Merzbow ~ Prolific Japanese Noise Artist
Merzbow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Merzbow | |
|---|---|
 Masami Akita at Moers Festival 2007 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Masami Akita |
| Also known as | Merzbow |
| Born | December 19, 1956 |
| Origin | Tokyo, Japan |
| Genres | Noise, experimental, dark ambient[1] |
| Instruments | Magnetic tape, homemade guitars, synthesizer, effect pedals, percussion, laptop, drums |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Labels | Important, Misanthropic Agenda, Relapse, Lowest Music & Arts, ZSF Produkt, among many others |
| Associated acts | Boris Sunn O))) Sonic Youth |
| Website | merzbow.net |
| Members | |
| Masami Akita | |
| Past members | |
| Kiyoshi Mizutani Reiko Azuma (aka Reiko A.) Tetsuo Sakaibara (aka Bara) | |
Merzbow (メルツバウ Merutsubau) is the main recording name of the Japanese noise musician Masami Akita (秋田 昌美 Akita Masami), born in 1956. Since 1979[1] he has released in excess of 350 recordings.
The name "Merzbow" comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork, "Merzbau". This was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic. In addition to this, Akita has cited a wide range of influences from progressive rock, free jazz, modern classical and musique concrète[2] to BDSM and Japanese bondage.[3] More recently he has been inspired by animals, animal rights and environmentalism.[4]
As well as being a prolific musician, he has been a writer and editor for several books and magazines in Japan, and has written 17 books of his own. He has written about a variety of subjects, mostly about art, avant-garde and post-modern culture. His more renowned works have been on the topics of BDSM and fetish culture. Other art forms Akita has been interested in include painting, photography, filmmaking and Butoh dance.[5]
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 to some as the "most important artist in noise".[1]
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Life and career
[edit] Early life
Masami Akita was born in Tokyo in 1956. He listened to psychedelic music, progressive rock, and later free jazz in his youth, all of which have influenced his noise.[1] 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".[6] By this time he and high school friend Kiyoshi Mizutani had started playing improvised rock at studio sessions which Akita describes as "long jam sessions along the lines of Ashra Tempel or Can but we didn't have any psychedelic taste".[6]
He later attended Tamagawa University to study fine art from which he majored in painting and art theory.[5] While at university he became interested in the ideas of Dada and surrealism and also studied Butoh dance.[6] This is where he learned of Kurt Schwitters' Merz, or art made from rubbish, including Schwitters' Merzbau, or "Merz building" which is the source of the name "Merzbow".[7]
[edit] Lowest Music & Arts (1979–84)
Merzbow began as the duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani who met Akita in high school. He started releasing noise recordings on cassettes through his own record label, Lowest Music & Arts, which was founded in 1979[citation needed] in order to trade cassette tapes with other underground artists. The first tape made for the label was Metal Acoustic Music and was sold exclusively by mail order. Various other releases were made before the first real release which included Collection 001 and a very limited release of Remblandt Assemblage.[8] The Collection series was originally ten cassettes that were going to be distributed through an independent label called YLEM, but when it became defunct and cancelled the series, Akita decided to release them through Lowest Music & Arts.[9]
His earliest music was made with tape loops and creatively recorded percussion and metal.
I threw all my past music career in the garbage. There was no longer any need for concepts like 'career' and 'skill'. I stopped playing music and went in search of an alternative. - Masami Akita on Lowest Music & Arts.[10]
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. The early releases were 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".[11] In 1984 he founded a second record label called ZSF Produkt.
