But even in that explosive first contact, there’s often a set of unspoken conventions that guide the performance and shape its aesthetics. To visit an experimental music venue in North Carolina—as I do on occasion—is to hear noisy improvisers raucously subverting the norms of their instruments, even if they have never met before or spoken about what they intend to play. It is spontaneity, but with tacit agreements, the overlapping of a particular set of sensibilities.