Null & Merzbow – "Babilonia" (ZSF Produkt – ZSF 07) 1983

Null made more than a baker's dozen of these noisy collaborations with everyone's number one choice  to leave,casually strewn across the unpolished surface of their gentrified dockland warehouse abode coffee table...."Oh look Rupert,he's got an early  ZSF Cassette,by Merzbow.", one day. i will transfer these to vinyl and sell them to the uber-nouveau-riche for exorbatant fees.....I will call it Urinal- On- Demand.....O,Rupert I can see it now,me and you and S&M gf''s in Berlin,shops,Genesis P-Orridge museums...the Lot!

Of course these classically educated sons of investment bankers investment bankers would have overlooked the fact that it featured the less commercially minded japnoise pioneer, K.K.Null, but these same ...er.....cunts(?),would only realise this once that enthusiastically priced Vinyl Box-set had hit the inter-web.

So get yer ankle length leather coat on,and imagine you are one of these cred-envy fools, who read marvel comics hidden inside copies of W.S.Burroughs' Soft Machine,and act out their Throbbing Gristle Fanboy fantasy's at the expense of dignity.

Again, yer average Noise outing sounds far better on cassette tape than, CD,or even...mmmm yes, Vinyl.It fuzz's the edges,rather like the Atlantic ocean muffled the screams of drowning poor people on the Titanic.I guess it also muffled to sound of the Billionaires who were crushed as their submersible imploded...except i doubt anyone on the Titanic paid half a million quid for the privilege. Its a great leveller is death.

I have, however, yet to hear of anyone playing Merzbow at their funerals.....unless anyone out there knows better?

Whoops!...I just heard that MONTE CAZAZZA has just died!?.....maybe he'll play some Merzbow at his funeral?

Tracklist:

A Iroha
B1 Nihohe
B2 Tochi
B3 Rinuruo

DOWNLOAD inna babilonia HERE!

Merzbow + S-Core ‎– "A Collaboration Tape" ( Afflict Records ‎– Aff 011) 1987

No, i'm not slagging Merzbow by the way! Just some slight criticism that he's painted himself into a corner  Noise-wise, and probably would benefit from a collaboration with the more understated S-Core......wait-a-minute!.....he did just this in 1987,and the result is a slightly harsher S-Core album.
If you like the sound of failing machinery in an abandoned factory then this is the Japnoise collaboration for you.

DOWNLOAD these collaborators HERE!

Flying Testicle ‎– "Space Desia" (Charnel Music ‎– CHCD-8) 1993

A Japnoise 'Super Groop' called 'Flying Testicle'?????....it don't get much better than this!
That bloke from 'Merzbow', and that screamy bloke from 'Masonna', get down and make some sublimely, or subliminally fucked up Noise Rock that could clear a room of music fans in 60 seconds or less.
That's always a recommendation.
Underneath the mind destroying wreckage this is as close to actual song based music these reprobates have ever sailed close to, without hitting the 'Rock' and sinking in that abysmally redundant category. This is what 'Rock' music should sound like.A decontructed power trio from an anti-universe,devastatingly LOUD and obnoxious, a sonically offensive musical bad trip. It preserves the processed noise onslaught that its individual members are famed for,but adds conventional instruments to the morass to reel in the casual metalhead before they burst into tears.
All topped off by that ridiculous band name.....nearly perfect.

Tracklist:

1 Johnny Guitar 10:50
2 Arturos Island 4:00
3 Romance 8:07
4 The Red Lanterns 2:31
5 Dark Eyes 7:45
6 Hit Kit Party 2:53
7 Night Falls 10:15
8 Open Squeeze/Horizontal Bop 19:17
9 Beautiful Dreamer 7:45

DOWNLOAD from the giant flying testicle in the sky HERE!

Various Artists ‎– "Ne Shi" (Banned Production ‎– BP- 55) 1994

Now we are on the Japanoise end of the former Axis powers; it seems natural to start with a compilation does it not?
This double cassette box set is the best place to collect the main perps of the japanese primal scream.
Its rather like listening to a platoon of Guiger-Muller tubes focusing in on ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately after the American Atrocities had fucked everything up forever. Accompanied by the screams of burning children as they are x-rayed onto the rubble.
If you want reminding what a Nuclear strike could feel like, listen to some of this stuff,by some ofthe most repressed people on the planet.Which is even more relevant today as we have an intellectual amoeba in the Whitehouse capable of giving as much thought to initiating a Nuclear war as he does to the economy he is just about to over-heat and send into recession.