[edit] ZSF Produkt (1984–90)
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.[12] Numerous releases were made in the ZSF Produkt studio with Mechanization Takes Command being the first.[13] The studio continued to be used until 2001 when Akita started producing home recordings from his bedroom studio.[14]
During this era, Merzbow found much wider recognition and began making recordings for various international labels.[15] He also started touring abroad with the help of various collaborators. Merzbow performed in USSR in 1988, toured USA in 1990, Korea in 1991 and Europe in 1989 and 1992.[16] For most of the late 1980s through the 1990s, Merzbow live was a trio including Reiko A. on electronics and Bara on voice and dance. Around this time he started crediting the name "Abtechtonics" (or variations of this) on his recordings under artwork. He explained in the Merzbook that this name is used for him publishing his own artwork which he attempts to do as much as possible.[17]
[edit] Digital era (1990–2000)
Nick Cain of The Wire argues that
| " | Merzbow's analogue era, which began roughly around the time of his first CD, Cloud Cock OO Grand, is Akita's most sustained period of creativity, when he realised the latent potential of his 1980s work, accelerating it into a new variant of Noise.[18] | " |
Merzbow's first digital recording was the CD release Cloud Cock OO Grand in 1990.[19] With a higher international profile in the 90's, Merzbow started working on more ambitious projects such as the Noisembryo, which was a Merzbow album sealed in a car released in a limited edition of one copy. The disc was sealed in the CD player of a BMW Sedan which was rewired to play the CD whenever the car was started. The CD was also released normally on the same label.[20] Recordings from the mid-1990s onwards are mostly of extreme volume, some mastered at levels far beyond standard (Noisembryo, Pulse Demon).[21] From 1996, plans were made to release a "10 (or maybe 12)" CD box set on Extreme Records.[22] In 2000, Extreme Records released the Merzbox, a fifty CD set of Merzbow records, twenty of them not previously released.
[edit] Laptop era (2000–2010)
Since 2000, Akita began to use computers more in his recordings. At live performances, Akita has produced noise music from either two laptop computers or combination of a laptop and analog synthesizers.[citation needed] Reiko A. and Bara left Merzbow during this time, Reiko Azuma now has a solo career. Since 2001, Jenny Akita (formerly Kawabata) 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 stated how it began:
I started raising four bantams, the little ornamental chickens. With this experience as a start, I gradually started to be concerned and care about chickens and all the barn animals I used to eat without giving it a second thought before. So I started reading books and researching on the internet about Animal Rights and that triggered an awareness of "evil" that human society has done.[23]
During this period, Akita also became a supporter of PETA which is reflected in his animal-themed releases.[24] 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.[25][26] He has also produced several works centered around recordings of his pet chickens (notably Animal Magnetism and Turmeric).[27]
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,[28] though some reviewers pointed out that it sounded very similar to Aqua Necromancer (1998) which features samples of progressive rock drumming.[29][30] Merzbird (2004) and Merzbuddha (2005) followed in a similar vein with sampled beats combined with Merzbow's signature harsh noise.
Through 2009, Akita released a 13 CD box-set called 13 Japanese Birds, a set which was released monthly (one album a month). This release features the return of Akita to the usage of analog sounds and also the use of drum kits. Also in that year Merzbow cancelled his tour over United States and Canada due to the swine flu outbreak.
[edit] Current era (2010–present)
Beginning in November 2009, Akita started releasing archival recordings from the 80s – early 90s, including several on cassette. Blossoming Noise has reissued cassettes like E-Study, Normal Music, Flesh Metal Orgasm, and two volumes from the Collection series. Also on the same label he began the Microkosmos series, which are new recordings with visual collages created in 1982–83. Merzbient, a 12 CD boxset of unreleased recordings from 1987–90 was released by Soleilmoon. Other cassettes of unreleased material include Untitled Nov 1989, 9888A, April 1992, and Variations for Electric Fan.
[edit] 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.[31]
Akita's early work consisted of industrial noise music made from tape loops and conventional instruments. Similar to his present albums, he produced lengthy, disorientating pieces. He also became infamous for the sheer amount of releases in a short time frame.[32]
Audiences in general, especially those of "closed societies", did not quite know what to make of his style. During his performances (with Kiyoshi Mizutani) in the USSR, at the Jazz-on-Amur '88 festival, what incorporated improvised, electroacoustic and experimental music that time (the fest's producer consciously obscured both the very type of Akita's music and the erotic trend of his art from Soviet officials), whereas the producer, rocky youth and Soviet improvised music guest stars were extremely pleased, the unprepared orthodox jazz and agier parts of the audience were severely frustrated, particularly, with loudness, to leave the site, and for the second performance, for another, 1000-place hall (of the Soviet Army Officers' House), and even much more conservative audience,[33] he was asked to play "more musically" so he toned it down a bit.[32] On that first stage, Merzbow used the finest example of "classical analogue live noisemaiking 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 slide and light shows. This live recording was re-processed and released as Live in Khabarovsk, CCCP (I'm Proud by Rank of the Workers) LP - and as the CD 26 of the Merzbox later on.[33]
During the 90s Akita's work became much harsher and were generally mastered at a louder volume than usual. These were heavily influenced by death metal and grindcore bands of the time (a prime example is the Venereology album).[34] The mid-90's saw Akita being heavily influenced by psychedelic bands and this was reflected in various albums.
