Sedonis opens with motion rather than impact. “Sedonis A” does not drop a single immovable wall of distortion over the listener. A nervous drum-machine pulse pushes forward while bowed strings scrape and bend above it, giving the track a harsh but unusually open shape. The rhythm provides somewhere for the noise to travel. Instead of being trapped inside one fixed mass, the listener is carried through an unstable environment whose surfaces keep shifting.
That movement makes Sedonis one of the more immediately legible Merzbow releases of recent years. It remains severe, loud and densely layered, but its four tracks contain enough rhythm, space and contrast to reveal the decisions inside the pressure. Bursts rise and fall. Frequencies thin out. New layers enter through gaps left by the previous ones. The music is violent, but it is rarely static.
The first three tracks form a connected suite. “Sedonis A,” “Sedonis B” and “Sedonis C” occupy the first side of the vinyl and behave like different stages in the appearance of one large organism. Masami Akita associated the invented title with Barunga, the floating balloon-like creature from the Japanese television series Ultra Q. The image fits the music. Sedonis seems to expand, contract and change outline while remaining recognizably the same presence.
“Sedonis A” establishes that presence through bowed guitar strings, homemade instruments, computer processing and modular electronics. The bowed tones hover between string music and damaged machinery. At times they resemble an orchestra being dragged through a wind tunnel. Elsewhere they bend toward psychedelic guitar before being swallowed by the surrounding electronics.
The drum machine is crucial. Its pulse is too damaged to function as conventional dance music, but it keeps the track moving. Merzbow does not simply place noise over a beat. The distortion attacks the rhythm, buries it, and then allows it to reappear from another angle. The beat becomes another unstable object inside the composition.
“Sedonis B” begins with a more suspended texture. Bowed sounds spread into a scorched haze, creating a brief sense of space before the electronics tighten again. High frequencies gather over a shifting lower mass. The track seems to breathe through compression and release.
This use of relative emptiness is one of the album’s strongest features. Silence never fully arrives, but pockets of reduced density repeatedly appear. A thin tone may hang alone while heavier layers withdraw. A broken rhythm may surface for a few seconds before being crushed. These spaces do not provide comfort. They expose the scale of the next eruption.
“Sedonis C” is the most violent section of the title sequence. At more than ten minutes, it has enough room to develop the earlier ideas into a wider field of rhythmic noise. Percussion loops grind beneath layers of feedback and distortion, connecting the track to Merzbow’s long history of pulse-driven work.
The rhythm does not create order. It provides a framework that Akita can overload. Sections stretch outward, recoil and return with greater density. Feedback gathers into spirals. Low-frequency impacts interrupt the upper-register abrasion. The track often sounds like a swarm circling a damaged engine, but the image never remains stable for long.
What first appears chaotic is carefully distributed across the frequency range. High tones sting and slice. Midrange distortion provides the thickest surface. Bass arrives in less continuous but more physical bursts. Rhythmic fragments bind the layers together without making them predictable. The disorder is composed.
The closing track, “Monolith 4,” changes the album’s scale. The three Sedonis pieces suggest a mobile organism. A monolith suggests something fixed, singular and massive. At nearly seventeen minutes, the track fills the entire second side and acts as a broad counterweight to the concentrated activity of Side A.
It begins in a more spacious register. Distortion spreads across a burned, open field rather than striking through a dominant beat. Without a strong rhythmic center, time seems to widen. Some tones feel close enough to scrape against the listener, while others hang at a distance as electronic weather.
This is not ambient Merzbow. The sound remains hostile, but the hostility is spread across space rather than concentrated into constant impact. Long layers hover and split, revealing smaller movements underneath. The track creates the sensation of studying a vast surface and slowly discovering that every part of it is active.
Sharper events begin piercing the field as the piece develops. High tones enter with surgical force. Small rhythmic flickers appear beneath the sustained noise. These details prevent “Monolith 4” from becoming a simple comedown after “Sedonis C.” Its violence is slower and more patient.
The harshest moments arrive because the surrounding sound has been allowed to thin. A single high frequency can feel more severe than an entire wall of distortion when it enters alone. A sudden bass disturbance becomes enormous after several minutes of suspended space. Merzbow uses contrast not as relief, but as a way to sharpen impact.
The physical edition reflects the same combination of precision and abrasion. Signal Noise issued Sedonis in a limited edition of 300 copies with double sleeves and matching die-cut windows. The outer jacket uses heavy stock, silver printing and black letterpress, while the inner sleeve frames the record label through the cut opening. The design treats the album as a carefully constructed object rather than a disposable container.
That refinement does not soften the music. It makes the control behind the noise more visible. Sedonis is full of rough surfaces, but the presentation is exact. Even the small printing error on the back cover, which suggests two tracks on Side B when only “Monolith 4” appears there, adds another minor instability to the object.
Sedonis was recorded and mixed by Akita at Munemihouse in Tokyo during July 2024 and released in June 2025. The setup of computer, modular electronics, homemade instruments and bowed guitar-string koto gives the album a distinctive body. The unusual string textures prevent the record from becoming another purely electronic assault, while the drum machines provide enough movement to keep the density in motion.
The album is approachable not because it is gentle, but because its architecture can be heard clearly. The listener can follow the rhythms, hear layers enter and withdraw, and recognize the contrast between the three-part title sequence and the larger open field of “Monolith 4.”
After decades of Merzbow releases, it is easy for another album to disappear into the scale of the discography. Sedonis avoids that fate because it has a recognizable shape. The bowed strings, fractured rhythms, cloudlike expansion of the title suite and scorched space of the closing track form a complete design.
This is not simply another block of Merzbow noise. It is one particular creature appearing, changing shape across thirty-seven minutes, and vanishing before its outline can be fully understood.
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