Progressive noise structures.
by Dave Skipper

DEPARTMENT PAGE FOR THIS SERIES: THE ULTIMATE NOISICIAN
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NEXT ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES: Voice of Noise 4/4

Introduction

In this series (The Ultimate Noisician) I am zooming in on those particular Bible passages that describe God’s character and actions in terms of sounds and noisy activity. I am then opening up some ideas as to how noise more generally can reveal God, and proposing some potential applications to the works and processes of noise artists.

This particular sub-series (Voice of Noise) is an introductory study to Psalm 29, one of those aforementioned noisy Bible texts. In part 1 I looked at the words and phrases in the psalm which refer to various sounds or noises; in part 2 I described all the attributes of God mentioned in the psalm and how they are reflected in noise.

Now I will look more closely at some of the structural features of the psalm, and how these might relate to and inform creative noise-making processes for the noisician.

So, first of all let’s look at the whole psalm again. This time I have added some words and phrases from alternative translations [in square brackets]. These extra words and phrases help to give a richer view of the meaning of the original Hebrew text. The non-bracketed text is from the New International Version, which is the translation I use by default on this blog.

Psalm 29

A psalm of David.

1 Ascribe [or give] to the Lord, you heavenly beings [or mighty ones, or sons of gods],
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name;
worship the Lord in [or with] the splendour [or beauty, or majesty] of his holiness.

3 The voice of the Lord is over [or upon] the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord thunders over the mighty [or many] waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks in pieces [or splinters] the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon leap [or skip] like a calf,
Sirion [Mount Hermon] like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord strikes
with flashes of lightning [or divides the flames of fire, or hews out flames of fire].
8 The voice of the Lord shakes [or causes… to whirl] the desert [or wilderness];
the Lord shakes [or convulses/agitates] the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the Lord twists [or convulses/agitates] the oaks [or makes the deer give birth, or causes the hinds to calve]
and strips the forests bare.
And [or but] in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’

10 The Lord sits [or sat] enthroned [or as King] over the flood;
the Lord is enthroned as King for ever.
11 The Lord gives [unyielding and impenetrable] strength to his people;
the Lord blesses his people with peace.

Detailed structure

This is where things gets really interesting. Reading straight through the psalm it may appear at first glance that the ordering of the details is somewhat arbitrary. However, on closer inspection a deliberate chiasmic (symmetric) structure is revealed. The broad sweep of the psalm can be captured one way as follows:

A gift (v1-2)
____Water (v3)
________Trees (v4-5)
____________Shaking (v6)
________________Lightning (v7)
____________Shaking (v8)
________Trees (v9)
____Water (v10)
A gift (v11)

So as well as a linear reading, the psalm also invites a nonlinear reading. One way to do this could be to start from the pivot in the centre and trace the text in parallel back to the start and forward to the end. The more natural way would be to read through linearly as normal, but in the second half pay deliberate attention to the parallels by glancing back up through the first half in reverse order in-between reading through the second half. Either way, the extra effort involved actually makes comprehending and following the train of thought of the psalm much easier. The cumulative layers of noise that build up as the psalm rumbles on span inanimate matter, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom (on which more further down). This adds an overlapping animal layer into our chiasmic structure as follows:

A gift (v1-2)
____Water (v3)
________Trees (v4-5)
____________Animals/Shaking (v6)
________________Lightning (v7)
____________Shaking (v8)
________Animals/Trees (v9)
____Water (v10)
A gift (v11)

Note that a chiasm doesn’t denote an identical symmetry: the parallel side opens up variations and maybe even twists that were absent in the first half. Next I will break down each associated pairing and see what these variations have to say about the progression of noise through the psalm.

A gift (verses 1-2 & 11)

“Ascribe [or give] to the Lord, you heavenly beings [or mighty ones, or sons of gods],
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name;
worship the Lord in [or with] the splendour [or beauty, or majesty] of his holiness.”
↳
“The Lord gives [unyielding and impenetrable] strength to his people;
the Lord blesses his people with peace.”

The opening and closing sections hold the psalm together and define its focus and purpose.

