Ducks Battle Satan

The mid to late 1990′s may have been Merzbow’s strongest period. I gradually come around to the view that his strongest work is pre-2000 although I’m not one of those who would  suggest that everything he did post 2000 is of little value (and there are a lot of those folks out there). For beginner noise folks those Merz records are stil the way to go before getting your hands on 1930.

Think about the quality of the albums that were released during the 1990′s; 1930, Space Metalizer, Hybrid Noisebloom, Noisembyo, Oested, Green Wheels, Amlux etc. The striking thing about this period is that most of those releases are now long our of print and except for 1930 you’d have to hunt them down and pay some silly money on Discogs to secure your copy or buy an itunes copy. Pinkream is another harsh noise cracker from the same period. I thought that this was out of print given its limited run of 500 copies but you can still pick up a copy from the Dirter website. I think it is well worth while tracking down – I’d give it an eight on the harshness scale. Its probably quite close to Oested in the industrial noise storm unleashed here. Not one for beginners but a bit of a gem for the rest of us.

The inspiration for Merzbow’s latest album is marble. The press release says that he was in Venice and liked the marble and here is the noise that resulted. It’s all pretty comical really. Those of us who have bought the Birds records and the animal rights ones have probably realised that the sound inside has no link to the title of the CD nor the particular  ”inspiration” Merzbow felt before he made it. One might suggest that his homage to  a particularly memorable can of baked beans would result in a similar noise.

Of course that is not to say that the noise on many of these records is not fantastic. Marmo is not quite up to the standard of Ouroboros but is a pretty sound noise record none the less. In many of my posts on Merzbow’s work I have used the word”scree”. Scree is the small rocks that lie on a mountain slope and it is a word that makes sense when listening to Marmo. Those looking for the cool elegance of marble may need to look elsewhere. What Merzbow adds to the mix of layers on this one is a sound that reminded me of some of the incidental music of the classic French animation Les Planetes Sauvage, particularly the neo-futurist minimalist beeping and bleeping. To get what I mean check out the clip below for around ten seconds at the 102 second mark. And if you haven’t seen that movie you should check it out. One of the strangest things you’ll ever see. Marmo isn’t a great Merzbow record but it still works in a vaguely psychedelic way.

After I received my copy of Ouroboros I decided to have a bit of a browse through the Soleil Moon webshop and fuck me if they didn’t find a couple of this long out of print title in the depths of their storeroom.

I struggle to come up with anything new to say when reviewing a Merzbow record. All of his standard bag of tricks are on display here and used to great effect. There are three tracks in all with the first short track Prologue getting the ears ready before the sheer noise fuckery of the mammoth second track, Electric Salad, kicks off for the best part of an hour.

Initially I thought this was kind of similar to 1930 in many ways. The playful high end bubble pulses and whips were everywhere. Merzbow displaying his sense of humour and a lightness of touch if you like. But at around the 26 minute mark I realised that this is a very different beast. Shit got weird basically. Merzbow chucks in cuts ups of  movie dialogue, traffic noise  and 1960′s film music into the middle of his noise maelstrom. Does it work? Yeah I think it does,but after the complete noise-fests of Ouroboros and Higanbana, its gave me a bit of a jolt to hear Merzbow at his playful, media cut up best. The final track is also a bit of a gem  but I suspect that by the time many listeners come to terms with”the Salad” noise exhaustion may have set in.