Ducks Battle Satan

I haven’t had a guest reviewer for a while and Miles, one of my lastfm friends,  was good enough to jot down his thoughts on Merzbow’s awesome Doors Open….. It’s a great album and one which I’ve never got around to posting on myself. In fact all of the Alein8 Merzbow releases are pretty essential. Cheers Miles, great review.

On Alien8’s website they dedicate Door Open At 8 AM to all Merzbow “non-believers,” which I found very fitting. This (along with Keio Line) is one of the albums I play for people when trying to turn them on to Merzbow. What makes this album such a good release is that it’s tied so well together by its theme, which is essentially Akita’s take on jazz.  Merzbow has other very rhythmic albums, but he doesn’t go in the electronica direction of albums like Merzbeat or Merzbird, instead filling these seven tracks will various samples of piano, bass, guitar, and of course fantastic jazz drum loops. It makes for the perfect album to point to in defiance when people accuse Merzbow of being repetitive.  “Tony Williams Deathspace” is a genuinely catchy two minutes, but the real highlights of this album are “Jimmy Elvins in Traffic” and “Lyons Wake.” These take the idea of “Merzjazz” and do it just right, each starting with very distinct jazz motifs and returning to them throughout. I can’t review this album without mentioning “Africa Brass.” Supposedly a Coltrane cover, (though Africa Brass was an album, not an actual song.) I think it is good, but it doesn’t work as well as the two I already mentioned, or even the fantastic closer “Metro and Bus.” What truly makes this album so good though is that while you can recognize it as Merzbow at any time, it really sounds like a jazz album. Highly recommended.

This entry was posted on May 27, 2009 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Merzbow, Music, noise with tags Merzbow, Music, 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.