Edinburgh Napier University

  Difficulty and complexity are values most often associated with a modernist avant-garde of ‘serious’ music. Their presence in popular music tends to attract the opprobrium of critics who seek to maintain a purity for popular music founded on values of authenticity, sincerity and directness of expression. In my presentation I will explore the critical discourse of audiences for difficult music in popular culture, such as avant-rock, Noise and free improvisation. I will show how and where audiences listen to and derive pleasure from music that sits on the intersection between the popular and the avant-garde. Rather than engage in arid exercises in intellectualism, which is how many critics might expect such audiences to behave, fans of the popular avant-garde encounter difficulty and complexity through a fertile variety of social situations, interpretations and aesthetic judgements.