Ducks Battle Satan

I’ve spent time on this blog trying to get the word out there that Merzbow is nothing to fear. Despite his reputation as a non-compromising noise artist, I’ve found a lot of the his output readily accessible, exciting and just damn enjoyable. Given the fact that this has been my main focus I’ve struggled with what to write for Minazo. From the cover art it seems like another cuddly edition to the Merzbow catalogue. If you thought that though, you’d be very wrong.

Minazo is a tribute to the elephant seal that died in 2005. Minazo was a bit of a celebrity in Japan and in the liner notes to this disc, Masami Akita despairs for the way he was treated and ponders if it caused his early death. Merzbow’s love of animals is no secret and his support for PETA is mentioned often. But how do you convey very personal feelings about the death of an animal through noise? When I first started tackling this disc I thought that it lacked the interest of some of his other records. In the last week I started to really listen to it. Not have it as some background noise when doing some other task. It was only through carefully listening that I started to get it. There are four tracks on Minazo and I have no idea whether this is intentional but there is a real feeling of panic on some of the tracks, especially the first untitled track which blew me away with the ability to covey an actual emotion like fear and panic through oscillations, pulse and noise. I felt the panic of the animal as it was kept in captivity, isolated and alone.

If you are startying out on Merzbow avoid this. It is dense and unrelenting. If you know your Merzbow then this is another classic. Seriously the man can do no wrong.

This entry was posted on May 19, 2008 at 8:37 am and is filed under Merzbow, Music, noise with tags Merzbow, noise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.