Merzbow Top Hits

[Moran]

I was right, the Akita/Merzbow identity question was briefly discussed in Novak's Japanoise book (excerpted from p. 134):

Akita used the pretense of Noise to separate from Music, and certainly he could not have predicted its later reception as "Japanoise."  But to remain "outside" of Music, the "inside" of Noise demanded to be situated to some distinct and separated self, some original person who could stand for Noise.  Akita's identity---and, ultimately, the genre of Noise itself---has to be detached from his own history.

Like Merzbow, the name "Noise" itself operates as a pseudonym that stands in for a hidden reality. [...] Just as [the use of pseudonyms in underground cultures] conflates a person with their performative role, recorded media can stand in for musical subjects that could not otherwise be reduced to a consistent identity.

[...]

Over time, the name "Merzbow" has taken on a one-to-one correspondence with the figure of Akita, which displaced the search for generic histories onto an inquiry about Akita's persona.

Thanks. While the reasoning about Akita's identity and the noise is elegant, I don't see much convincing evidence supporting Novak's claim in the excerpt. The relationship between Merzbow and Akita seems complicated like you said.

Is Novak talking about noise as a whole? If so, Novak's distinction between noise and music is much too simple. One could argue that a great deal of noise roughly follows the trajectory of 20th century Western art music (and others) consciously or not. I don't take issue with his distinction if it's just addressing Merzbow's idea of noise, which, at least from the older interviews I read, seems in line with it.

What "hidden reality" is Novak talking about?

Novak then reminds that Merzbow has, historically at least, been a collaborative project featuring Akita and a variety of others, and he then argues that Merzbow warrants critical interest because of the volume of releases---not due to the particular individuals who contributed to them.

Why not both? I should probably take a look at the book.

To be fair, the argument being made throughout the book far exceeds the limited quote that I shared---and it actually isn't about noise, strictly speaking.  My understanding is that he is trying to explore how cultural ideas, like "noise" in relation to "music," are established through intercultural exchange and feedback, meaning that artists like Merzbow function as media of sorts facilitating that exchange/development.  In other words, I think he actually agrees with you that simply positing ideas like "noise vs. music" as an opposition is far too simple a way of describing what is actually going on.

I think, then, that the "hidden reality" explored by Merzbow is the non-conceptual space between the formation of concepts, like Bataille's idea of the "formless" (of which Akita is certainly aware):

A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

Gotcha.