heavy lifting for this concept is done in the preface and introduction. There, Graham outlines the multifaceted dimension of becoming, with ‘becoming noise music’ referring both to the development and movement of noise in music into its own genre – noise becoming genre – and, more abstractly, to a ‘quasi-dialectical … movement and tension’ (vii, italics author’s own) where, he explains, ‘noise music hovers between “musical” order and “noise” disorder, legible language and illegible speech, treating these different elements as coextensive dialectical antagonisms rather than mutually opposing or cancelling opposites’ (1). Added to this is a ‘subjective’ dimension of becoming, where becoming captures the ‘feelings of self-in-process, or “emerging” self or self-less’ (9). This becoming refers to the psychological experiences of the listener of extreme noise, where the self is said to flicker in and out of focus in ecstatic states. Graham’s account oscillates, then, between historicising noise, conceptualising its instability, and describing this ‘unstable’ listening experience.

While convincing in parts, these different but related modes of becoming create problems. Because the conceptual framing is established early, readers are expected to carry it with them as an interpretive lens throughout the book. As a result, becoming is often implicit rather than clearly specified in Graham’s analyses. This makes it unclear at times which kind of becoming is at work, or how exactly it functions in particular examples. For instance, when dealing with the problematic politics of power electronic groups like Genocide Organ – a dimension of the genre that Graham, to his credit, confronts head on – one wonders whether ‘becoming’ has a role at all and, if it does, whether it operates historically, psychologically, or through some version of transgressive instability, any of which could be relevant but none of which is clearly articulated. Further complications arise when becoming is occasionally situated alongside other philosophical concepts. In Chapter 2: Anti-music, various ideas like nihilism, Lacanian ‘lack’, Nagarjuna’s ‘emptiness’, and Bataille’s ‘divine darkness’ (65–66) are mobilised to address the negational aspects of noise, but it remains unclear whether these ideas are compatible with becoming or whether they are operating as something conceptually distinct.

When dealing with the psychological experiences of becoming, Graham sometimes shifts into a personalised mode of writing, marked by italics. This approach is used in his discussion of music works such as Merzbow’s album Noisembryo (1994), where Graham narrates his own listening experience and moment of self-loss, describing his ego dissolving into a larger cosmic context (101) before re-emerging in an altered state. This passage, and others like it, are rich in detail, and Graham deserves credit for his ability to render such abstract sounds into language. However, at times these passages lean too heavily on well-worn ideas of noise as ecstasy. Although Graham states his desire to move away from notions of noise as ‘“formlessness” and “pure chaos”’ and towards something ‘unresolved’ and ‘suspended’ (94), some descriptions seem closer to the former.

Nevertheless, one of the book’s most engaging chapters emerges precisely from these ecstatic and traumatic dimensions of noise. In Chapter 8, Noise Erotics: Traumatic Bodies and Desires, Graham argues that noise music can create a space where violent memories and trauma can be confronted in ‘a safe, controlled, environment’, offering noise up as a kind of therapeutic practice (181). Engaging with artists like Himukalt and Moonbeam Terror, he draws attention to a contemporary ‘trend’ in noise aesthetics that he rightly suggests has been somewhat neglected in the literature.

On this front, the book succeeds in expanding the story of noise into areas that some scholarship has overlooked. Dark ambient music is a welcome addition, although Graham’s choice of Gnawed’s Subterranean Rites (2020) is perhaps less genre-defining than figures such as Lustmord, who is only mentioned in passing. More compelling is Graham’s suggestion that the density of harsh noise wall and the minimalism of dark ambient music exist on a spectrum of contraction and expansion (162). Although again made in passing, this is one of the more convincing instances of becoming at work.

One notable absence in Graham’s otherwise expansive history is hip hop and the question of black noise. Given the sonic textures, distortions, and confrontational aesthetics associated with much of hip hop – from Public Enemy’s ‘Bring the Noise’ (1998) through to more contemporary and explicitly noisy acts like Dälek, Death Grips, and Backxwash – it feels like a key part of noise’s history is missed. This absence is particularly striking in light of Hegarty’s recent essay ‘Is There Black Noise?’ (Reference Hegarty2021), inspired in part by Tricia Rose’s Black Noise (Reference Rose1994). In this essay, Hegarty, drawing on Rose, traces hip hop’s noisiness while developing his own concept of noisy hybridity. He describes artists such as Flying Lotus, Death Grips, and Moor Mother as producing a form of ‘collision genre’ that remains unsettled, in which ‘“blackness”, or racial exclusion, is made into form and content of the work’ (97). This absence arguably sees Graham’s criticism – that some noises have been persistently overlooked in noise theory – rebound. As already noted, Graham does not claim to be exhaustive, so this omission does not completely undermine his project, but it is a shame: these noises and Hegarty’s account would have complemented Graham’s discussion of hybridity in the final chapters.

Despite its conceptual and historical blind spots, then, Becoming Noise Music succeeds in broadening the aesthetic and stylistic conversation around noise music and will be of interest to scholars and listeners alike. Perhaps the instability and unresolved nature of aspects of the work is a fitting format for noise’s own instability.