Merzbow (メルツバウ, Merutsubau) is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita (秋田 昌美, Akita Masami),[1][2] best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 500 recordings and has collaborated with numerous artists.
In addition to 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.[1]
In 2000, Extreme Records released the 50 CD box set 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".[7]
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.[7] In 1972, he became the drummer of various high school bands,[8] which he left due to the other members being "grass-smoking Zappa freaks".[9] By this time, he and school friend Kiyoshi Mizutani had started playing improvised studio sessions that he described as "long jam sessions along the lines of Ash Ra Tempel or Can but we didn't have any psychedelic taste".[9]
He later attended Tamagawa University to study fine art, at which he majored in painting and art theory.[1] While at university, he became interested in the ideas of dada and surrealism and also studied Butoh dance.[9] At Tamagawa, he learned of Kurt Schwitters' Merz, or art made from rubbish, including Schwitters' Merzbau (meaning Merz building, German pronunciation:[ˈmɛʁtsˌbaʊ̯]), which is the source of the name Merzbow.[10]
Beginning (1979–1989)
Merzbow began as the duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani, who met Akita in junior high school.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13][14]
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.
Early methods included what Akita referred to as "material action", made by making quiet sounds with household objects which were recorded with close miking or rubbing the microphone directly on things and overloading the recording levels.[9][11] This method was used on Material Action for 2 Microphones and Material Action 2 N.A.M.. This led to a technique he termed "environmental percussion", where instrumental sounds were made with non-instruments such as banging on the floor, gas stove, spring of a table lamp for percussion sounds. As well as using a violin bow on objects like plastic cassette cases or cards, rubber bands as a guitar sound, blowing in a toilet paper tube as horns, scratching metal as electrical sounds, etc. At this time, Akita also made a homemade instrument consisting of a metal case strung with piano wires, guitar strings, and springs. It was played by bowing or placing objects inside and shaking it. This can be heard on albums like Crocidura Dsi Nezumi, Ecobondage and Storage.[9][16]
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".[17]
ZSF Produkt (pronounced zusufu, from an ancient Japanese word meaning "magnetic")[15] was founded in 1984 to release music by similar artists within the industrial movement but eventually became the successor to Lowest Music & Arts.[18] Numerous Merzbow releases were recorded at ZSF Produkt Studio, Masami Akita's home studio.[19]
During this era, Merzbow found much wider recognition and began making recordings for various international labels.[20]Batztoutai with Memorial Gadgets was his first LP released outside of Japan.
Merzbow's first performances outside of Japan were at the Jazz-on-Amur festival in March 1988 in Khabarovsk, USSR. Merzbow were invited along with computer composer Kazuo Uehara. Apparently Merzbow was mistaken for a group using hi-tech equipment.[8][21] The first set was typical Merzbow style, but was stopped for being too noisy.[22][8][21] For the show the following day, the duo were asked to play "more musically".[22] and featured Akita on drums and Mizutani on piano and guitar.[8][21] Following this, touring would become an important activity for Merzbow, especially for the connections made with artists and labels.[8] Merzbow would tour Europe in 1989 and the United States in 1990.[23] Kiyoshi Mizutani left Merzbow after the 1989 European tour and continues to pursue a solo career.
Noise electronics era (1989–1999)
During a 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 (1990) was the first example of this new style, Merzbow's first digital recording (on DAT), and the first recording made for the CD format. It also includes live material recorded during the tour.[24]
But when I started live in late 1980s I didn't like to use tape on stage. I like only live electronics. So, my studio works changed to more live composition style. I'm still using many tapes in studio works, but difference is I treat tapes and instruments. Before, I used tapes as overdubbing concept. But now tapes are crashing together, no static overdub. I found that style on Cloud Cock OO Grand.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Merzbow began to be influenced by death metal and grindcore.[25] Recordings from this time are mostly recorded at extreme volume, some mastered at levels far beyond standard (Noisembryo, Pulse Demon).[26] In 1994, Akita acquired a vintage EMS synthesizer. From 1996, plans were made to release a "10 (or maybe 12)" CD box set on Extreme Records.[27] 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 (aka Bara) 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 (不二企画, Fuji Kikaku) and seppuku-themed videos by their sub-label Right Brain.[25] Akita also directed Lost Paradise (失楽園 乗馬服女腹切り, Shitsurakuen: Jōbafuku onna harakiri) for Right Brain.[28] 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 The Dead Man 2: Return of the Dead Man.[25] Kerkhof made the documentary Beyond Ultra Violence: Uneasy Listening by Merzbow in 1998.[29] Akita also created music for Ilppo Pohjola's Asphalto (1998)[30] and Routemaster (2000).[31][32]
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.[citation needed] Reiko A. and Bara left Merzbow during this time; Reiko Azuma now has a solo career. Since 2001, Jenny Akita (née 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 later stated:
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.