The starting-point, before any noise is made, is to give to the eternal Creator God our full attention and worship. Meditating on his attributes, his perfect nature and character, and directing these thoughts and feelings towards him is the essence of being his creatures. And this isn’t just a suggestion or a good idea, it is expected and mandated. There is no attempt to persuade on the part of the psalmist David, and no hint of hesitation present in the exhortation. Ascription isn’t a concrete gift as God doesn’t need anything; on the contrary we need everything from God and everything is a gift from him. He owes us nothing and we owe him everything. Starting with this posture of the heart paves the way for being receptive to learning from God’s subsequent noise-making, and also prepares the human noisician to ensure that his noise-making is itself an act of worship in continuity with his whole orientation.

The parallel gift at the end of the psalm is a complete twist: all the giving is from God to his people. But this the wonderful consequence of the opening, not its opposite. The fact is, there is nothing that fills our hearts to overflowing more than dwelling in the glory and goodness of God. The more we give the more we receive. God is not selfish. Since he is perfect in glory and majesty and beauty and holiness, then he knows that the greatest fulfilment and delight that we can experience is found in our submission to him. Therefore the worship offered at the outset is the essential pathway to being fully gifted with all the strength and peace that we desire. The crucial point is that this “unyielding and impenetrable” strength and unending deep peace can only be received on God’s terms. So for example to seek to use noise (music) as a display of strength for personal fulfilment, or to strive for inner peace through the creative process of noise-making is to embark on a futile dead-end quest. Yet when making noise (music) is integrated into a lifestyle of worship it can go hand-in-hand with receiving that strength and peace, not from the noise itself but from the God who gifts creativity and noise to us.

This two-way giving is anything but passive, even though all the noise action in the psalm is in the middle, sandwiched between these gifts. These bookends remind us that noise, music, art are not primary.

Water (verses 3 & 10)

“The voice of the Lord is over [or upon] the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord thunders over the mighty [or many] waters.”
↳
“The Lord sits [or sat] enthroned [or as King] over the flood;
the Lord is enthroned as King for ever.”

Now the noise gets underway: God’s voice of noise, his thunders. This is the first expression of God’s glory and so on already declared in the opening of the psalm. Thunder is the decisive action and the chief sound of the whole psalm. Thunder in itself doesn’t ‘do’ anything other than sound and herald the onset or presence of a thunderstorm. So straight away it is a powerful reminder that the all elemental power in the natural world is formed and directed by the ‘mere’ sound of God’s voice (whether metaphorical or literal). This will remind the reader/listener of the account of the creation of the world at the start of the Bible in Genesis 1, i.e. that God spoke the world into existence by his word.

Thunder “over the mighty waters” evokes many sounds accompanying the thunder itself: torrential rains thrashing upon the ocean waves, themselves being battered and tossed violently by raging winds, and those winds whooshing and muffling any hopes of shouted communications that terrified sailors may be attempting, and maybe the creaking and bashing of their ship and its contents being buffeted by the heavy storm. God’s voice thus drowns out all human voices as it forces spirals of noise to spray out from waters on all sides.

On the other hand, these sounds of the waters are not directly mentioned, so we can also imagine the distant peals of thunder promising an impending storm that is not-yet-here, the waters now calm and quiet, passive and impotent until stirred by the storm. This is also an appropriate picture of the dependence of the creation on God to sustain and direct its existence and motions.

The parallel verse later on develops and contrasts these ideas in interesting ways. First of all, note that God’s action here is sitting, no more thundering. In fact this verse lies outside the central section through which “the voice of the Lord” operates. His work of the preceding verses now done, his word having accomplished its purposes, he sits down on high. Nothing to prove and no-one to answer to, now and forever. God’s sitting is not passive. He reigns sovereign over the elements and the hearts of men with constant perception and effortless ease.

But the waters are very much present here, now in the form of a flood – the final or most extreme destination that water can reach. Complete immersion and submersion, nowhere left to escape apart from sky and space. Floods decimate and destroy: the ground disappears, creatures drown, humans die. Floods denote waters stirred and activated from above and below, overrunning their boundaries, and attaining a new state of equilibrium once the instigating action has subsided. Again there is no mention of the flood’s noise. That is left to the imagination. I recall amateur footage from the immediate aftermath of north-east Japan’s great earthquake and tsunami of 2011. The familiar noise of moving masses of water, as in a large river rushing headlong with surplus rainwaters threatening to burst its banks, became an utterly chilling sound. The sheer relentlessness of the water rising and sweeping away anything in its wake was truly horrifying to witness – and that from the comfort of safety, watching these videos at home far away.

