Microsound

Microsound is a strand of electronic composition that works with very short sound events — clicks, grains, brief sine tones — assembled into clouds, points, and ribbons. Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) builds tracks from precise pulses and brief sine flashes; Ryoji Ikeda uses test-tone-like signals at near-painful frequencies to interrogate the listener's hearing. The relationship to dance music is distant; the relationship to acoustic research, glitch, and the visual arts is close.

The term was popularised by Curtis Roads' 2001 book 'Microsound' and the Mille Plateaux-affiliated 'Clicks & Cuts' compilations. Labels including Raster-Noton (Alva Noto, Ryuichi Sakamoto collaborations), Touch, and 12k anchored the scene from roughly 1999 onwards. The aesthetic crosses into installation art and gallery contexts as often as it shows up in concert form.

Density is the parameter. Sparse grain clouds read as pointillism; dense ones read as fog. Headphones at moderate volume; Ikeda in particular pushes the upper hearing range and is uncomfortable at high SPL.

Alva Noto's 'Transrapid' (2003). Ryoji Ikeda's 'Dataplex' (2005). For the theoretical underpinning, the granular-synthesis examples on the CD accompanying Curtis Roads' book.

Granular synthesis — the technique of building sound out of tiny grains — predates microsound by decades, going back to Iannis Xenakis's writing in the 1960s. Roads' contribution was to provide a vocabulary that connected the technique to a recognisable musical practice.