What to listen for in noise?

Harmonics, shifting textures, and surprises. Also rhythms - even if they're only implied, or superimposed upon the sounds themselves artificially, like a layer of reverb or tremelo added during mixing (or whenever that sort of thing is done).

Also, is it too much to ask that the stuff be recorded reasonably cleanly and professionally? (Unless a crap recording job is kinda the "point", of course.)

the sublime / humor / conceptual derring-do

I think I listen to noise the same way I listen to outside sounds. Most of the time, it feels like a matter of being given pieces of a puzzle that only fit together in retrospect, but usually I don't look back on what happened, so I'm always listening to what's happening right now (and maybe sometimes wonder what will happen). When something hits me, when I have a reaction that for whatever reason I feel the need to reflect on, perhaps it seems like a pattern is emerging, or suggested, but even then it's always fleeting. It's like hearing a story that will almost certainly not go where you expect it to, and for large stretches might seem totally incomprehensible -- so, if I want to "comprehend" it, I just have to listen, and let meaning happen intuitively (?). I think it helps if you go into noise knowing that nothing may resolve, no clues may be given -- and then over time, somehow it still seems okay, evocative, intuitive, musical.

For many musicians and listenters, music is a discrete abstraction that exists within larger meaning-making environments - such as human consciousness, or a built space. Some music, however (and especially at very high volume), seems to break those boundaries, becoming an inhabitable physical environment in itself - something that contains and transforms both the perceiving consciousness and the built space that supposedly contains it.

Sometimes I prefer music as an explorable, seemingly infinite sound-space to music as a decorative or intellectual artifact within some other containing space. And when approached this way, the quality and/or ostensible meaning of the music's component sounds doesn't matter as much the overall experience of inhabiting the sound-structure.

I like structures that are surprising, graceful, intuitively accurate, challenging, and dreamlike. I like structures that pay more attention to the tactile/sensual qualities of the whole than to the composition of any given part. And in pursuit of that, I listen to a lot of straight-up noise.

i like when it makes me feel like what i'm doing - shopping, carefully walking across an ice patch, administrative work - feel far more important than it actually is.

what to listen to with ears?

I listen for disorientation. I *only* listen to noise when I'm absolutely fucking full of stress and I need something to cut up my brain into little pieces to be recombined whenever. I don't listen to noise often but when I need it, I NEED it. The vast majority of noise I'm scouring my hard drive and the internet for right this moment is falling well fucking short of my needs so I'm having to play 4 songs simultaneously. Really 3 was doing it, but 4 is really chasing the demons. It's been that kind of day, comes maybe twice a year.

musicmatch: merzbow - 1930
foobar: merzbow - intro to 1930
pandora - clip - 1r1
winamp - merzbow - degradation of tapes

I downloaded 1930 cuz I can't find my cdr of it and Pandora is pussying out on me and I don't know of anything as harsh or harsher than 1930. I could use some other suggestions, nothing soft or rhythmic or meditative or any of that tho jsut jackhammer shit. I need it within the next 30 minutes or so so if you see this later don't bother. thanks.

Merzbow/Pan Sonic - "V"
IT IS THE CHEESE GRATER YOUR BRAIN NEVER KNEW IT NEEDED.

i'm on it. thanks

I'm listening to it again, trying to hear through new ears, and it might not be what you're after. It's more like the laser crawling up toward James Bond's crotch than jackhammer shit.

sounds great!