Merzbow - Material Action 2

A heaping dollop of noisiness from the long-time Japanoise king, Masami Akita, a.k.a. "Merzbow," who has been going since 1978 and has a hundred and forty million albums of this stuff. Here, we have a heavy collage of bang and clang, intercut with high, piercing, synth whistling but it never does in any way get dull. The feeling is that one is inside the bowls of some great, futuristic tin horn beast from a demonic bestiary located somewhere south of Chiba City and somewhere north of the Sprawl. Strings are plucked behind the wall of noise, there is always the sensation of movement...movement...movement forward in sound, a process of progression.

There is the mewling and squealing of something that strikes one as being vaguely organic. Beneath that, there is the discernible, vaguely oriental aforementioned plucking, that does become a recognizable, if discordant melody beneath what is here, offered, on the material action plate. The melody beneath could be the soundtrack to animals wailing in Hell (Akita is a vegan and an animal rights activist), but whatever they are experiencing is a torment that is real, eternal, and blends or morphs almost effortlessly into what could be the scraping of metal or claws against steel. But it is never too much for the listener, although that is, undeniably the intent.

The melody finally loses itself, sounding as if it has become confused, and there is a grinding sound, as of a machine in the mid-range of things, operating towards a sinister purpose. But is it all an audio mirage? The listener will be hard pressed, at times, to discern just what these sounds might be striving to reproduce, or what audio hellscape they are traversing.

The piercing grind gives way, occasionally, to a deep and inscrutable electronic call and response, as if two AIs are debating the relative merits of slaughtering whatever small, furry species of animal (alternately, round, soft, hairless fetal pig) has happened to fall victim to the sentient, chopping blades of the industrial machine the listener finds his or her consciousness temporarily imprisoned in.

There are moments when things become more subtle, more subdued. Roger Waters once said that the reason he didn't like the film Pink Floyd The Wall was that it went, "ch ch ch ch, kuh kuh kuh kuh," for ninety minutes (i.e., the scary, echoing, breathless nonsense sounds used to great effect on the Friday the Thirteenth movie soundtrack, a trick they happened upon in post-production with a little deft editing of the word "Jason." (Pink Floyd used it FIRST, however, on their song, "Careful With That Axe Eugene," which was about a murderer, or someone anticipating becoming one.)

What Waters meant, of course, is that the film was all heaviness and horror, with never a let up for humor. He even said something to the effect that, "The film is no fun." The same can usually be said of a sub subgenre such as noise, which tries so hard to push the envelope it pushes sound to the ecstatic, to test the limits of endurance. But this is often at the expense of a sense of proportion, of understanding, and pacing, both of which could lend a "forward progression with something like noise." (To quote Boyd Rice.)

We get some at times random, ominous synth blasts here, and there, and beneath is, the same constant, tap-tap-tapping, or drumming of tin cans or the belly of some vast, inscrutable machine or device. Finally, this becomes a gritty scraping, cascading of sound, and then, the ominous synth, which has almost a panther edge to it at times, but is always beneath in layers, with electronic blasts of squeal worming around for us, as beneath, we hear the echoes Masami has brought, as acid spray blasts tone down to a quiet incidental synthroid cinema of the mind, and the listener, thirty-eight minutes into the forty of this anti-symphony, realizes that he or she, in an auditory sense, has just traveled through a strange world, a new process, a place where sound is transmuted into its own, vast, extraterrestrial landscape. Love and napalm.

Oh, lastly, there are what seem to be horn blasts and brassy big ball squeals. But who can tell?

Note. Little Buddy AI had this to say about my essay:

"...the critique is generally well-written. It effectively uses descriptive language to convey the sensory experience of the music, creating vivid imagery for the reader. The language is rich and imaginative, which can enhance the reader's understanding of the unique soundscape presented by Merzbow's work. Additionally, the critique incorporates references to other artists, genres, and cultural elements, adding depth and context to the discussion."