Merzbow Top Hits

[Zeno Marx]

how's the Merzbow/Slugbait - Arctic Twilight / Anthem Of The Sun CD?

[ImpulsyStetoskopu]

how's the Merzbow/Slugbait - Arctic Twilight / Anthem Of The Sun CD?

I guess that good, but isn't good as Merzbow's collaboration with Achim WOLLSCHEID, EMIL BEAULIEAU, JAZZKAMER or GENESIS P-ORRIDGE.

[Bloated Slutbag]

how's the Merzbow/Slugbait - Arctic Twilight / Anthem Of The Sun CD?

Full bodied. As might be expected from the period ('96). Recall that I wanted very much to hate it, for the same reasons that I wanted to hate Namanax, and was disappointed to discover that it was actually quite listenable. Was vindicated somewhat to find the Slugbait mix inferior- or just plain unmemorable.  Net impression: Merz defers to the (feedback-drenched, rather inferior) source materials to output fairly slow-going indulgence of relatively limited perv-vision. I do think Akita makes a valiant attempt at sexing things up- to occasionally quite satisfactory effect. This could very well be a thing to be much appreciated in a live setting. Still something to which I am forced to return, at this moment, to properly recollect- a necessary step unbecoming of the greats. Nice packaging, though*.

As for the Lowest Music & Arts 1980-1983 box, I would also be glad of a comment or two. Some weeks back, in a weak moment, almost snagged, but managed to stay the index finger based on my experience of early Merz- even without reference to FreakAnimalFinland's recent 7" review. None of the early-est of Merz has managed to particularly recommend itself... though if someone were to - even very slightly - praise the box in question I would immediately run out of excuses not to click ahead...

Pleast don't.

Pleast do.

Pleast don't.

Etc.


* No, you do not detect a note of sarcasm. Packaging is, like, really important.

[Bloated Slutbag]

In a whole new context (system), I am ever tempted to audition my faves and for the nth...

Elysia, Valley Of The Metal from World Record comp (Alchemy)

Good Mikawa, what is this? The Ultimate Merzbonanie? The depth, the complexity, the sheer quantity of shit dumped into the Valley, subtitled "Metal Machine Music Up the Ass". As though the whole of (the studio work from) Metalvelodrome were compressed into ten short minutes. Does (a good portion of) a 4-disc set need to be so compressed? This manages to demonstrate several of the more favorable sides of the Merz, huge stacks of collapsing scrap metals, heaving movements from one extreme to the next, both calculated, methodical and unhinged, unwieldly, so good it plain hurts. And yet. Despite all the material apparent, this could be a straight up live performance; or a minimally edited presentation of assorted perversions culled from a series of live performances. This kind of thing I like. Nothing overwrought, no apparent need to recompose the life out of the essential brutality inherent in the materials at hand. No, here the essense is preserved, the quintessential junktextures allowed their room to breathe, dribble, get the runs, make a mess of things. A studied avoidance of the pratfalls the more artistically inclined might very well deem instrinsic. The noisehead, pleased.

(EDIT. Still I had to laugh reading over the above in light of the paroxysms of ardour I've directed at the recent Endo. Definitely a lot of overlap, which probably speaks more to the particular headspace my noisepredilections are currently occupying than the actual character of the sounds in question. At this rate, by next Endo commentary I'll have come full circle and will be able to sum up in three words: "Sounds Like Merzbow".)


While I'm flipping back through Merzposts, one of my hobbies, I find that I'd meant to come back to this on the off-chance clarification was needed:

Nevertheless. Even if Merzphysics does present little more than, essentially, dicking around, the dick easily kills most contemporaneous shit on offer. All of these discs are eminently releasable.

I was thinking something similar after listening to Oersted the other day.  It wasn't a negative, nasty reaction to the quality of noise we now get, but

Hard to say this without coming off as an absolute wanker, but... by "contemporaneous shit" I was referring to shit contemporaneous with other noise in that period- that is, in and around 1994. I couldn't personally speak with any authority on the noise we now get. I do know that I've heard plenty, since 1994, that I would rank as highly as anything else- up to and including The Golden Age Of Merz. Much as I like to kid myself that I am still relatively conversant, there just seems such an abundance readily available at this point that (for me) to issue blanket statements, in favor or disfavor, of a particular strain of sound-making apparent seems just a tad, how shall I say it? Postmature.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Geez, it's been whole days since I've engaged in a little dead horse flagellation, must be slipping. Just thought I'd attempt to further qualify my previous pro Elysia, Valley Of The Metal assertions.