After 2000, Akita started making vague concept albums and experimented with sampling rhythms. He also began to use laptops.
[edit] Side projects
In addition to Merzbow, Akita has been involved in a number of side projects and groups.
[edit] Side projects
SCUM was a project where Akita made new releases out of previous Merzbow recordings. SCUM is an acronym for "Society for Cutting Up Merzbow" (a reference to the SCUM Manifesto), "Scissors for CUtting Merzbow" or "Steel CUM" among others.
True Romance was a performance art project in the early 90s with Tetsuo Sakaibara (who later joined Merzbow live) and Toshiyuki Seido.
Right Brain Audile is co-credited on the two Music for Bondage Performance albums, as they're soundtracks he did for several bondage films produced by Right Brain. "RBA" reappears on Merzbient, which features recordings from this era.
[edit] Groups
Merzbow Null was a collaboration between Masami Akita's Merzbow and Kazuyuki Kishino's Null, including Kiyoshi Mizutani and Asami Hayashi among others. Tibeta Ubik was Akita and Kishino duo.[32] Both groups made several cassettes of live improv performances.[36]
Bustmonster was a "conceptual death metal" (because they couldn't play death metal)[37] group with Tetsuo Sakaibara, Fumio Kosakai, Masahiko Ohno, Shohei Iwasaki, Maso Yamazaki and Zev Asher. Flying Testicle was just with Yamazaki and Asher.
Sponge was an anonymous group whose personnel are named after prominent Japanese businessmen/doctors, the actual performers are believed to be Jojo and Junko Hiroshige, Masami Akita and Maso Yamazaki.
Other groups include: Merz-Banana with Melt-Banana;[38][39] Melting Lips with Hanayo;[40] Muscats with Hanayo and Masaya Nakahara; Commando Bruno Sanmartino with Incapacitants and Violent Onsen Geisha;[41] Shalon Kelly King with Fumio Kosakai;[42] Maldoror with Mike Patton; MAZK with Zbigniew Karkowski; Satanstornade with Russell Haswell (they later released an album entitled Satanstornade under their real names); Boris with Merzbow; Kikuri with Keiji Haino.
Akita also played drums for Hijokaidan during the early–mid 90s.
Balázs Pándi has drummed for Merzbow at several concerts since 2009.
Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Excellent Jandek Article from www.weirdomusic.com
“I’m an inordinately private person…”
The music world isn't exactly short of maverick recluses. There’s Syd Barrett, Scott Walker, Brian Wilson, Arthur Lee and Lee Mavers to name but a few. None, however, have perfected the art of disappearance quite as well as Jandek, a man who managed to vanish practically before he’d even emerged.
His first brush with the outside world came in 1978 when an album by The Units called ‘Ready For The House’ was released on an unknown label, Corwood Industries. The stark cover photo of an empty living room and lack of any credits, bar the song titles and Corwood Industries PO Box number, gave little away.
Despite the band’s New Wave moniker, the music owed nothing to the punk or new wave scenes and nor was it the work of a bona fide band. Described by one reviewer as ‘the most frightening record I’ve ever heard’, the album sounded like the music found on an unlabelled tape left in a deserted house. One play and you wonder what the hell had happened to the previous occupant.
A solitary guitar – not tuned to any conventional scale – plucks out single notes while an earthy yet otherworldly voice whispers unsettlingly personal confessions that could well be the last words he utters. Songs rarely follow any standard verse-chorus-verse structure nor do they offer any changes of mood or tempo, except for the moments when the voice cracks.
It was as if the man singing had come in contact with no other music, except for one muffled rendition of a Robert Johnson song when he was in the womb.
Needless to say, the assorted college radio DJs, reviewers and record store owners who were sent copies weren’t sure what to make of it and, with no live shows to support it, the record disappeared without trace.
But with ‘Ready For The House’ the artist had created a landscape as completely realised and instantly identifiable as, although vastly different from, Bruce Springsteen’s small-town Honest Joe’s or Tom Waits’ midnight beat hustlers. There were no pointers or references to any contemporary music, giving ‘Ready For The House’ (and his entire oeuvre), a timeless quality where, even though you can still hear the clock ticking, you know it’s long since stopped.