Tracklist:

A1 –Incapacitants - Whisper In The Night
A2 –Agencement - Homeo Box & A.T.G.C.
A3 –C.C.C.C. - Space Temple
B1 –Solmania - Astral Montage
B2 –K2 Zombie - Anatomy
B3 –Contagious Orgasm - Dr. Plum Pig
C1 –Yuzuru Syogase - Kundalini
C2 –MSBR - Crack.
C3 –Yximalloo - A Grass
D1 –Ryuzi Ryuzi - Meddw Brwysg
D2 –Vasilisk - The Blood
D3 –S·Core - Doldrums
D4 –Merzbow - Ram Me, Ream Me, You Lusty Cunts

DOWNLOAD this nagasaki nightmare HERE!

Merzbow ‎– "Collection 001" (Lowest Music & Arts) 1981

Don't worry, this isn't the first of a hundred Merzbow tapes.I wouldn't do that to you!
But it does complete the Axis of Noise, after having done the Italian connection,with a smattering of Germans here and there;so logically,some Japanese noise is required.....also it allows a smooth segue into some other stuff from the sons of Nippon to follow like a Kamikaze attack on the senses; a divine wind of abstract noise if you will? 
This is very early Merzbow, so its more experimental sounding,and less reliant on brain searing Noise.

Tracklist:

Side A
Side B

DOWNLOAD from somewhere over the merzbow HERE!

Merzbow ‎– "The Lampinak" (ZSF Produkt) 1985

From what was previously thought of as the worst year for music since 1975;but turned out to be better than any year between 1988 and 2015.From 1985 sprung forth another Merzbow cassette.Like the failing machine in the Eraserhead factory it scrapes,crackles and splutters.Droning with distorted fried circuitry squealing a death rattle of cruel reality.The artwork suggests that this is Masami's "Watership Down", with the main theme of pitilessness in the natural and non-natural world made real by the searing noise avalanche making your sub-woofers bounce in and out like a child's trampoline. In this version Hazel disembowels himself rather than be torn to pieces slowly by The 'Generals' "Ethnic Cleansing Death Squads".Helplessly entombed in a collapsing rabbit hole, Bigwig and the rest of the rabbits gasp for air as the warren is filled with Zyklon B. Kehar,the Seagull has switched sides after being paid; and the 'General' begins the clampdown for his Rodent Dystopia.
Just replace the Rabbits with Humanity,and the noise begins to make sense.

Tracklist:

A1	The Lampinak
A2	Serpent Power
A3	Live At House
A4	Carcas On The Floor
A5	Village Of 8 Graves
B1	5th Innocent Victim
B2	Zykle
B3	Invocation
B4	Nym Ma Pa

DOWNLOAD the sound of fluffy bunnies performing Seppuku (切腹) HERE!

Merzbow - "Solonoise 1" (Lowest Music & Arts Records) 1982

What an unrelenting god-awful racket this is.......superb!
Like a cavernous Cement mixer full of scrap steel, gravel, oil drums,and barely functioning TV sets. Frequently heard are the death rattles of oil tankers as they break their backs and sink into the deepest trench of the Atlantic Ocean. Imagine Merzbow as the band playing on the Titanic, as the stearage class passengers and the Rats scramble to keep clear of the approaching sea water on a rapidly elevating deck......now you're getting somewhere near the impact of this timeless music. I am full of admiration for any artist like Masami Akita, who plough the same furrow for thirty years, oblivious to the neigh sayers and the also-rans, to try and push humanity forward. Carrying on in what he believes in when others have fallen.
Slowly this is becoming the Pop music of the 23rd century, the hits of post-extinction Earth, when the Human Animal has become a distant memory.

Track Listing:

Side A Untitled 23.00
Side B Untitled 23.00

plus bonus Track from Merzbox "Untitled 3" (22.21)

DOWNLOAD one this Solonoise HERE!

Merzbow - " Live Performance Feb '85 " (Le Syndicate - 14) 1985

"Heavy Metal shouldn't be recorded in Dobly!"........Wrong Mrs St.Hubbins, but correct when referring to a Merzbow Cassette! This shear flesh peeling noise has an unappealing muffled quality when the Dolby 'B' button is pressed which I kin of like, but,lessens the ear splitting impact.
Sounds like a ruthless performance from the Merzbow crew here. I can't imagine what the audience, if there was one, were doing for the one hours duration of this concert. No head nodding, no foot tapping, no encore calling went on I wager; how refreshing is that? The traditions of the standard 'Rock' gig are too boring and predicatable for my meagre vocabulary to slap down!
But the fact that this was recorded at Merzbau studio,suggests to me that there was no audience at all anyway. This was a 'Live' studio recording, much in the vein of Throbbing Gristle's "Heathern Earth" album from 1980.
The sounds on this tape makes Throbbing Gristle sound like Enya, with its iPhone in a food blender noises, stretched tape loops played back on a belt sander.........christ,I'm running out of adjectives for this stuff. I think I'll call it a day for the Merzbow stuff and move on to some Sun City Girls tomorrow.
I'll sign off by simply saying that this is good,and you should train your brain to like it if it don't; but if it does already,then I'm wasting my time and yours. Just download it and enjoy,if enjoy is the right word for this unpleasant racket.

