Sunday, August 25, 2019
Merzbow & Sun Ra - (2016) Strange City CD & LP
Cold Spring – 228 CD
Cold Spring – 229 LP
Note that LP and CD versions of this album contain completely different material
The constant and destructive waves of noise make this decisively a Merzbow record, but its cosmic mood and rhythms prove that Sun Ra lives in its DNA.
Sun Ra’s presence on the latest Merzbow record is odd: blink and you might miss him completely, but squint and you can notice him almost everywhere. The only time it’s blatantly obvious that Masami Akita, the man behind noise legend Merzbow, is using Sun Ra’s recordings as source material comes in the first 10 seconds of Strange City. Opener “Livid Sun Loop” begins with overlapping saxophones and drums, but Akita quickly steamrolls those into a dense cacophony. For the rest of the album’s 103 minutes (66 on CD and 36 on LP, both titled Strange City but containing different music), he steadfastly maintains that busy din.
Yet focus your ears intensely on Strange City—preferably through headphones—and Sun Ra’s music peeks out through Merzbow’s noise wall. (The Ra estate gave Akita material from 1966’s The Magic City and 1967’s Strange Strings, which he remixed and treated while adding his own original sounds). Rattling drumbeats grow out of crackling static like weeds in a garden, bassy rhythms undulate beneath rolling roars like shifting tectonic plates, and pretty much every screech and squeal could pass for a wailing horn. Strange City is decisively a Merzbow record, but Sun Ra lives in its DNA.
Where Strange City stands in Merzbow’s massive discography is easier to suss out. Many of the strengths Akita has developed over roughly four decades of noise devotion are put to use here. He creates relentlessly forward-moving music with so much going on that it feels three-dimensional. During such lengthy tracks, your ears and brain accept and acclimate to Akita’s ruthless sounds, and his seemingly random noise eventually starts to feel normal.
Strange City is most successful on the two half-hour-plus tracks that make up the CD version. “Livid Sun Loop” is filled with destructive sounds and stabbing rhythms, but it also has a narrative arc developed through 32 minutes of sonic drilling. On “Granular Jazz Part 2,” Akita grapples most seriously with Sun Ra’s creative spirit. Devoted primarily to the trebly end of the spectrum, the piece subtly rides Ra’s rhythms while building a space-bound aura, a fitting way to grapple with an artist who claimed to come from Saturn.
The three tracks on the LP version of Strange City—all titled as parts of “Granular Jazz”—are less distinctive. In some places, Akita falls back on stock noise moves like firing-laser jolts and helicopter-style whirr. Something interesting happens on every piece, though, and the closer “Granular Jazz Part 4” is particularly fascinating due to its relative restraint. Surprisingly distant and subdued, it’s like Merzbow’s ballad of Sun Ra, an elegy for a virtual partner coming after 100 minutes of sonic boxing. You could call Strange City a Merzbow victory, but it couldn’t have happened without Sun Ra on his team.
The constant and destructive waves of noise make this decisively a Merzbow record, but its cosmic mood and rhythms prove that Sun Ra lives in its DNA.
Sun Ra’s presence on the latest Merzbow record is odd: blink and you might miss him completely, but squint and you can notice him almost everywhere. The only time it’s blatantly obvious that Masami Akita, the man behind noise legend Merzbow, is using Sun Ra’s recordings as source material comes in the first 10 seconds of Strange City. Opener “Livid Sun Loop” begins with overlapping saxophones and drums, but Akita quickly steamrolls those into a dense cacophony. For the rest of the album’s 103 minutes (66 on CD and 36 on LP, both titled Strange City but containing different music), he steadfastly maintains that busy din.
Yet focus your ears intensely on Strange City—preferably through headphones—and Sun Ra’s music peeks out through Merzbow’s noise wall. (The Ra estate gave Akita material from 1966’s The Magic City and 1967’s Strange Strings, which he remixed and treated while adding his own original sounds). Rattling drumbeats grow out of crackling static like weeds in a garden, bassy rhythms undulate beneath rolling roars like shifting tectonic plates, and pretty much every screech and squeal could pass for a wailing horn. Strange City is decisively a Merzbow record, but Sun Ra lives in its DNA.
Where Strange City stands in Merzbow’s massive discography is easier to suss out. Many of the strengths Akita has developed over roughly four decades of noise devotion are put to use here. He creates relentlessly forward-moving music with so much going on that it feels three-dimensional. During such lengthy tracks, your ears and brain accept and acclimate to Akita’s ruthless sounds, and his seemingly random noise eventually starts to feel normal.
