Merzbow


Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita. Merzbow is best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.
The name Merzbow comes from the German dada artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork Merzbau, in which Schwitters transformed the interior of his house using found objects. The name was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic. In addition to this, Akita has cited a wide range of musical influences from progressive rock, heavy metal, free jazz, and early electronic music to non-musical influences like dadaism, surrealism, and fetish culture. Since the early 2000s, he has been inspired by animal rights and environmentalism, and began to follow a vegan, straight edge lifestyle.
As well as being a prolific musician, he has been a writer and editor for several books and magazines in Japan, and has written several books of his own. He has written about a variety of subjects, mostly about music, modern art, and underground culture. His more renowned works were on the topics of BDSM and Japanese bondage. Other art forms Akita has been interested in include painting, photography, filmmaking, and Butoh dance.
In 2000, Extreme Records released the 50 CD box set known as the Merzbox. Akita's work has been the subject of several remix albums and at least one tribute album. This, among other achievements, has helped Merzbow to be regarded by some as the "most important artist in noise".

Life and career

Early life

Masami Akita was born in Tokyo, Japan on December 19, 1956. He listened to psychedelic music, progressive rock, and later free jazz in his youth, all of which have influenced his noise. In high school he became the drummer of various high school bands, which he left due to the other members being "grass-smoking Zappa freaks". By this time, he and high school friend Kiyoshi Mizutani had started playing improvised rock at studio sessions that Akita describes as "long jam sessions along the lines of Ash Ra Tempel or Can but we didn't have any psychedelic taste".
He later attended Tamagawa University to study fine art, at which he majored in painting and art theory. While at university, he became interested in the ideas of dada and surrealism and also studied Butoh dance. At Tamagawa, he learned of Kurt Schwitters' Merz, or art made from rubbish, including Schwitters' Merzbau, which is the source of the name Merzbow.

Beginning (1979–1989)

Merzbow began as the duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani, who met Akita in high school. Akita started releasing noise recordings on cassettes through his own record label, Lowest Music & Arts, which was founded in order to trade cassette tapes with other underground artists. The earliest recording he made was Metal Acoustic Music. Various other early releases included Remblandt Assemblage and Solonoise 1. The Collection series consisted of ten cassettes, the first five were recorded in a studio for an independent label called Ylem, which went defunct before they could be released. So, Akita released them himself, and recorded five more at home.
Akita's earliest music was made with tape loops and creatively recorded percussion and metal.
Early methods included what he referred to as "material action", in which he would closely amplify small sounds so as to distort them through the microphone. This method was used on Material Action for 2 Microphones and Material Action 2 N.A.M.. Among early releases like the box set Pornoise/1kg, Merzbow created artwork using photocopies of collages made out of manga and porn magazines he found in trash cans in the Tokyo subway. Akita explained this as trying to "create the same feeling as the secret porn customer for the people buying my cassettes in the early 80s".
ZSF Produkt was founded in 1984 to release music by similar artists within the industrial movement but eventually became the successor to Lowest Music & Arts. Numerous Merzbow releases were recorded at ZSF Produkt Studio, Masami Akita's home studio.
During this era, Merzbow found much wider recognition and began making recordings for various international labels. Batztoutai with Memorial Gadgets was his first LP released outside of Japan. He also started touring abroad with the help of various collaborators. First, Merzbow performed in the USSR in 1988, then, toured the USA in 1990, Korea in 1991, and Europe in 1989 and 1992. Kiyoshi Mizutani left Merzbow after the 1989 European tour and continues to pursue a solo career.

Noise electronics era (1989–1999)

During the European tour in September–October 1989, Merzbow could only bring simple and portable gear; this led to the harsh noise style Merzbow became known for in the 1990s. Cloud Cock OO Grand was the first example of this new style, Merzbow's first digital recording, and the first recording made for the CD format. It also includes live material recorded during the tour.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Merzbow began to be influenced by death metal and grindcore. Recordings from this time are mostly recorded at extreme volume, some mastered at levels far beyond standard. In 1994, Akita acquired a vintage EMS synthesizer. From 1996, plans were made to release a "10 " CD box set on Extreme Records. In 2000, Extreme Records released the Merzbox, a fifty CD set of Merzbow records, twenty of them not previously released.
Throughout most of the 1990s, Merzbow live was a trio with Reiko A. on electronics and Tetsuo Sakaibara on voice and dance. Masami Akita occasionally played drums for Hijokaidan during the early–mid 1990s.
In the early 1990s, Masami Akita composed the soundtracks to numerous kinbaku videos by Fuji Planning and seppuku-themed videos by their sub-label Right Brain. Akita also directed Lost Paradise for Right Brain. Some of this music was included on Music for Bondage Performance and Music for Bondage Performance 2, co-credited to Right Brain Audile. Director Ian Kerkhof would use a Merzbow track for his 1992 film La séquence des barres parallèles, and Akita composed original music for Kerhof's 1994 film . Kerkhof made the documentary Beyond Ultra Violence: Uneasy Listening by Merzbow in 1998. Akita also created music for Ilppo Pohjola's Asphalto and Routemaster.