When the storm is over, when the floodwaters have peaked and not yet started to subside, there remains a terrible stillness, the crushing power of massively increased water pressure now continuing its quiet work out of sight. There surely can be no doubt that in writing this psalm David wasn’t only observing or remembering small local floods that he may have witnessed or heard about during his lifetime. There is clear reference here to the Great Flood of Noah’s day, recording in the Bible’s book of Genesis chapters 6-9, and taking place approximately 1300 years before David. A study of that episode is a task for later. The main point for now is that the noise of God’s voice of thunder causes dramatic things to happen, and the culmination of the ensuing layers of noise depicted in this psalm end in the quasi-noisy, quasi-silent floodwaters that reside under his sure rule. The Ultimate Noisician in consummate control.

Trees (verses 4-5 & 9)

“The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks in pieces [or splinters] the cedars of Lebanon.”
↳
“The voice of the Lord twists [or convulses/agitates] the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And [or but] in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’”

After the impressive introduction of God’s voice of thunder over the waters, his voice is described as powerful and majestic. The anticipation is there – just how is the power and majesty of God’s voice going to reveal itself next? We don’t have to wait long: colossal trees, those cedars of Lebanon, one moment reaching forty metres into the sky, the next – cracked in half as the solid trunk (up to three metres thick) splinters with ease. What force of nature can bring these sturdy trees crashing to the ground? It suggests rampaging winds, a hurricane or tornado, ripping through the forest, its invisible presence a cover for its astonishing brute force capabilities. The thunder brought this power with simplicity and ease, for God nothing more than the slightest breath of air. Imagine the noise: the howling winds painful to the ear, and the mass of huge trees being ripped to shreds simply deafening. Those weirdly organic sounds that trees make under pressure: creaking, heaving, cracking, fracturing, splintering, splitting, snapping, ripping, heaving, thudding, crashing… This is no ordinary storm.

When we come to the parallel verse we are taken beyond the comparatively simple brute force of trees snapping into the more involved and complex actions of twisting and stripping. There is a complexity of motion here, perhaps a huge whirlwind or tornado, and the necessary force that comes with it, able to wrench these great oaks around, spiralling their trunks in movements by turns jagged and jerking or smooth and swirling. Oaks that are already twisted to start with find themselves ultra-twisted to the nth degree. Then stripping the trees bare – not just budging the leaves off, but doubtless ripping off whole branches, boughs flailing and careening into other trees and into the ground, the twigs and leaves swamped and discarded all over as obliteration of the forest landscape is completed with reckless abandon. Or, maybe the trees are stripped by forest fires ignited by the lightning strikes? The blaze roars, cracklings amplified exponentially. There is a definite progression from the earlier breaking and splintering. There is a deepening of both the action and the resulting sounds, more detail and nuance in the whole shebang despite (or rather because of) the greater forces involved.

I can think of no better word (or at least none that I like better) to sum up all this wild tree noise that this one: gnarly. And when it comes to extreme harsh noise music, there are no sounds quite like those gnarly sounds which just dig in and twist and uproot anything in their path, laying all to waste.

Shaking (verses 6 & 8)

“He makes Lebanon leap [or skip] like a calf,
Sirion [Mount Hermon] like a young wild ox.”
↳
“The voice of the Lord shakes [orcauses… to whirl] the desert [or wilderness];
the Lord shakes [or convulses/agitates] the Desert of Kadesh.”

If you’re not paying close attention, this next verse sounds light and joyous: carefree calves frolicking around, oblivious to destruction we have just been witnessing? Ah but no, not calves – the whole land of Lebanon itself skipping around! And a mountain (or mountain range) too for good measure! I wouldn’t want to get in the way of a jumping cow or ox, however young they may be, but they are exponentially puny compared to the earthquakes clearly being depicted here. We certainly sense no joy in the lurching of mountains and exaggerated vibrations of the ground, defying borders and kings with equal dismissiveness. If the analogy here is of joyful animals, then it just shows how tectonic activity is miniscule compared to God and his might, and how his creation delights to do his will at every command of his voice. Or maybe they are bounding in fear, startled and helpless as they are thrown around in any and every direction.

