9. MerzbowHybrid Noisebloom
Merzbow’s kind of like the go-to when people talk about noise, to the point where it’s almost a cliché. At the same time, there aren’t many other people I can think of that have done it as compellingly, and as thoroughly, and as obsessively as Masami Akita.
There was a period of years when Relapse had a sub label called Release and they were doing ambient and noise-related stuff. I got connected to Matt Jacobson and Gordon Conrad at Relapse and I got a handful of Merzbow CDs from them. At first, I was like, ‘I dunno. This is intriguing because of its extremity but I don’t know what to think about this.’ Then I had one of those breakthrough moments with this record. I was sitting for this one, on my couch in Boston and I had this CD on a boombox. Prior to this I was putting on Merzbow because I was intrigued by it, and it was this masochistic thing where I just wanted to see if I can take it. But there was this moment of listening to this record where it transcended that kind of painful part of hearing it and really started to unfold for me and become a pleasurable listening experience where I just let these waves of sound wash over me and I stopped thinking about what it was and rejecting the harsh nature of it and started really embracing it.
That was one of those very distinct musical moments where I found my way into this world and it changed me and it set me on a journey of, not only wanting to listen to more noise, discovering Masami’s world, and then all of these other Japanese artists and then also the people that were doing it in the States and all the other permutations of it, but it also made me want to make noise and it made me understand that I didn’t even necessarily have to use guitar anymore. I could just use some pedals and a microphone. Then later figuring out ways to integrate what I liked about harsh noise into a metal framework and how powerful that concoction can be.
So, there’re all these pathways that these things create, and I ended up collaborating on stage with Masami in Tokyo many years after hearing this record. It was another one of those moments where I’d been listening to this person’s music for years and then finally found myself on stage with him and my partner Faith. I couldn’t believe that getting these CDs from Relapse and not knowing what they were and then getting into it finally led to me being in Japan and playing with Masami and also meeting him. This guy who has made volumes of sound, really massive, abrasive and psychedelic sound and he is this very very softly spoken, very gentle guy, to the point where it’s almost hard to hear him when he’s speaking. So, there’s that dichotomy between his physical presence versus his musical output and I find that really interesting.
