Abstract

« Noise » has become a generic label for anything deemed to subvert established genre. Where noise orthodoxy substantializes its putative negation of genre into an easily digestible sonic stereotype—the hapless but nevertheless entertaining roar of feedback—, two extraordinary bands, To Live and Shave in LA and Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, forcefully short-circuit incommensurable genres, and manage to engender the noise of generic anomaly. It is the noise that is not « noise », the noise of the sui generis, that actualizes the disorientating potencies long claimed for « noise »