New timbres and levels of noise are thus now introduced. Earthquakes bring with them ominous and unstoppable rumblings, deep and low as the earth from whence they are awakened. Mountains caught up in the quaking are provoked to more violent consequences – mudslides, avalanches, landslides create rivers of both wet and dry noise. Rocks split with tremendous cracking sounds. Animals are cast to the ground or off cliffs, scrabbling, bleating, wailing, bones breaking and heads spinning. As the very foundations of the earth are ruptured, volcanic mountains leak and spew their molten rocks and fiery lava and ash – maybe no volcanoes in view here, but the full gamut of earthquake-related disaster and noise is undeniably wide and fearsome.

The parallel verse appears to rein in the earthquake’s scope as now it is the desert shaking instead of the mountain. Does this mean the earthquake is subsiding, dropping down its influence to the level plains and uninhabited wastelands? Maybe or maybe not, but we do again see a progression in the type of action described, from the innocuous-sounding leaping to the schizophrenic and violent shaking, whirling, convulsing, agitating. Maybe hints of ferocious winds again as not only the ground but the dust itself is stirred into swirling dust storms, adding yet more noise and danger and paralysis to any people or creatures caught up in the storm. But it’s those images of the ground convulsing that heighten the drama of the scene, the rock-splitting, earth-rumbling noises of before now spitting and smashing in epileptic rhythms, like the cut-up harsh noise dynamics beloved in the world of noise music.

Did you ever hear of such a storm, the sound of thunder causing earthquakes and wreaking the havoc of a thousand natural disasters? The psalmist is taking us on a ride through our imagination, beyond the limits of what we have ever encountered in nature. This is how powerful and majestic the voice of God is! Throw together the most extreme noises imaginable and it hints at the the power of his ultimate voice of noise!

Animals (verses 6 & 9)

“He makes Lebanon leap [or skip] like a calf,
Sirion [Mount Hermon] like a young wild ox.”
↳
“The voice of the Lord twists [or convulses/agitates] the oaks [or makes the deer give birth, or causes the hinds to calve]
and strips the forests bare.
And [or but] in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’”

Now, I need to retrace my steps just a moment. In Voice of Noise 1/4 I noted the flow of sound and its effects as delineated in this psalm:

(ultimate) noise source
↓
noise
↓
noise effect

= new (immediate) noise source
↓
noise

The first half of verse 9 says, “The voice of the Lord twists the oaks”, or alternatively, “The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth.” Where did that come from?! How can there be such different translations of the same verse? This raises the larger question of interacting directly with the original Hebrew text, its grammar and vocabulary, but at this stage I have to be content with engaging solely with established English translations. Anyway, this new twist (the literary twist of the twisted oaks that may also/instead be a mother deer getting in a twist) adds a new application of the noise flow, thus:

God’s voice
↓
thunder: rumbling, crackling, roaring
↓
deer giving birth
↓
straining, panting, crying

So animals find their way into the chiasmic structure of the psalm as a kind of overlapping bridge, connecting to the shaking/earthquake/mountain part in the first half, and then to the destructive winds/trees part in the second half. They are somewhat ambiguous in their connotations too – happy or fearful or both? As for the whole reference to giving birth (which is itself of at one and the same time both a traumatic and painful ordeal and a deeply rewarding and joyful experience), how does the sound of thunder bring that on? It is well-known that certain low sub-bass frequencies can really have the effect of loosening the bowels (a fact exploited in certain forms of sonic weaponry), so maybe that is what is happening! The exaggerated vibrations of the ground beneath resonating with the mother animals’ innards, accelerating the onset of labour. The pain, the strain, the panting and gasping – fear and joy indeed as new life is brought forth!