Elysia, Valley Of The Metal from World Record comp (Alchemy)

Good Mikawa, what is this? The Ultimate Merzbonanie? The depth, the complexity, the sheer quantity of shit dumped into the Valley, subtitled "Metal Machine Music Up the-" <snip>

Elysia... while not, to be clear, possessing of the essential mind-blowingness of the fully-loaded Merz, nevertheless manages to make a case for singular Merzvision. One which seems more closely linked with the fundamental aesthetic staked in the earliest of days; "scum electronics"  or "scum noise" or whatever, straight down to the project name. Merzbow is, at its best, some of the most artfully composed sound one might hope for... but at the same time, Merzbow is, at its most quintessential, non-artful, un-artful, even, from certain traditionalist bents, anti-artful.

Thus with Elysia we can perceive an almost haphazard molesting of assorted more or less randomly selected materials. Limited editing, possibly managed on the fly; or an editing that verges on clumsy; or seemingly deliberately careless, as though- against all expectation- the Merz simply couldn't give a shit. And then, amid dense masses of metallic clamor, the sudden, ridiculous, flow-disrupting incursion of looped rhythmic interruptus. Yet the whole lurching monstrosity flows, or better- disflows- in such compelling fashion. And it does so principally owing to the freshness, the tastiness- not to mention the all-consuming the density- of the ingredients so liberally distributed.

Back when I would score things for Rawness, there were two considerations. One was that of atmosphere, by which I mean a considerable exercise of, um, artistic license would apply to the consideration (similar to how things may be characterized as sounding "cold" or "warm" or name your meaningless adjective.) The second consideration was more literal, and would apply to the apparent resistance – intended or not – to more, shall we say, classically-oriented considerations of the sound palette. (See recent posts under the "Idiots" thread.) A piece like Elysia manages, impressively, to utterly nail both criteria- in my case, as though hammered straight into a Raw nerve.

Er... yeah. Glad I could confuse things up. Now back to our regular scheduled Merzworship.

Edit. Almost forgot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBhTbw-6EHw

[13]

I may have missed it, but does it say anywhere if Masami recorded this "classic era" direct to tape to regular cassette or DAT?

I have been told by some Japanese guys that secret to their sound was actually DAT. That all stuff needed to be recorded to DAT to get the good sound for it.
Specific player with analogue to digital processing results loud and crispy distortion. No crackling, no glitch, but violent razorsharp overdrive. I guess this could be secret of many. I don't know so many people in west who could have said DAT players were very popular in consumer use. Japan is probably slightly different?

Back then DAT was too expensive and obscure format unless you had studio and after popularity of advanced computers and CDR format it became quite obsolete... but it may have had effects to certain type of noise we hardly realized.  One Merzbow master DAT I got for FA#11 compilation, it was all-at-maximum blast, with plenty of DAT tape overdrive. Made local studio guy very surprised. While analogue tape can be crucial for some noise, it makes you wonder if role of Digital Audio Tape is foolishly ignored since it appears to be so much less cooler format?

This is very interesting. I'll talk to some of my engineer friends and get back to you asap.

[Zeno Marx]

From my listening experience, and from reading many discussions about DATs, they are very much unique.  I missed Mikko's post.  The Grateful Dead tapers were all over DATs, as it was viewed as cutting edge technology at the time, and the GD tapers were always pushing the boundaries of equipment and sat on the forefront of the digital age.  PCMs and DATs.  Dan Healy, the GD's audio engineer (and overall audio guru), used them to record soundboards on a nightly basis.  I bring this up because if you wanted to talk the ins/outs of DATs, there probably isn't a more knowledgeable community than the Grateful Dead tapers.  They've also become the go-to thinktank on DAT restoration and transferring.  They appear to be fragile and a very poor medium for archival purposes.  If you have something on DAT, it should be transferred sooner than later.  The playback decks are yet another big problem, as calibration and maintenance are constant.  Personally, I like the sound of the PCMs.  They're generally thin and cold sounding; a true listening novelty.  Electronic sounds pop, while organic sounds get lost.  The keyboards bubble.