During this period, Akita also became a supporter of PETA, which is reflected in his animal-themed releases.[34] 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.[35][36] He has also produced several works centered around recordings of his pet chickens (notably Animal Magnetism and Turmeric).[37]
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,[38] though some reviewers pointed out that it sounded very similar to Aqua Necromancer (1998), which features samples of progressive rock drumming.[39][40]Merzbird (2004) and Merzbuddha (2005) 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. In 2008, Akita reintroduced the drum kit, his first instrument.[41] This can be heard on the 13 Japanese Birds series. At this time he changed the name of his home studio to Munemihouse. 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.[41] In 2014, he toured without a laptop.
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.
Masami Akita and Balázs Pándi live in 2010
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 (2013) with the Swedish saxophone player Mats Gustafsson, Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper (2015) with Gustafsson and Thurston Moore, and An Untroublesome Defencelessness with Keiji Haino (2016), 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 known 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 (a split with two tracks from 1982), Merzbow Meets M.B., and Amalgamelody.[42]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.
Beginning in April 2018, the Japanese label Slowdown Records began releasing a series of archival recordings spanning Merzbow's career on a semimonthly basis, starting with Hyper Music 1 Vol. 1 and 23 November 1979 (B). Groups of six releases were later compiled in 6 CD box sets. These boxes were themselves later compiled in larger boxes: 10×6=60 in 2021[43] and 35 CD Box in 2022.[44] Slowdown has also released several new recordings in addition to the archival releases. By the end of 2022, Slowdown has released 96 archival CDs and 116 CDs total.
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, as in Merzbient. 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.[45]
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.[22]
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 (a prime example is Venereology).[25] 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
Abtechtonics (or variations of this) was used by Akita for his artwork on Merzbow releases and his books.[9]
House Hunt Hussies is credited for a track on the Sexorama 1 compilation. ZSF Produkt is listed as the contact address.
Lotus Club was used for the tape Le Sang et la Rose in 1983 because of the difference in musical style.[46]
Pornoise was a mail art project Akita had in the 1980s where he made collages using discarded magazines – in particular pornographic magazines – taken from the trash. These were then sent along with his cassettes, the idea being that his art was like cheap mail order pornography. Pornoise/1kg was released as part of these activities.[9][10] Pornoise was credit as the artist for a track on the Sexorama 2 compilation and co-credited for artwork on Scissors for Cutting Merzbow.
Right Brain Audile is co-credited on the two Music for Bondage Performance albums, as they're soundtracks he did for several S&M and faux-Seppuku films produced by Kinbiken/Right Brain. The abbreviation RBA appears in track titles on Merzbient, which features recordings from this era.
SCUM was a project where Akita made new releases out of previous Merzbow sessions using cut-ups, effects, and mixing.[9] SCUM is an acronym, standing for something different on each release, including "Society for Cutting Up Merzbow" (a reference to the SCUM Manifesto), "Scissors for CUtting Merzbow", "Steel CUM", etc.
Zecken was used for two solo synthesizer performances in 1996.[22][47]
Flying Testicle was a trio with Yamazaki and Asher.
Merzbow Null was a collaboration between the groups of Merzbow and Null. In addition to Masami Akita and Kazuyuki Kishino, it featured several other members of both groups such as Reiko Azuma, Asami Hayashi, Kiyoshi Mizutani, Yushi Okano, Ikuo Taketani, etc. They did many improv performances during 1983–84 and released over a dozen cassettes.[49]
Tibeta Ubik was a duo of Akita and Kishino active at the same time as Merzbow Null.[22][49]
True Romance was a performance art project in the early 1990s with Tetsuo Sakaibara (who became a live member of Merzbow) and Toshiyuki Seido. The performances included fetish equipment, simulated gore (including autopsy), mechanical devices, nude models, etc. It was inspired by Viennese Actionism. Masami Akita was a performer in addition to composing the backing music.[48]
After completing his degree, Akita became a freelance writer and editor for various magazines in Japan. He frequently wrote on a variety of topics such as sexuality (including pornography, S&M, and Japanese bondage), underground and extreme culture (including music and art), architecture, and animal rights. None have been published in English.
Year
Japanese title
English title
Publisher
ISBN
1988
倒錯のアナグラム 周縁的ポルノグラフィーの劇場 Tōsaku no anaguramu: Shūenteki porunogurafī no gekijō
Edwards, James Rhys (2011). "Silence by my noise: An ecocritical aesthetic of noise in Japanese traditional sound culture and the sound art of Akita Masami". Green Letters. Vol. 15. pp. 89–102. doi:10.1080/14688417.2011.10589093.
Novak, David (2013). Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Duke University Press Books. ISBN978-0822353928.
