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The history of noise rock may be long, but it is not varied. Noise rock aficionados will differ. They will say it's an issue of "texture" - of droning vs. clanging kitchen utensils, electronic blips vs. waves of feedback, the bloop of an experimental jazz quartet vs. the bleat of an art-rock band intentionally playing out of tune.

To the naked ear, it's noise.

Whether in a fitful burst or woven throughout a song, it's dissonance replacing melody. But the aficionados are correct: Not all noise is created equal. Virtually every music genre has toyed with cacophony - for instance, the roots of modern noise acts are not in buzz-saw punk or the trippier soundscapes of "The White Album" so much as classical experimentalists like John Cage and 19th-century composer Erik Satie, as influential as they are impenetrable. That said, the following is a quick sketch of select players and their sounds:

The forerunners

You don't become an iconoclast by making people happy. To this day, the poor souls who accidentally pick up Lou Reed's infamous "Metal Machine Music" (1975) may think its 64 minutes of solid feedback and amplifier hum is a joke, but it's not without shape. Fifteen years later, Neil Young and Crazy Horse pieced together the sonic flotsam of his 1991 tour into "Arc," a patchwork sounding even more unwieldy.

More virtuosic (but no less demanding) is Ornette Coleman's avant-garde "The Shape of Jazz to Come" (1959), a work that dispensed with harmony and structure to follow the moods of the players - it's hard imagining atonal indie acts like Tortoise without it. Actually, it's hard imaging experimental indie rock at all without the shapeless collage of "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" (1978) by Cleveland's Pere Ubu.

Pure Abrasion

Two groups spring to mind: Chicago's Big Black and the Detroit-born brothers who make up Half Japanese. An early proponent of drum machines, Big Black sounds like a jackhammer. (Its best-known album has a title that's unprintable for a family newspaper, though leader Steve Albini went on to produce Nirvana and PJ Harvey and become a huge influence on industrial acts like Nine Inch Nails.) Half Japanese is the sound of kids loose in a china shop - cheerfully chaotic, unabashedly primitive.

The Tuneful Dabblers
"Tuneful" is arguable, but for three decades Sonic Youth has been unquestionably the most mainstream of modern noise rockers, alternating (like its hero, John Coltrane) from a hook to dissonance, then back again. (The best place to start is 1988's "Daydream Nation.") And you're likely to encounter noise in memorable (and unusual) moments of dissonance in works as well-known as Wilco's "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel," Flaming Lips' "The Soft Bulletin," and Justin Timberlake's latest, "FutureSex/LoveSounds."

Sonic Youth(ier)

So, where is noise rock popular now? One guess. Right, Japan. The most celebrated Japanese noise act (on both sides of the Pacific) is the Boredoms. Imagine your new age Windham Hill CD performed as a collaboration between Jimi Hendrix and an Xbox cranked to 11. In this country, the scene is exemplified by Michigan's Wolf Eyes (ambient and punishing), San Francisco's Deerhoof (cuddly and orchestral and nuts) and Providence's Lightning Bolt - which, in its endless drum lines and power chords and lack of actual songs, sounds like the louder bits from Sonic Youth 30 years before.

- Christopher Borrelli

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