Strange City is most successful on the two half-hour-plus tracks that make up the CD version. “Livid Sun Loop” is filled with destructive sounds and stabbing rhythms, but it also has a narrative arc developed through 32 minutes of sonic drilling. On “Granular Jazz Part 2,” Akita grapples most seriously with Sun Ra’s creative spirit. Devoted primarily to the trebly end of the spectrum, the piece subtly rides Ra’s rhythms while building a space-bound aura, a fitting way to grapple with an artist who claimed to come from Saturn.
The three tracks on the LP version of Strange City—all titled as parts of “Granular Jazz”—are less distinctive. In some places, Akita falls back on stock noise moves like firing-laser jolts and helicopter-style whirr. Something interesting happens on every piece, though, and the closer “Granular Jazz Part 4” is particularly fascinating due to its relative restraint. Surprisingly distant and subdued, it’s like Merzbow’s ballad of Sun Ra, an elegy for a virtual partner coming after 100 minutes of sonic boxing. You could call Strange City a Merzbow victory, but it couldn’t have happened without Sun Ra on his team.
John Moloney, Merzbow & Thurston Moore - (2013) :Caught on Tape
Manhand – 160
Live Burn - MH160 Recorded live at King's Barcade at Cory Rayborn's Hopscotch Day Party September 2013.
Merzbow - Electronics
John Moloney - Drums
Thurston Moore - Guitar
Thanks to Cory Rayborn and NYC Taper.
Collage by Sarah Gibbons.
Merzbow - (2012) Lowest Music & Arts 1980-1983 9xLP & 7''
Vinyl-On-Demand – 108
Lowest Music & Arts 1980–1983 is a box set compilation by the Japanese noise musician Merzbow, it is composed of recordings from the earliest years of Merzbow.
Vinyl-on-demand deliver a knockout blow of formative, seminal Merzbow material; all of it appearing on vinyl for the first time, and all carefully selected and mastered by the notorious artist himself. It really is one of the handsomest, most alluring things we’ve ever stocked; proper, top shelf vinyl porn for the collectors, and arguably one of the most extraordinary collections of noise material to ever land on vinyl. So, maybe a little introduction is required: around 1979 Masami Akita appropriated the name Merzbow in homage to Kurt Schwitters ‘Merzbau’ artwork. It was clear indiction of his allegiance to radical avant-garde thought and practice, and came to encompass myriad influences from free jazz to musique concrète and psychedelia which would inspire a nebulous catalogue stretching to over 350 releases and an unparalleled reputation in the world of extreme music and art. This ten LP set charts the primordial genesis of this uncompromising gesamtkunstwerk: at one end we have his earliest material from 1980 – screeching, elemental Metal Acoustic Music – hypnotic rituals for ungodly praxis – thru to unique ecologies of clattering percussion, demented synth noise and cosmic/industrial cacophony, while digging deeper into the box reveals hitherto hidden sides of his oeuvre; culminating in the mindbending torque of his 1983 recordings – a decimated mixture of roiling garage rock, atonal industrialism, and, perhaps most surprisingly and enticingly of all, technoid drum patterns recalling Throbbing Gristle and MB which sound all too prescient and timely in 2012. It’d do us a mischief to describe the whole thing, but needless to say it’s a truly mind-melting collection, suitably presented with the highest attention to detail and aesthetic.
Vinyl-on-demand deliver a knockout blow of formative, seminal Merzbow material; all of it appearing on vinyl for the first time, and all carefully selected and mastered by the notorious artist himself. It really is one of the handsomest, most alluring things we’ve ever stocked; proper, top shelf vinyl porn for the collectors, and arguably one of the most extraordinary collections of noise material to ever land on vinyl. So, maybe a little introduction is required: around 1979 Masami Akita appropriated the name Merzbow in homage to Kurt Schwitters ‘Merzbau’ artwork. It was clear indiction of his allegiance to radical avant-garde thought and practice, and came to encompass myriad influences from free jazz to musique concrète and psychedelia which would inspire a nebulous catalogue stretching to over 350 releases and an unparalleled reputation in the world of extreme music and art. This ten LP set charts the primordial genesis of this uncompromising gesamtkunstwerk: at one end we have his earliest material from 1980 – screeching, elemental Metal Acoustic Music – hypnotic rituals for ungodly praxis – thru to unique ecologies of clattering percussion, demented synth noise and cosmic/industrial cacophony, while digging deeper into the box reveals hitherto hidden sides of his oeuvre; culminating in the mindbending torque of his 1983 recordings – a decimated mixture of roiling garage rock, atonal industrialism, and, perhaps most surprisingly and enticingly of all, technoid drum patterns recalling Throbbing Gristle and MB which sound all too prescient and timely in 2012. It’d do us a mischief to describe the whole thing, but needless to say it’s a truly mind-melting collection, suitably presented with the highest attention to detail and aesthetic.
