This is not the original draft of this review. The original draft was a deft, scholarly analysis of the presence of noise in modern aesthetics. Pristine and humorless, rigorous, lovely, and clad in non-reflective black. That review rolled its own cigarettes and stroked its facial hair. It was hungry but it was free. After a protracted visit with the Pitchfork Thought-Police and a well-placed glass catheter, I have cheerfully opted to revise. The question, my friends, is no longer: "What is the meaning of noise?" The question has become: "How much noise should you get for about $15." And perhaps this is the more relevant question these days.

I remember the first time I heard John Cale's solo on the Velvet Underground's "European Son." He scraped a metal fold-up chair against a linoleum floor for five minutes over the indifferent death-thump of Moe Tucker's cymbal-less percussion. Why no cymbals? Because, said Lou Reed, they eat up the fucking guitars! That was a good noise, a joyful noise. The wail of Coltrane's Interstellar Space. Even "Revolution #9" (God bless you, Yoko!). For a while, I think, a piece of music succeeded if it made me ask it what music was. I started thinking of music as a threat.

Does noise still threaten us? Sometimes. Mostly not. Sonic Youth's command of noise has only gotten better on their Directions in Music series, thanks in no small part to the guitar work of Lee Ranaldo. Check out Invito al Cielo and Goodbye 20th Century. You'll hear Sonic Youth taking sound to such extremities that it just about disappears into a grey wash of feedback receding toward and away, loud and not-loud like a stage whisper. Lee Ranaldo's Dirty Windows, a limited edition compilation of previously unreleased material, isn't like that.

Dirty Windows has very little truck with serenity. It's a jagged and disdainful work of tortured guitar and reckless beat poetry. The first tune, appropriately titled "How Much Needs Crushing," is a grotesque sex-machine crunch under gasps of self-abusive. It reminds me of the "scream-music" by John Zorn's pal Yamantaka Eye. In fact, all of Dirty Windows seems inflected by the lunatic fringes of the Tzadik scene.

The poetry is okay, but a bit overwrought and inelegant. Like beat poetry in general, it's exuberant, narrative and cares little for economy. The poetry is drawn from dirty charcoal sketches of life in the West Village and beyond. Ranaldo talks about "human pelts for sale" on Seventh Avenue and West Fourth Street, just a few blocks from my old apartment (which I miss dearly). I never saw anyone selling human pelts, but you know what he means. The imagery slips in and out of filth and surrealism. The music is sparse and sexualized, in a kind of breathy pant under the poems of sins and seasons. The whole thing is like an obscene phone call.

And you know what it will come down to: How much noise should I get for about $15? How much is that doggy in the dirty window? I don't know. What do you want? Great works of noise don't lend themselves to regular rotation or top ten lists. You have to be open to the possibility of being accosted by it, maybe being accused by it. And in the end, that will be worth it-- the curses and the feedback and the porn of Lee Ranaldo's Dirty Windows. You may listen to it once, but if you listen closely, that's $15 well-spent. It's not a promise. It's a threat.

-Brent S. Sirota