The piano on Pia-Noise is not placed safely in front of Merzbow’s electronics, where its melodies might remain intact while distortion supplies a dramatic backdrop. It is dropped directly into the noise. Nicolas Horvath’s notes are struck, repeated, scattered and sustained while Masami Akita surrounds them with overloaded frequencies, electronic shrieks, radio fragments, granular eruptions and constantly shifting masses of static. At times the instrument remains clearly recognizable; elsewhere it seems to be burning inside the mix, with only the hard impact of a key or a brief harmonic shape escaping through the surface.
The cover provides an exact visual equivalent. An old piano stands in a ruined room where plaster has peeled from the walls and daylight enters through tall windows. The building appears abandoned, but the instrument has not been removed. It remains inside the decay like evidence of a cultural order that has outlived the conditions supporting it. That image is more useful than a simple contrast between beauty and ugliness. Pia-Noise does not present Horvath’s piano as beautiful civilization being attacked by Merzbow’s barbaric noise. Both musicians inhabit the same damaged space, and both contribute to its instability.
Horvath and Akita had discussed working together roughly fifteen years before the record finally appeared. The collaboration was initially associated with Dapnom, one of Horvath’s underground electronic identities, but the eventual project placed his own piano at the center. The music was assembled remotely during the pandemic period, when isolation made online exchange a practical substitute for sharing a studio. Horvath called the finished work an “ode to our ruin,” while Sub Rosa connected its atmosphere to the health crisis, ecological disaster and a wider condition of social anxiety. These ideas explain the record’s emotional weather without reducing its sound to a topical illustration.
Pia-Noise contains two compositions of almost equal length. “N9512MIX” lasts just under twenty-two minutes, while “914 for Horvath” runs slightly shorter. The division creates the dimensions of an LP even though the initial Sub Rosa edition was issued on CD. Each piece provides enough time for the relationship between piano and noise to change repeatedly. This is important because their interaction cannot be summarized as a permanent duel. Sometimes Akita overwhelms Horvath, sometimes the piano guides the listener through the electronic density, and sometimes the two streams proceed with such independence that the ear must decide which one to follow.
“N9512MIX” is the more immediately punishing half. Merzbow’s processing arrives in thick, bright layers, filling the upper frequencies with pressure while lower electronic movement churns underneath. Horvath responds not by trying to outplay the volume but by exploiting the piano’s percussive body. Chords become impacts. Rapid figures cut through the static because their attacks are sharper than their decays. When he allows notes to ring, their resonance is quickly scratched, covered or absorbed by the surrounding electronics. The result resembles a concert grand being heard through an electrical catastrophe that has somehow become part of the performance.
There are lyrical fragments within Horvath’s improvisation, but they do not develop into consoling themes. A run of notes may briefly suggest late Romantic harmony, the suspended atmosphere of Satie or the chromatic restlessness of Scriabin, only to be broken apart before it can establish authority. Horvath’s extensive classical background matters here because his playing contains memories of organized musical language. Merzbow does not simply erase those memories. His noise exposes how fragile they become once their expected acoustic frame disappears. The recital hall has collapsed, but the pianist continues without pretending that the old room is still intact.
Akita’s side is equally responsive. His sound may initially appear continuous, yet close listening reveals streams moving at different rates: sustained high-frequency abrasion, flickering digital particles, sudden bursts, irregular pulses and mangled signals resembling pieces of radio transmission. Instead of one immovable wall, the noise behaves like extreme weather composed of several simultaneous systems. A piano phrase can momentarily open a cavity inside it, redirect attention toward a quieter layer or make an electronic event sound like an answer. The collaboration is most convincing when neither musician appears to control the other.
“914 for Horvath” begins from a comparatively restrained position. Space opens around the piano, and Akita’s electronics often resemble shredded broadcasts, damaged communication or distant machinery rather than a full-spectrum assault. Horvath can use a wider dynamic range here. Quiet notes linger; heavier chords arrive as structural shocks; short silences become audible enough to matter. Merzbow gradually complicates the field, but the piece retains a greater sense of breathing room. Its tension comes from expecting the noise to close every opening and noticing that it sometimes chooses not to.
This restraint makes the second piece more unsettling than a simple continuation of the first. The piano is easier to hear, but clarity provides no security. Isolated notes can sound lonely, exposed or stubbornly formal against Akita’s corroded transmissions. When the electronic pressure increases, Horvath’s phrases do not behave like victims. Their weight alters the apparent scale of the noise. A low chord can make a mass of static seem suddenly vertical, while a delicate upper-register figure reveals how violently crowded the same frequency range has become. The two performers generate architecture through collision.
Piano-and-electronics collaborations often preserve an implicit hierarchy in which the traditional instrument supplies emotional meaning and the electronic artist provides texture. Pia-Noise refuses that arrangement. Merzbow’s sound has its own phrasing, dynamics and internal color, while Horvath treats the piano as a source of noise as much as melody. Felt hammers strike metal strings; the wooden body amplifies vibration; pedals and dampers determine which resonances survive. Heard beside Akita’s generators and effects, the piano stops appearing naturally pure. It is another machine, older and mechanically visible, producing controlled impacts from a large resonating enclosure.
The title condenses this meeting into one slightly awkward but accurate compound. Pia-Noise is neither a Merzbow album decorated with piano nor a modern-classical recording subjected to electronic interference. It establishes a third field in which both practices become harder to separate. Noise makes the piano’s physical construction audible, and piano gives Merzbow’s turbulence an unstable harmonic depth. Even passages that seem mutually indifferent contribute to the design. During isolation, collaboration did not require the illusion that two people occupied the same room. It could preserve distance and still create contact.
Released by Sub Rosa in 2024, the album fits naturally within a catalog devoted to experimental electronics, musique concrète, modern composition and difficult historical crossings. Horvath had already worked with Lustmord on The Fall, a radical engagement with Dennis Johnson’s minimalist composition November, and his career has repeatedly moved between canonical repertoire, neglected composers and underground electronic practice. Merzbow’s enormous discography has likewise demonstrated that harsh noise can interact with drums, guitars, free improvisation, ambient music and acoustic instruments without surrendering its identity. Pia-Noise succeeds because neither participant treats the meeting as novelty.
The record does not offer hope in any conventional sense. Its ruined room is not repaired, and the noise never resolves into harmony. Yet continuing to play inside that room becomes its own form of resistance. Horvath’s piano survives without remaining untouched; Merzbow’s electronics communicate without becoming polite. Their collision produces something richer than despair: a dense record of two people building a common language while physically separated and imagining culture amid ongoing collapse. Pia-Noise is an ode to ruin, but it is also proof that ruin can still resonate, answer back and generate new forms.
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