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I've often heard talk of the Japanese noise assault that is Merzbow. Is it worth looking into, if so, which album is a good starter. Just so you know, I've got a decent tolerance for noise (I like Lesser, Alec Empire, and Shizuo quite a bit). Thanks Jamie --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

On 31/12/99 06:48, Jamie Johnson said in living color:

quoted 4 lines I've often heard talk of the Japanese noise assault that is Merzbow. Is it

> I've often heard talk of the Japanese noise assault that is Merzbow. Is it > worth looking into, if so, which album is a good starter. Just so you know, > I've got a decent tolerance for noise (I like Lesser, Alec Empire, and > Shizuo quite a bit).

I'm not a huge fan and haven't listened to much of Merzbow's output but I've found the "1930" album on Tzadik to be the most interesting Merzbow I've come across. g. -- Guillaume Grenier - gollum@videotron.ca in space there is no north in space there is no south in space there is no east in space there is no west --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

On Fri, 31 Dec 1999, Jamie Johnson wrote:

quoted 4 lines I've often heard talk of the Japanese noise assault that is Merzbow. Is it

> I've often heard talk of the Japanese noise assault that is Merzbow. Is it > worth looking into, if so, which album is a good starter. Just so you know, > I've got a decent tolerance for noise (I like Lesser, Alec Empire, and > Shizuo quite a bit).

I don't really subscribe to the "heard one Merzbow disc, heard 'em all" theory, which is usually put forth by people who haven't taken the time to check out the various flavors of Merzbow releases. Though I have to admit there was a period in which the market was flooded with similar-sounding junk. For convenience's sake, there are mainly two different kind of Merzbow discs out there- the junky-sounding loop stuff derived from applying Deutsche Grammafon Avant Guard methods (c.f. the liner notes to Batztoutai w/ MG) to Kurt Schwitters' worldview, and the blaring distorto-noise fests which are more approachable as ever-shifting textural waves. As a rule of thumb, the early material (mid 80s to about 1990) tends to fall into the junkier phase, wherease the later stuff gets more amped up. If I had to pick a handful of releases to sum things up, I'd probably go for _Batztoutai w/ Memorial Gadgets_ (2CD on RRR, cheap and still available) and _Ecobondage_ (CD reissued by Jim O' Rourke's then-girlfriend, I think) for the early period and _Rainbow Electronics_ (CD on Alchemy- his first masterpiece of "I feel your pain because I'm causing it to happen"), _Pulse Demon (CD on Relapse) and maybe _Flare Gun_ (out of print LP, but I have pretty fond memories of this one). There's also a collaborative LP with SBOTHI (I think) which was pretty nifty. In fact, there was a period of time in which a staggering number of mail collaborations w/ Akita were being put out, but don't fool yourself into thinking that they vary that much according to his collaborator. There's also a bunch of odds and ends, including _Music for Bondage Performance_ (CD on Extreme), which is more of a chilled-out ambient disc. A lot of people seem to like this, but I suspect it's more because they secretly think it "proves" that Akita is not a one-trick pony than an indicator of relative quality. There's also a pretty amusing stab at Factory-style new wave, documented on the cassette-only release _Aka Meme_ (V2 Archief, NL). Akita must've figured out that it was too confusing to put these things out under the Merzbow franchise, because lately he's been using his own name for these weird sojourns (as in the _Prosperity of Vice_ CD and the really terrible 12" on Mego). As a final note, Iannis Xenakis' _Legende d'Eer_ CD (Disques Montaigne) has this really amazing aural rendition of his wartime experience of being hit by a grenade that any Merzbow fan would do well to investigate. Not too many audio experiences are hairier than that one. -rob ps- cheers to Masonna, whose vocal acrobatics sound like nothing more than Henri Chopin being seared by arcs of electricity (c.f. Madame Anne Sanglante...). Jeers to the Incapacitants, who can't even claw their way into the cesspool of mediocrity that Hijokaiden has been stewing in for almost a decade. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org