"Either one keeps repeating the form of innovation; in which case it becomes formulaic and retroactively negates its own novelty. Or one seeks constantly new types of innovation; in which case the challenge consists in identifying novel forms which will not merely reiterate the old. But one must assume an infinite, hence unactualizable set of forms in order not to repeat, and the limits of finite imagination invariably determine the exhaustion of possibility. It is never enough to keep multiplying forms of invention; one must also produce new genres within which to generate new forms. Noise becomes generic as the form of invention which is obliged to substitute the abstract negation of genre for the production of hitherto unknown genres." -Ray Brassier, "Genre Is Obsolete"
When I read this back in the 2010s, it basically gave me the philosophical programme for I would do - not limited to a genre, or more radically, an unceasing attempt to make a new one. Every time I felt I became too influenced by somebody, I would instantly 'ruin' it with an unrelated influence. Basically, noise is not a genre, but an empty place to create new ones out of the muck via a process of subtraction. That's what experimentation is. That's why you hear sludge metal next to folk piano next to vocaloid. Every time I came close to a "genre", I'd throw a spanner in to "deterritorialize" or "subtract" from it (depending if one is more Deleuzian or Badiouian). I don't know if I succeeded, and frankly I don't always have the energy or skill to avoid cliche, but its the closest thing to a "method" or "philosophy" I actually have. Basically, when writing your own noise work, the aim is not to try and mimic somebody else who is 'edgy' - unless you aim to throw something unrelated into the mimicry (due to our finite imaginations). Noise is a formal method for producing new genres, not a genre. It's why we end with all kinds of weird little microgenres from "death industrial" to "digicore" to "harsh noise wall" (Brassier points out noise is currently going through something similar to metal in the 80s with the mass-spawning of microgenre). Noise is like a stem cell which can be cultivated into pre-existing cells, or mutated into entirely new (potentially carcinogenic) ones. As Rudolf Eb.er puts it: "I grow my sounds ‘biologically’, like dividing cells."
As Brassier puts it (in quite Badiouian and theological terms):
"If all possibilities are extant, this can only be a totality of incompossibles, which harbours as yet unactualized and incommensurable genres. The imperative to actualize incompossibles leads not to eclecticism but to an ascesis of perpetual invention which strives to ward off pastiche by forging previously unimaginable links between inexistent genres. It is the injunction to produce the conditions for the actualization of incompossibles that staves off regression into generic repetition."
Genres are dead realms, and are useful in telling what a noise musician should avoid or contaminate. Don't aim to make something in a genre - aim to make something that may be considered its own. Noise is chaos from which new structures appear (yes, even if you are Vomir, who isn't exactly unpredictable). It is also why the term "noise musician" isn't not a contradiction - noise is the condition for the possibility of genre, the original seed of genre and therefore recognisable music - just as noise is the transcendental condition for signal, or information.
The ultimate sign of failure is simply being boring.
