Sonic warfare refers to the use of sound and vibration as instruments of power, from intimidation and crowd control to psychological pressure in conflict. The phrase is closely associated with the theorist and producer Steve Goodman, who founded the Hyperdub label and records as Kode9. His book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (MIT Press, 2010) examines how sound produces atmospheres of dread, and how frequencies at the edges of hearing, infrasound and ultrasound, which he groups as unsound, can act on bodies and moods.
Goodman is less interested in weapons technology than in what he calls an ecology of fear: the way the same vibrational force runs through riot-control devices, commercial sound design and the bass-heavy sound-system cultures that he sees as resisting them. For drone and dark ambient the concept is a sobering mirror. The immersive, enveloping qualities prized in a listening room are the same properties that, at other volumes and in other hands, can be turned against people.