The progression is interesting: from young animals to newborns seems to be a backwards step, but the greater complexity of birth compared to just skipping around, plus the greater range of resultant noises, implies otherwise. Thus one of the roles of animals in this psalm is as all-round harbingers of surprise and anomaly and paradox, all very welcome concepts in the world of noise-making!

The pivot: Lightning: (verse 7)

“The voice of the Lord strikes
with flashes of lightning [or divides the flames of fire, or hews out flames of fire].”

At the very centre of the chiasmic structure is the silence of light. This silent power is more effective than all the noise, the power of a thunderstorm storm residing more in the lightning than in thunder. Does lightning accompany thunder – the greatest noise – or is it the other way around? It is very fitting that this is the centrepoint, as God is defined elsewhere in the Bible not as sound, nor noise, not thunder, nor energy, but as light: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5b). God’s holiness, purity, splendour, majesty, and glory are all summed up in his being light. And it’s not that he is like light; he is light. It’s not just that he is the source and creator of life (though is that), but that he is the very definition of light, the true light by which every form of created light that we know is measured against and derived from.

And what of lightning itself? Stunningly beautiful to behold, potentially devastating in its power to electrocute and start fires, and virtually unknown in its essence. Every new modern age likes to think it has mastered so much knowledge, but we still are barely scratching the surface of understanding how our world works. I read a fascinating article recently, entitled “Hunting mystery giant lightning from space.” Dr. Neubert, chief scientist for Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), is quoted therein as saying, “We don’t really know what’s inside lightning. It happens so fast and it’s so dangerous… it’s hard to get to the real inside physics.” Love it!

And it’s this mysterious and stunning lightning that is at the very heart of God’s noise ‘performance’ in this passage. The alternative readings of verse 7 are marvellous: “The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire” or “The voice of the Lord hews out flames of fire”. Just wow! Back in the beginning, God said “Let there be light”, and there was light: strange and unique and ubiquitous in its charm. So this all begs the question: is lightning ‘just’ a physical phenomenon? Or can we meld a scientific understanding with an awe-inspiring dimension of mystery that even touches on the mystical? Not so as to imbue lightning with mythical powers or magical status, but to recognise its created status as one of our planet’s spiritually revelatory lynchpins?

Thunder is not mentioned here, but of course it is implicit as thunder and lightning belong together. But the light comes to us before the sound, from a distance: the silent power (silent voice) of lightning heralding the rumbling, crackling thunder (audible voice); originating together but perceived apart. And the noise of the electricity discharging through the atmosphere: sizzling, crackling, fizzing. If fires are started they bring their own crackles, possibly spreading and growing to the roar of a forest fire. The silence of light yielding its own return of noise flavours.

The psalm reaches its dramatic climax, the scintillating spectacle of infinite tentacles dancing and weaving instantaneously down through the sky. But this is not the end, the parallel path through the other side progresses on with fresh noise and fresh vistas to take in.

Overall shape

Here is a version of the structure of Psalm 29 based on some of the different noises I’ve considered:

Ascribing to the Lord (v1-2)
____Voice of thunder (v3)
________Torrential rains, raging seas (v3)
____________Trees breaking, splintering, hurricane winds (v4-5)
________________Mountains shaking (v6)
____________________Crackling lightning accompanied by thunder (v7)
________________Desert shaking (v8)
____________Trees twisted and stripped bare by more violent winds, animals giving birth (v9)
________A multitude cries out, “Glory!” (v9)
____Floodwaters risen and calm (v10)
God’s silent gift (v11)

The symmetry is now slightly off-kilter in this version as I inserted the “Glory!” cry which didn’t feature in my above analysis. There is a clear parallel in play here as well, though. The voice of God is expressed in verse 3 as thunder. The voice of sentient worshippers (whether angelic or human) is expressed in verse 9 as a declaration of God’s glory. It’s a simple case of call-and-response, a reverse mirroring of the gifts in the opening and closing verses. The curiosity is why do the floodwaters of verse 10 fall outside of the central section? And/or why does the temple cry take place before the reference to the flood? Questions that may be dead ends, or that may be worth contemplating further.

Alongside the chiasmic structure I have focussed on here, there is a simultaneous “climbing the mountain” structure in non-inverted parallel too. The ordering of the action through the psalm is indicative of the physical structure of the earth, or of the process of ascending a mountain twice (in the first and second halves of the psalm).