Merzbow - (1994) Venereology CD
Release Entertainment – 6910
The undisputed king of Japanese noise MERZBOW returns, as the landmark album Venereology celebrates 25 tinnitus-inducing years with its inaugural vinyl pressing! Remastered by James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL, and more) and featuring reworked art, this is the most extreme recording of harsh electronic sickness you will ever own! Venereology features a second LP with more than 20 minutes of unreleased bonus material.
Merzbow & Xiu Xiu - (2015) Merzxiu LP
Kingfisher Bluez – 6014
The collaboration doesn't seem like it would be a collaboration upon first listen, but there is a distinguishable feature with both artists that create something unique and brilliant. While Merzbow has a very bold presence, it's clear that Jamie Stewart has his hands on the textures of Merzbow's noise, adding more experimentation, colour, and gloom to this sinister and bloodthirsty LP.
Merzbow, Mats Gustafsson, Balázs Pándi, Thurston Moore - (2015) Cuts Of Guilt, Cuts Deeper 2xCD
RareNoise Records – 052
How did renowned Japanese noisemaker Merzbow (aka Masami Akita), Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi follow up their majorly intense statement made on their tumultuous debut album, Cuts, which was released in 2013. By adding another ingredient to the volatile mix, in the person of skronking guitar hero and Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore they’ve taken things up a notch or two on the Richter scale on their RareNoise Records follow-up recording. With Gustaffson’s roaring baritone sax blending with Moore’s shriekback guitar, Pandi’s intensely throbbing beats and Merzbow’s subversive white noise barrages, it all adds up to a sonic pummelling of epic proportions on the remarkable two CD-set, Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper.
For Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper, the four kindred spirits went into the studio and came up with four extended tracks. CD 1 is comprised of the 20-minute “replaced by shame, only two left” and the 18- minute “divided by steel, falling gracefully.” CD 2 contains the dynamic 21-minute jam “too late, too sharp -- it is over” and the extreme anthem “all his teeth in hand, asking her once more.” Drummer Pandi calls it ‘mystery in sound.’ As saxophonist Gustafsson said of their purely improvised session, “We had no game plan. That usually does not work so well. It all depends on the day, the energy and of course the room. And oh boy, that room was freakin’ spectacular! It actually had a skateboard ramp! It was a truly spectacular recording. It went super-fast -- just a wall of noise-poetry with layers and perspectives changing all the time. And to have Thurston Moore in the mix just added colours, layers, energies and sound. It was a very inspired sharing with the others.” Pandi provides a bit of history on the evolution of this Cuts quartet. “There is a legendary Roskilde live recording of Sonic Youth with Mats and Masami called ‘Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth’ and as a combination of that record and my longstanding duo with Masami, the idea came to try and play a quartet. Those were the days of the last couple Sonic Youth shows in South America, around 2012.
For Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper, the four kindred spirits went into the studio and came up with four extended tracks. CD 1 is comprised of the 20-minute “replaced by shame, only two left” and the 18- minute “divided by steel, falling gracefully.” CD 2 contains the dynamic 21-minute jam “too late, too sharp -- it is over” and the extreme anthem “all his teeth in hand, asking her once more.” Drummer Pandi calls it ‘mystery in sound.’ As saxophonist Gustafsson said of their purely improvised session, “We had no game plan. That usually does not work so well. It all depends on the day, the energy and of course the room. And oh boy, that room was freakin’ spectacular! It actually had a skateboard ramp! It was a truly spectacular recording. It went super-fast -- just a wall of noise-poetry with layers and perspectives changing all the time. And to have Thurston Moore in the mix just added colours, layers, energies and sound. It was a very inspired sharing with the others.” Pandi provides a bit of history on the evolution of this Cuts quartet. “There is a legendary Roskilde live recording of Sonic Youth with Mats and Masami called ‘Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth’ and as a combination of that record and my longstanding duo with Masami, the idea came to try and play a quartet. Those were the days of the last couple Sonic Youth shows in South America, around 2012.
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