Billy Joel once talked of everybody talking about the new sound and feeling funny because it was still rock and roll to him. Who hasn’t as a teenager had one or both of their parents say in response to hearing a record that isn’t something they like saying ‘It’s just noise’?
Well, parents new and old, past and present, as Slade once provoked in the 1970s, it is time to come on and feel the noise – or should I say noise, period ! – in the brand new near-hour documentary FOR THE LOVE OF NOISE!
Alan Cross’ analytical documentary invites us into the realm of ‘London By The Sea’ aka Brighton as we are taken into the underground and below the line world of ‘noise’. Co-written and produced with Kevin Hough, this is a weird, but truly wonderful opportunity to see that there is a place for people to express themselves less through the tradition verse-chorus structure of classical and popular music.
As narrator Mike Cooper points out, there are conflicting accounts of where the genre of noise came from, whether it was punk of the 1970s, or jazz from much earlier, but the scene itself has begun to thrive in many shapes and means of expression, incorporating all manner of aural canvas and even bringing in experimental poetry from a whole cluster of fans and cliques keen to express themselves when the last post from your workplace has gone off and you want to get yourself intimate in a club with people who will use all manner of ideas and physical concepts to create their take on noise.
It’s a fascinating exposé of a DIY industry and a companion piece to the experimental music scenes that often come out of people willing to look at the genres of the past and then subsequently mix-and-match to create a new unique of sorts sound.
To a generation who have never seen anything as modern as an iPod or iPhone with all the music you can muster on your porta-device, the sight of classic TDK and Agfa old-time cassette tapes being used as a true point of pleasure (in much the same way that vinyl has made its’ comeback in recent years) will stimulate and intrigue you. However, the principles that many of the break-out genres have been built on share a common embryonic-to-reality framework.
Admittedly, starting out you may wonder whether there was any virtue in people just making noise for the sake of doing so, but as one contributor points out, noise is treated by the purists and true seriously dedicated as another form of music and by the end of it, you get a real idea of how evolution of this genre has turned into a true revolution in creative development.
We all have our own key loves when it comes to music, but FOR THE LOVE OF NOISE! – a film made out of the motivation of lockdown desires to create – may just offer some enlightenment and hope to those who never quite made it past the three chords and the truth principle that punk created back in the day.
The Paris International Film Festival runs online until 20th February, 2022.
Tickets and info:
https://www.parisintlfest.com/