Three years later the release of ‘Six And Six’, this time under the name Jandek, offered another glimpse inside this solitary, haunted world. Again the music was totally alien to any other trends and again the sleeve carried no information beyond song titles and Corwood Industries PO Box number. This time, however, the cover featured a photo of a young man staring sullenly at the camera. Over the course of over 40 albums pictures of the same man would appear taken at various stages throughout his life.
Bleach-blonde on ‘Someone In The Snow’, bearded on ‘A Kingdom He Likes’, in profile on ‘Later On’, bare chested and out of focus on both ‘Modern Dances’ and ‘Blue Corpse’. Presumably this man was Jandek himself. The covers not featuring the man presumed to be Jandek carried similarly stark and intriguing imagery, often of a guitar or drum kit, houses in Texas, shop windows in Chester or streets in Cork.
But no other information ever featured on the back sleeve. There were no songwriting credits (although public records show Jandek’s copyrights to be owned by someone named Sterling Richard Smith) and no recording dates, making it possible that the early records could have been recorded years before they were physically released.
The music, if nothing else, kept coming. Customers could order large quantities at discounted prices direct from Corwood Industries and those who wrote to the PO Box were rewarded with a typed copy of the ever-expanding Jandek catalogue, sometimes accompanied by a cryptic handwritten fortune-cookie message signed ‘Corwood’.
As the records continued to arrive, the rumours began to circulate and grow. Jandek was the retarded son of a wealthy motor industry owner who released his music as a tax write-off. All his music had been recorded as part of a therapy session and would be released album-by-album until there was nothing left unreleased. Jandek was a millionaire who, having made his money trading silver and gold, had turned his back on it all to follow his artistic vision.
Each album would refine Jandek’s hermetic environment without expanding on it. Song lines later appear as song titles, while song titles often become the names of later albums. The songs themselves are often re-recorded, most notably European Jewel which has undergone countless revisions, while entire lyrics are recycled (‘Nancy Sings’, ‘John Plays Drums’ & ‘Birthday’ all feature identical words). The ‘Blue Corpse’ album even features three songs with the same chord progression.
Sometimes he would sound as if he were enjoying a jam with friends, often he would sound as if his entire world had fallen apart. And while the sound never deviates greatly from the blueprint set on ‘Ready For The House’, small progressions can be heard. Unidentified collaborators started to appear, most notably on ‘Nancy Sings’, the gorgeous melody sung by a female voice presumed to belong to a girl called Nancy.
Gradually Jandek moves from plucked notes to strummed chords, introducing a second, more conventional, guitarist who plays approximations of blues scales. Jandek himself tries his hand at other instruments like the harmonica, accordion and piano, though all are played in his own inimitable style. And as more collaborators appear the music becomes increasingly celebratory, with much of an album like ‘Telegraph Melts’ taken up with deranged, ritualistic duets between Jandek and an unnamed female. Then the collaborators disappeared. And eventually even the music disappeared as Jandek embarked on a trilogy of a-capella records in the early ’00s, truly disturbing documents which at times sounded similar to finding a stranger’s suicide message on an answerphone.
Was this where the Jandek story was destined to end? Though still very much an underground phenomenon, he had gathered numerous admirers, including Kurt Cobain, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, Beck and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. And Jandek’s influence had already spread further than his hermetic world would suggest. It’s there in Nirvana’s agonised primal scream, it’s there in the troubled naivety of Beat Happening, it’s there in the improv noise passages of Sonic Youth, it’s there in the spooked hillbilly warbling of Will Oldham and his many Palace guises.
Once again, the records kept coming, now with a deeper voiced Jandek often accompanying himself on double bass and quite often slurring his delivery. Increasingly, his subject matter seemed concerned with spiritual matters with song titles like ‘I Gave My Eternity’, ‘Angel Moves’ and lyrics such as ‘Can I catch you on your way to hell?’
Still the rumours continued to circulate. The occasional collaborators had been fellow patients in mental institutions. He works in a record pressing plant. He had had a relationship with the girl known as Nancy, their break-up resulting in the ‘Blue Corpse’ album. It was even suggested that he might be the second coming of Christ, returned to test peoples tolerance of all they found difficult to understand.
Who knows the truth? Only Jandek himself.
And so far he isn’t telling. In the one recorded interview, conducted by John Trubee for Op magazine in 1985, the man on the other end of the phone is lucid and articulate, putting paid to the many Idiot Savant rumours. There is, however, a comedy moment when the interviewee pauses for almost a minute when asked where he met the other musicians he collaborates with. Eventually he responds ‘I don’t think it would be appropriate to answer that question.’
