|
Gotta say I can't begin to imagine either "Pattern Recognition" or anything off Goo as "complete and utter noise". Those are even less noisy than average tracks for Sonic Youth in the grand scheme of things. Not that this changes your question entirely, but it does a bit.
Once in a blue moon I hear somebody who actually plays full on "noise music" that I enjoy, but the vast array of it pretty much bores me. Doesn't offend or shock me, but doesn't excite or interest me particularly either. There are quite a few artists I love who get lumped into "noise music" these days, but invariably I find that I think it's a mischaracterization of what they do overall (two good examples would be Soup Purse and Crank Sturgeon). So it is with Sonic Youth, though I dearly love the Silver Sessions.
I think your real question is why do we find noise an intersting element on a musical pallete, and that just doesn't seem as hard to fathom put that way. Of course I know how you feel in that I encounter people all the time who can't handle anything with the slightest bit of dissonance or loud fuzz. But I find myself wondering about them than me anymore because as I've gotten older people like that seem to be increasingly fewer and fewer (but then I do run in pretty insulated circles).
Personally I like noise that is liberating in feeling, so that's why it often works so well within a structure based upon more traditional rhythm and harmony - a perfect example from Sonic Youth, the way the middle section of "Silver Rocket" falls apart so perfectly to accent the tightness of the intro and outro. That's not the only way I like noise, but a very effective way. It can also be quite liberating to watch Crank Sturgeon in a fish suit wrestling with a rubber lobster covered in contact mics.
|