Introduction

Background

Merzbow was my first introduction to pure noise. When I look back at my music taste to that point there were certainly elements of noise – the cacophany of some bridges in post-rock tracks or the more sonically harsh drone/ambient tracks. Wikipedia classifies noise music as a genre where sound is used “without exigency to follow traditional musical rules, and may possess (at least in contrast to the norm) harsh sonic characteristics”.

Nonetheless, a youtube video of Pulse Demon on a rainy bus journey home is a memorable start of listening to noise music. I was captivated by *that* artwork and loved the overwhelming sound. I found that noise that originally apperead to be totally overwhelming could become a familiar and pleasant backdrop to life. I even use some as a sleep aid! I’d always dismissed Merzbow to that point as somewhat of a joke or a meme – the artist with at least (per discogs) 534 releases. For better or worse, Masami Akita (Merzbow) stands as one of the figureheads of the genre. I was soon captivated by the different periods of Merzbow and exploring the releases within each period. Albums were similar in sonic texture, but distinct releases. However, it was possible to love one release, but find the next rather stale or even low effort. My noise tastes have expanded beyond Merzbow, but it has always been worthwhile re-visiting releases or listening to some of the recent reissues.

Retrospectives

Retrospectives of Merzbow have become vogue over the last few years. The Noisextra podcast initially started as the Merzcast in February 2019 with an episode on Tauromachine. The hosts and different guests would revisit favourite or seminal albums which influenced them as artists. They discussed the music and process but also touched upon anecdotes of working/seeing Merzbow (Masami later objected to some of these anecdotes and so the podcast re-launched to discuss noise in general).

In a timely coincidence, the Immerzbox podcast also started in January 2019 with the aim of reviewing the Merzbox, a 50 disc retrospective covering Masami’s career from 1979 to 1997. The hosts would discuss the “Merznotes” of each release: a brief summary of the methods used to produce the album, it’s recordings, personnele, etc and review track by track.

The issue with the Merzbox is that, even for a mega fan of Merzbow, it contains at least 20 discs which had never been released and where I think some more quality control could have been applied. At times it seems to aim more for excess and exhaustiveness of flushing out the back catalogue rather than a true retrospective of Merzbow’s output. Furthermore, for a modern fan of Merzbow, the Merzbox finishes just before Merzbow started to use a laptop. There’s divided opinion on later output but there are certainly many fans whose favourite work is after 1997. Finally, for the immerzbox podcast, the hosts probably wouldn’t have described themselves as mega Merzbow fans before starting. At times I wondered if they would even enjoy seminal releases like Venereology or would just sigh at more use of junk metal! In all fairness, while the hosts may have sounded jaded they were trying to actively listen and comment on the likes of Music for True Romance..

10×60=60CDBOX

Since 2018 slowdown records have been releasing unpublished or archived Merzbow releases and these have now been collected together into 10×6=60CDBOX. A 60 cd box set, divided into 10 periods of Merzbow’s career. I thought it would be fun to contribute to the discourse and do a CD by CD review of 10×6=60CDBOX. The benefit of 10×6 is that many of these albums are available on the slowdown records bandcamp so a partial legal listen along is possible, even if the boxset is now sold out and attracting the usual discogs scalpers. We’ll touch on my favourite periods, the distinction between these and the liner notes in later blog posts. For now, we start in 1979 with Merzbow’s early sessions.