What is the attraction of extreme music? What can "extreme" even mean
nowadays, when the outer limits in every conceivable direction seem to have
been probed? Besides, extremity depends on context and expectation. If
"extreme" has any meaning at all,shouldn't it iin reference to extremity of
affect, the intensity of what the listener experiences? But then, as we can
all surely attest, it's often the softest songs, the most gently seductive
and caressing sounds, that cut you up most cruelly. Bursting into tears is a
pretty extreme reaction to a piece of music, but I can't think of any noise
record or avant-garde work that has done that to me. Whereas Al Green's "I'm
Still In Love With You" or The Smiths' "There is A Light That Never Goes
Out" infallibly devastate. The most recent thing to make this grown man sob
was Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", an innovative piece of music on many levels, but
not really "extreme" or noisy, on the contrary, all euphony and Beach
Boys-like honey to the ears. What choked me up wasn't the poignant melody
but the sheer aesthetic majesty of it, the spirit behind the work.
Conversely, I once fell asleep in a Diamanda Galas concert (and I was a fan
and admirer of her music!). The singer was aiming to conjure Old Testament
levels of affliction, abjection and grief (the work was inspired by AIDS as
a modern day plague). Yet the undifferentiated pitch of mind-rending anguish
had the effect of lulling me into a doze. On the level of affect, Galas's
work was on the same level as Mantovani. Or a mug of Horlicks.