'Over the ruined factory there’s a funny noise': Throbbing Gristle and the mediatized roots of noise in/as music

Britain's Throbbing Gristle used a kind of aural and conceptual violence to pursue specific ideological goals. The concept of noise is crucial to the understanding of this use, but is often explained in a limiting discourse. Friedrich Kittler offers an alternative approach by showing how the introduction of media technology initially formed this discourse. When one assesses the use of noise and its relation to violence from such a media historic point of view, Throbbing Gristle's layered work becomes conceptually coherent and turns out to be an exemplary case study for the status of noise in popular music more generally.