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Merzbow is the name used by Japanese musician Masami Akita (秋田 昌美 Akita Masami) (born 1956) for most of his experimental noise records. He has released an extensive catalog of CDs, LPs and cassettes since the early 1980s, and is seen as one of the most important noise musicians working today.
Occasionally Akita is joined by other musicians, such as Genesis P-Orridge, Otomo Yoshihide, Cock E.S.P. and Mike Patton, but records made under the Merzbow name are usually by him alone.
He was born in Tokyo. He listened to psychedelic music, progressive rock and later free jazz in his youth all of which seem to have left their mark on his music; his album Aqua Necromancer, for instance, samples progressive rock drum lines, while Doors Open At 8am samples free jazz.
He went to Tamagawa University to study art, and it was while there that he learnt about Kurt Schwitters' concept of Merzbau - art made from other people's rubbish. It was this concept which gave him his pseudonym.
His earliest music was made with tape loops, and has been compared to Throbbing Gristle. He released his music on cassettes through his own record label, Lowest Music & Arts, which was founded in 1979. In the early 1980s, he founded a second label, ZSF Produkt. Since then, he has released records on a large number of labels, including Mego and Tzadik.
He later began to use more electronic instruments and electric guitars, but his music remained to be mainly made up of what most people would think of as "noise". In the past few years, Merzbow has begun to use digital technology more in his music, and at a live performance these days, it is normal for him to produce all his music with a single laptop computer (much to the dismay of a large portion of his fans, those that had joined him at the time that records such as Venereology and Pulse Demon were made popular and loved him for his "extremeness").
In 2000, the Extreme record label released Merzbox, a 50 CD set of Merzbow records, 20 of them not previously released. The set also included badges, postcards, posters and various other Merzbow collectibles.
In 2002, he released "Merzbeat"; which was seen as a significant departure from his trademark abstract style, using entirely beat-oriented compositions in a widely available release for what seemed like the first time (some older Merzbow, such as can be heard in the Merzbox, is perhaps more rhythmically focussed than Merzbeat, and many other Merzbow albums have also incorporated obvious rhythms. Interestingly, it seems no-one noticed that Akita-san used rhythms until he put "beat" in one of his album titles), sparking some controversy among his fans, but ultimately gaining him a wider audience and critical acclaim for being one of the most innovative combinations of the noise genre with beat-oriented music (not that he was the first to do this, but Merzbow is about as far as noise music goes for most people). 2004's "Merzbird" followed in a similar vein as a sequel.
Partial Discography
- Batztoutai With Memorial Gadgets (1986)
- Ecobondage (1987)
- Rainbow Electronics (1990)
- Rainbow Electronics II (1990)
- Venereology (1994)
- Music for Bondage Performances (1995)
- Music for Bondage Performances, vol 2 (1996)
- Pulse Demon (1996)
- Aqua Necromancer
- 1930 (1998)
- Tauromachine (1998)
- Doors Open at 8am (2000)
- Mazk (Live) (2001)
- Dharma (2001)
- Merzbeat (2002)
- Merzbird (2004)
- Sha Mo 3000 (2004)
Sound sample
- Media:Merzbow_Dharma.ogg - an excerpt of "I'm coming to the garden..... no sound, no memory" from Merzbow's album Dharma (2001) (ogg format, 12 seconds, 94KB)
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