In contrast to general perceptions of noise as undesirable audio phenomena, consideration of the objective acoustic properties of ‘noise’ and the functional aspects of noise in Information Theory are used to show how, rather than an impediment to communication, noise can aid in increasing communication. A review of noise in music of the twentieth century and beyond shows how this has become increasingly understood by composers, and that the greater use of noise as a sound source has arisen out of developments in audio technology. This article argues that the music of Carsten Nicolai (alva noto) represents a consolidation of this process. The Autorec CD and the track Impulse are cited as examples of how noise is used as part of a new practice in electronic music. By looking at the structural features of the cited musical examples, it is seen how this new practice follows neither the electroacoustic nor the commercial dance music mainstreams but manages to synthesise references to both traditions.

No art form so rigorously organises time as music. Whereas all art in some sense exists in time, music could be said to be of time. This article, however, questions implicit assumptions about the fundamental nature of time to music. In contrast, an alternative approach to the discourse of composition and analysis is proposed in which space rather than time is privileged. Russolo, Stockhausen, Cage and Agostino Di Scipio are cited as historical precedents where the status of time in music is questioned but a more detailed consideration is given to Ryoji Ikeda, a contemporary sound-art practitioner who, it is argued, represents a turn towards the privileging of space in contemporary music practice. This article argues that an approach to composition that implicitly accepts the primacy of time tends to privilege sounds that are more easily described symbolically, such as notated pitched sounds or materials with clear spectromorphological design. In contrast, an approach that places greater concern with the work in space facilitates the greater use of materials that could be considered ‘noise’, in the sense of both a broadband spectrum and signal disruption.

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