As late as 1998 journalist Katy Vine tracked down a Houston native she presumed to be Jandek who agreed to go for a drink and answer her questions, though he also commented, perhaps disingenuously, that he wasn’t important to either Jandek or Corwood Industries.
In 2003 filmmakers Chad Freidrichs and Paul Fehler produced the ‘Jandek On Corwood’ documentary, providing some of the widest exposure Jandek’s music had yet received. That it managed to hold interest and provide insight into the workings of Jandek was no easy task considering there was no direct input from its central figure beyond the clips of his music which made up the soundtrack.
And then, shortly after the DVD release of ‘Jandek On Corwood’, the unthinkable happened. Jandek made his first public appearance, playing at Glasgow’s Instal festival in late 2004. At least as far as anyone knew it was Jandek’s first live performance. Of course there was always a chance that he had appeared unannounced and unrecognised in public before. And, this being Jandek, there was always the chance that the performer was not actually Jandek at all. Appearing unannounced, the musician on stage was confirmed only as ‘a representative from Corwood Industries’, although he bore a striking resemblance to the man pictured on the front of the record sleeves.
Tall and gaunt, the Corwood Industries representative played an hour-long set of new material with sympathetic and subtle backing from Alex Neilsen and Richard Youngs. Neilsen and Youngs were kept on board for two further UK appearances, this time announced before the event. Again, both shows consisted of previously unheard material, the second even finding Jandek abandoning his guitar in favour of a piano for a suite of meditative songs collectively known as ‘The Cell’.
The live activity continued throughout August and September 2005 when Jandek played a handful of US shows, now backed by pick-up groups of local musicians and again offering sets of entirely new material at each show. Of course, this public activity also prompted the vital question of whether the music could stand up without the mystery.
Certainly some of the more abstract sonic doodles resembled the leftovers on a Sebadoh album, but much of it has an eerie quality worthy of attention beyond the intrigue. After all, was there ever anything more to Jandek than the music itself?
His anonymity may attract the curious, but the curious will read the story, listen to ‘Ready For The House’ and then move on to something else. The curious don’t keep coming back to ever-expanding Corwood catalogue. And perhaps the real mystery is how Jandek has managed to keep his art so far apart from the rest of the music industry and all of its promotional gimmicks, sales figures and notions of hipness which dilute and diminish most other recording artists. Ultimately, all that’s left is all there was at the start; the records themselves, Jandek’s art presented in all purity, free from any embellishments.
By no stretch of the imagination can a Jandek record be described as easy listening, but get past the unusual tunings and unconventional notions of tonality and it’s some of the most rewarding music produced. The way ‘Nancy Sings’ evokes with such beauty the picture of fresh raindrops glistening from the twigs of twilight trees. The way ‘Om’ sounds like an order of Benedictine monks trying to communicate with the dead. The way ‘Your Other Man’ captures the spun-out sleepless torment of infidelity and isolation. The way a song like ‘Love, Love’ offers some kind of hope, a gentle encouragement to follow the one speck of light when all else is in darkness.
The lyrics too, always have a poetic quality which ranges from the painfully direct (‘I passed by the building where you live and I wanted to die’) to the beautifully oblique (‘It’s low tide and there’s diamonds in the ocean’) to the startling (‘I got a picture of a teenage daughter who’s growing up naked in the afternoon’) to the downright puzzling (‘give him my genitals in a paper cup’). Even the way the title ‘Ghost Town By The Sea’ sums up the desolate quality of much of his early work.
And, of course, the mystery isn’t quite solved yet. The live appearances and heightened release schedule (Jandek went from releasing roughly one album a year during the 90s to 4 full length recordings in 2004 alone) prompted rumours that the man known as Jandek may have retired from his day-job.
Maybe his recent high profile, relatively speaking of course, is his way of showing his appreciation to those who appreciate his art. Or he could be simply be offering us a tantalisingly brief glimpse of himself in the flesh before going to ground for good. But, chances are, he’s getting ready to release another record. On Corwood Industries. With a blurry photo on the cover and no information on the sleeve. And when that record is released, you know it won’t sound like anyone other than Jandek. Whoever Jandek may be…
Graeme Larmour
This article first was published at Halfcutpublications.com
Original article here: http://www.weirdomusic.com/artists/jandek.htm
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