Laptop era (1999–2009)

Since 1999, Akita has used computers in his recordings, having first acquired a Macintosh to work on art for the Merzbox. Also at this time he began referring to his home studio as "Bedroom, Tokyo". At live performances, Akita has produced noise music from either two laptop computers or combination of a laptop and analog synthesizers/guitar pedals. Reiko A. and Bara left Merzbow during this time; Reiko Azuma now has a solo career. Since 2001, Jenny Akita started being credited for artwork on various releases.
Since 2001, Akita started utilising samples of animal sounds in various releases starting with Frog. Around 2002, Akita became a vegan. He later stated:
During this period, Akita also became a supporter of PETA, which is reflected in his animal-themed releases. An example of this is Minazo Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, dedicated to an elephant seal he visited often at the zoo and Bloody Sea, a protest against Japanese whaling. He has also produced several works centered around recordings of his pet chickens.
Also in 2002, Akita released Merzbeat, which was seen as a significant departure from his trademark abstract style in that it contains beat-oriented pieces. This has sparked some controversy among fans, though some reviewers pointed out that it sounded very similar to Aqua Necromancer, which features samples of progressive rock drumming. Merzbird and Merzbuddha followed in a similar vein with sampled beats combined with Merzbow's signature harsh noise.

Current era (2009–present)

Starting in the mid-2000s, Masami Akita began to reintroduce junk metal and effects pedals back into his setup. By the early 2010s, he was using a large number of pedals, oscillators and tone generators, and reduced to a single laptop running granular synthesis software. In 2014, he toured without a laptop. In 2008, Akita reintroduced the drum kit, his first instrument. This can be heard on the 13 Japanese Birds series. At this time he changed the name of his home studio to Munemihouse.
Beginning in November 2009, Merzbow started releasing archival material from the 1980s and 1990s, both reissues and previously unreleased material, several of which were released on cassette. The Blossoming Noise label reissued the 1980s cassettes E-Study, Collection 004, Collection 005, Normal Music, and Flesh Metal Orgasm. The Kibbutz cassette was reissued on vinyl by Urashima. Other cassettes of unreleased material include Untitled Nov 1989, 9888A, April 1992, and Variations for Electric Fan. 2010–2013 saw the release several archival box sets; Merzbient, Merzphysics, Merzmorphosis, Lowest Music & Arts 1980–1983, and Duo.
Akita began collaborating with the Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi in 2009, initially Pándi served as a live drummer for Merzbow. This resulted in the live albums Live at Fluc Wanne, Vienna 2010/05/18, Ducks: Live in NYC, and Katowice. Akita and Pándi then began to record studio albums collaborating with additional musicians, Cuts with the Swedish saxophone player Mats Gustafsson, Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper with Gustafsson and Thurston Moore, and An Untroublesome Defencelessness with Keiji Haino, all released by RareNoiseRecords. Akita, Pándi, and Gustafsson also toured together and released the live LP Live in Tabačka 13/04/12.
Merzbow also released several collaborations with industrial/noise musicians he had know since the 1980s: Spiral Right / Spiral Left with Z'EV, The Black Album with John Duncan, and a trio of releases with Maurizio Bianchi, Amniocentesi / Envoise 30 05 82, Merzbow Meets M.B., and Amalgamelody. Gensho, the seventh collaborative releases with Boris, was released in 2016. It is a double album, one disc is by Boris and one by Merzbow, that are meant to be played at the same time.

Musical style

Merzbow's sounds employ the use of distortion, feedback, and noises from synthesizers, machinery, and home-made noisemakers. While much of Merzbow's output is intensely harsh in character, Akita does occasionally make forays into ambient music. Vocals are employed sometimes, but never in a lyrical sense. Contrary to most harsh noise music, Akita also occasionally uses elements of melody and rhythm.
Akita's early work consisted of industrial noise music made from tape loops and conventional instruments. Similar to his present albums, he produced lengthy, disorienting pieces. He also became famous for the sheer volume of his releases.
The avant-garde nature of Akita's work made acceptance by mainstream and unprepared audiences difficult. When he performed with Kiyoshi Mizutani in 1988 at the Jazz-on-Amur festival in Khabarovsk in the far east of the USSR, his improvised, experimental electroacoustic set was praised by fellow musicians as well as the festival's producer. The number of the - jazz-oriented - crowd, however, had been expecting a more traditional performance, and started walking out. Prior to his second performance at the festival — which was to be made to an even more conservative audience— Akita was asked to play "more musically." On that first stage, Merzbow used the finest example of "classical analogue live noisemaking technologies" to display: untuned guitar, a drumset, various micro-objects, small springs centered in its shell baffles, large aluminium boxes with strings inside to be attacked with a fiddlestick, etc. along with multi- piezo-pickuping and close-miking techniques, live processing through vintage US fuzz, ring modulator etc. boxes, and quite vivid and spontaneous approach, backed by domestically supplied slide and light shows. These live recordings were post-processed/re-mixed and released as Live in Khabarovsk, CCCP LP – and as the CD 26 of the Merzbox later on.
During the 1990s Akita's work became much harsher and was generally mastered at a louder volume than usual. These were heavily influenced by death metal and grindcore bands of the time. The mid-1990s saw Akita being heavily influenced by psychedelic bands and this was reflected in various albums.

Side projects

In addition to Merzbow, Masami Akita has been involved in a number of side projects and groups.

Aliases

Other groups include: 3RENSA with Duenn and Koji Nakamura, Abe Sada with S.M.U.T., Commando Bruno Sanmartino with Fumio Kosakai and Masaya Nakahara, Kikuri with Keiji Haino, Maldoror with Mike Patton, MAZK with Zbigniew Karkowski, Melting Lips with Hanayo, Muscats with Hanayo and Masaya Nakahara, Metalik Zeit with Aube, Merz-Banana with Melt-Banana, Satanstornade with Russell Haswell, Secrets with Tetsuya Mugishima, and Shalon Kelly King with Fumio Kosakai.

Discography