you can get a feel for that coldness here:  https://archive.org/details/gd83-04-12.set2.pcm-sbd.miller.30808.sbeok.flacf

[13]

Well as far as I've been told DAT is 16 bit digital format. Just like any DAW like Ableton, Logic etc. So DAT really shouldn't have a "sound" except for being an exact digital copy of what's fed unto them. Just like a computer recording would be. That though was pretty cutting edge at the time. Analog tape would eat up quite a bit of the high end, so that's why DAT's might have been perceived as different. It is different in that regard. But there's really nothing like "DAT distortion" as far as I can tell. Such distortion would have to appear from another part of the recording chain.   

[FreakAnimalFinland]

DAT tape may storage digital data, which is same as CD quality, but it's not all about "storage of data".
Also things like analogue to digital process. There is plenty of technology before your sound is on that tape.

One can easily give a try (if you have DAT player and tapes?), to record full blast all-on-red stuff to DAT, and do the same on computer. And I'm pretty sure, it just doesn't sound the same. Handful of artists have concluded that they get so much better results from overdriving DAT than glitchy as fuck crackles when they try to do it on computer. Then one can always say that yeah, you just need this and that and the other soundcard, other pre-amp, some different kind of analogue-to-digital transformers etc... but yeah, you can just use DAT as several decks have proven to be great for doing crisp, yet not glitchy, brutal harsh sound.

[13]

Yeah that was my point. It would have the be the A/D conversion (or something else...) and not the actual tape giving it the "character".

[Zeno Marx]

I think some of this signature sound could possibly be linked to the idea that "digital is digital...and for dummies", so when people first used DATs, they paid little concern to adjustments, meters, recording volume, etc.  They threw in a tape, jacked the levels, and away they went.  And this was the beginning of the home digital capabilities, so they didn't have a full grasp of what digital meant in the first place.  It could handle anything you threw at it.  You weren't burdened with having to watch levels.  It was care-free.  You could be an idiot, and it would adjust to your shortcomings.  Sort of like how it was a revelation to some that you couldn't keep your CDs on the floor of your car for months on end and still have a functional format.  Digital was fragile and had its own set of know-how and rules.

[13]

I think some of this signature sound could possibly be linked to the idea that "digital is digital...and for dummies", so when people first used DATs, they paid little concern to adjustments, meters, recording volume, etc.  They threw in a tape, jacked the levels, and away they went.  And this was the beginning of the home digital capabilities, so they didn't have a full grasp of what digital meant in the first place.  It could handle anything you threw at it.  You weren't burdened with having to watch levels.  It was care-free.  You could be an idiot, and it would adjust to your shortcomings.  Sort of like how it was a revelation to some that you couldn't keep your CDs on the floor of your car for months on end and still have a functional format.  Digital was fragile and had its own set of know-how and rules.

Both yes and no. I'm sure the pre-amps and A/D converter could be pushed hard to great effect, but not the actual tape. Unless you want really bad digital distortion (clipping), which I can't hear on any of the 90's Merzbow albums I've heard.  

[Cementimental]

If it's even possible to coax the DAT into clipping the actual tape (which i don't see why it would be since you're just recording digital data coming from the ADC stage) you'd get corruption or just woudn't be able to play it at all, it wouldn't be any kind of waveform-clipping sound, 'bad' or otherwise.

[13]

I need a little help in regards to Merzbow. I really like Music For Bondage Performance, Metalvelodrome (Exposition Of Electro-Vivisection), Venereology and Pulse Demon and just bought 1930 (which everyone and their dead grandma seems to rave about...). Those are the only releases of his I've listened to a lot. I realize that this is all stuff from his 90's-era. Any ideas as to what I could listen to next?

[acsenger]

Any ideas as to what I could listen to next?

Pages 4 and 6 of this thread have entries with long lists of albums that are great. They're almost all from the 90s though. If you're curious about the 80s stuff (which is very often very different from the harshness of the 90s and can be quite difficult listening), there are some CDs like Ecobondage, Batztoutai with Material Gadgets and Antimonument. From 2000 onwards, his releases are hit or miss and I don't know a lot of them, but for example Merzzow and Sha Mo 3000 are great (and quite musical, actually).