Noise: The Political Economy of Music

Jacques Attali (Former adviser to President François Mitterrand and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development)


Attali's essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given society. For Marxist critics, this idea is nothing new. The novelty of Attali's work is that it reverses the traditional understandings about how revolutions in the mode of production take place:

"[Attali] is the first to point out the other possible logical consequence of the “reciprocal interaction” model—namely, the possibility of a superstructure to anticipate historical developments, to foreshadow new social formations in a prophetic and annunciatory way. The argument of Noise is that music, unique among the arts for reasons that are themselves overdetermined, has precisely this annunciatory vocation; that the music of today stands both as a promise of a new, liberating mode of production, and as the menace of a dysotopian possibility which is that mode of production’s baleful mirror image." - Fredric Jameson, from the "Foreword" to Noise

Decoder (1984)

Muzak, the artificial music product created by scientists and marketing experts to increase efficiency and enhance wellbeing, irrigates men everywhere. A young punk and hobby sound mechanic decodes this music and creates an antidote to provoke disturbances not only in the burger joints where he found this music. By recruiting street pirates to spread his twisted sounds via tapes (an idea directly taken from Burroughs' cut up manuals) the tumults turn into violent streetfighting (with real footage from Berlin's infamous Anti Reagan riots). The big corporations can not tolerate this and engage a shady agent to stop the antimuzak movement.

Muzak, by its very nature, has undoubted political significance. With this in mind, the authors of Decoder have achieved a blend of reality and fiction. Surreal, metaphorical imagery interwoven with music, words, and sound effects make this a musical action movie with a very physical impact and an exciting insight view in the subcultural ideas and aesthetics of the early 80's

Read more about the poetic German dystopian avant-garde science fiction film Decoder (1984)

Sonic branding: An earworm to your pocket

They may sound like mere jingles and ditties, but so-called "sonic branding" is big business indeed. How do advertisers capture your soul with just five musical notes?

Every day, trilling away innocuously in the background, dozens of tiny pieces of music are busy burrowing deep inside our psyche.

To the untrained ear they might sound unremarkable, even friendly - but drop your guard and you could fall under their spell.

Everyone recognises visual branding such as logos, and the aural equivalents are equally pervasive.

Nokia's ringtone, Intel's four-note bongs, McDonalds' "I'm lovin' it" refrain - all masterpieces of sonic branding, the genetically modified, 21st Century offspring of the jingle.

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