Merzbow – Chabo: 13 Japanese Birds Pt.13 (Important) 2010
Forget any pre-conceptions you have about this series, because Merzbow has left his best record to last. Chabo contains one long track titled “Resurrection”. I know that I’ve read elsewhere that Merzbow doesn’t give much thought to his titles in terms of the context to the noise they are attached to, but I can’t help but wonder whether “Resurrection” is his sign that the pure noise has returned and his experimentation with that damn drum kit is over. Chabo is pure noise through and through. The drum kit seems to have been discarded in favour of all that is good with a white hot Merzbow noise record. I’m putting this one up there with Hybrid Noisebloom, 1930 and Tombo for pure noise pleasure. If the drums are somewhere in here (and I got a sense of them somewhere deep down in the layers around the 26 minute mark) then they are processed to a degree that makes them almost imperceptible. Chabo is a pure noise record through and through. This is THE record in the series that all Merzbow freaks need to own. If this is an indication of what we have to look forward to in 2010 then it might be a very fine year indeed.
Ducks Battle Satan 
January 27, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I stumbled across this guy’s blog/website, he writes about all things Japanese including his love of Merzbow. You might be interested in some of his reviews because he writes about cultural/mythological references in Merzbow’s album/track titles. Do a search for Merzbow on the site http://www.genjipress.com/
January 28, 2010 at 9:12 pm
This is definitely one of the stronger Merzbow records to come out recently and it’s great to have something like Hybrid Noisebloom that’s current and in print that I can recommend to newbies. It doesn’t seem to be connected to the rest of the Bird series at all, though…I would have to recommend that someone pick this up in addition to another Bird release in order to get a sense of the drums. I’m very happy it exists, but at the end of the day, the entire series has been pretty solid. Only Kamo fell below the “good” mark, and if records like “Niwatori” suffered, it was only because they failed to show any significant development. On its own, that was a fine record. My ranking of the series:
Part 2, 13 (Classic)
Part 12, 4 & 9 (excellent)
Part 8 5, 11, 3, 1, 7 (very good)
Part 10 (good)
Part 6 (eh)