Briefly consider:

• the seas (v3) are at or below the base of the mountain;
  • forests (v4-5) are between the sea and the mountain, and on the lower mountain regions;
    • then the mountain itself (v6);
      • lightning (v7) comes from the sky above the highest mountains, and is best viewed from the mountain-top;

• back at the base of the mountain, the earthquake is felt keenly in the desert (v8);
  • back to the forest regions, inhabited by animals (v9)
    • the floodwaters cover the mountains as in the Great Flood (v10)
      • God’s gift comes from his throne above those high floodwaters (v11)

At the peak of the mountain the actual mountain is not then in view – eyes life naturally up to the sky, from where the thunder and lightning come. The end-point, the purpose of it all, is right where the psalm began: worshipping God above in his transcendence, him alone and nothing or no-one else.

Tips for Noise-Makers

Some noise music is – and other noise music may appear to be – arbitrary collections of disconnected sounds, formless and chaotic. But this isn’t always or necessarily the case underneath. Some concept of form, whether accidental and loose or deliberate and complex or somewhere in-between, is often in place to the astute listener. Form weaves its path both horizontally (through time) and vertically (layers of sound).

The structural elements present in Psalm 29 that I have introduced above suggest and endorse some potentially fruitful avenues to explore for the noisician:

• Structural clues and/or specific sound ideas, e.g. snapping sounds emerging from water-like noise torrents;
• Nonlinearity, symmetry, progression of ideas and sounds;
• Cumulative layers of noise that complement (or not) each other and advance the listening experience;
• Revisiting sounds or noise types but with different dynamics, effects, context, etc;
• Surprises and anomalies welcome: unanticipated twists and transitions, or breaking of patterns/symmetry/expectations;
• Uncompromising vision and execution, uncompromised and uncompromising sounds;
• Conceptual symmetry needn’t translate into obvious forms of time-bound symmetry (if indeed any category of symmetry is utilised at all).

About the gift aspect:

• Art and creativity (including noise music) are gifts to us from God;
• Our art (including noise music) is a gift back to God (part of ascribing glory to his name);
• Art (including noise music) blesses others as we give it to them through performance or recording (N.B. I don’t mean give for free necessarily!);
• Giving artists (including noise musicians) the opportunity to play and be heard usually results in receiving more from them through their art shared with us.

Lightning – the pivot or climax of Psalm 29 – could denote different things within a noise performance:

• A visual component of literal light;
• Silence;
• The most personal moment of the performance;
• The most dramatic or powerful and damaging (?) climax of the performance;
• Something that illuminates metaphorically in some other way
• Needn’t be at the mid-point timewise: the build-up to that point and the aftermath May well be uneven.

Improvisation is very much the spirit of large swathes of noise music, but this doesn’t discount the possibility and value of intentional structure and planned trajectories within noise-making. A skilled improviser takes form seriously and coaxes his tools and textures into tantalising territory with taste and tenacity and tactical nous. A ‘mindless’ approach to noise (unplanned, spontaneous, unstructured, completely improvisatory) is one way, and it has definite merits, yet a more considered approach brings exciting new possibilities to the table. This doesn’t imply rigidity: just bearing in a mind a couple of markers or transitions or contrasts within the trajectory of a noise piece or performance leaves plenty of space for all that spontaneity whilst potentially increasing the impact for the listener.

Conclusion

An obvious major application of my analysis of the structural features of these Bible passages would be to create sonic expositions of the Biblical text, i.e. noise music pieces inspired by the text. The psalm could operate either as a starting-point to explore from, or as a more deliberate and direct template for the composition itself. I am really intrigued to see what noise compositions different artists would create!

Nothing I’ve written here is prescriptive (of course there are countless other structures and forms, including more that I will pick out from other Bible texts), but hopefully this look at Psalm 29 has proved thought-provoking and inspiring.

In the next article, to conclude this Voice of Noise sub-series, I will summarise some of the ways in which the psalm echoes and foreshadows other key Biblical themes, plus I will present my own paraphrase of Psalm 29, reimagining it as a modern noise music performance.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

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