Stephen Graham is Head of the Arts & Humanities School at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and Senior Lecturer in Music. Stephen’s book, Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political, and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music, was published in 2016. Stephen has pieces on popular modernism, late style and fringe music writing in journals such as Popular Music and Twentieth Century Music. Stephen is co-author of a multi-generic history of 20th-century music due out in 2022.
Becoming Noise Music provides a much needed and compelling musical account of one of the most complex and contested descriptors in the contemporary history of sonic practices. The book carefully unpacks the multiple philosophical, political, and artistic strands of meaning that have been attached to the concept of 'noise' and weaves them back together masterfully to highlight the aesthetic, sensory, and conceptual resonances between noise and music. This is pivotal reading for those interested in understanding how noise has, in the last five decades, become aestheticized as a global musical genre with roots in powerful locally grounded musical styles and practices. * Francois Mouillot, Assistant Professor in Humanities and Cultural Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong *