Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation

David Novak’s Japanoise is the result of more than a decade of ethnographic research into the noise music scene in Japan and the United States. Even though, as Novak points out, it is now common to talk of music such as this as “Noise Music” or, simply, “Noise”, and while music that fits this description is produced in many different cultural contexts, his book takes its title from one of the neologisms given to particular forms of such extreme music coming out of an underground scene in Japan in the early 80s. In drawing attention to the “Japaneseness” of this music, this term in itself, of course, is proof of this music’s circulation beyond Japan’s borders and, as well, of the exotic appeal that it held for many, particularly American, transnational music fans...