"Yeah,It'd sound better in Dobly" (N.Tufnel,1983)

Track Listing:
Side A - Untitled 1
Side A - Untitled 2
Side B - Untitled 1b
Side B - Untitled 2b
Side B - Untitled 3b

Download this 'Live' Performance from 1985 HERE!

Merzbow - " Paradoxa Paradoxa " ( Lowest Music and Arts Records) 1981

(originally posted on 11/11/2011 on Die or DIY 1, so thats why the text is the way it is!)

I know I Know,posting a scraping noise-fest from a Japanese artist is no way to mark Armistice day; and I haven't forgotten what happened on the Burma Railway by the way!
The Japanese were victims too, of a brutal regime,and of Harry S. Trueman, who didn't think twice about slaughtering 100's of thousand of women and children with his vengeance weapons.
This live recording from 1981, is a fitting tribute to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose deaths are too easily skated over on a day when we should be remembering ALL of the war dead,not just the 'glorious' ones.
This Live cassette release, contains the sound of malfunctioning media systems during an air raid, accompanied by the scraping squealing strings of a Violin, provided by Kiyoshi Mitsutani.
Live at the Kid Airak Hall in Tokyo (or should that be renamed the Kid Air Raid Hall in Hiroshima?), this is Merzbow at his improvisational best, with echo's of Throbbing Gristle, Albert Ayler, and SPK, mixed up into a cathartic industrial squeal of pain.
So here is a fitting minute,going on hour, of Noise to play at 11am on November 11th.

Track Listing:
A- Part 1
B- Part 2

DOWNLOAD Paradoxa Paradoxa HERE!

Merzbow - " Dying Mapa III " (Lowest Music & Arts Records) 1983

Another C-46 full of fingernails scraping down blackboards, colliding with overloaded helicopter rotor blades slicing through electricity pylons.This is the Vietnam war as heard from the inside of a Napalm bomb, the agent Orange of horticulture.
Side A is definitely the more viscerally noisy of the two, with side B sounding like an out of control Numbers Station from a malevolent regime somewhere in the former eastern bloc.
They're watching you,and this is what it sounds like!

Track Listing:

A1		Genetic Erotique (Sie Wird Weiß)
B1		Rejet
B2		Ictus
B3		Connotation
B4		Accompagnement
B5		Penisersatz
B6		Stigma Indelabile Etc.

DOWNLOAD this Dying Mapa HERE!

Merzbow - " Yantra Material Action " (Lowest Music and Artists Records) 1982

the non-music on this C-46,is a more laid back version of Merzbow from the early eighties. Plenty of manipulated tape loops, detuned guitars, DIY drumming, and knob twiddling; all inevitably fed through a bank of circuit bending effects. Some sounds a lot like a badly tuned Shortwave Radio routed through a Marshall stack, and others like a bubbling electronic soup boiling over on gas mark 9.
If you like the sound of a red hot skewer inserted into your temporal lobe then this is for you. A fine sonic interpretation of the Human animal, a kind of ethnic industrial folk for the tribes of the 21st century.

Recorded at various locations, 1981.
Mixed at Junktion Music Works, 1981.

Track Listing:

01 Untitled (11:25)
02 Untitled (2:52)
03 Untitled (1:48)
04 Untitled (4:37)
05 Untitled (1:06)
06 Untitled (8:40)
07 Untitled (7:26)
08 Untitled (4:35)

DOWNLOAD some Yantra Material Action HERE!

Merzbow - " Mechanization Takes Command " ( ZSF Poduckt ) 1983

So here's an early cassette release from Masami Akita's Merzbow project,on his ZSF Produckt label from 1983. Not created in his mother's basement,or his Uncle's Garage, but in his own Merzbau studio,in Tokyo, from many fragments of unknown recording found lying casually around chez Merzbow.
Personally,I prefer the earlier Merzbow Style,its less dependant on shear paint stripping Noise. Its more an interestingly constructed random mess of tape loops, found sounds,guitar,electronics,even real drums, and....er.....paint stripping noise!
This C90 is the sound of Hiroshima after the bomb; full of shock waves,overloading Geiger Counters,harmonizing with the screams of survivors envying the dead. A portrayal of a society malfunctioning slowly to self destruction; pretty much the soundtrack to whats happening NOW!
Life is Horrific, when you take a couple of paces back to get the whole grim reality of it all.Merzbow's music, and I call it music advisedly, is the aural equivalent of Francis Bacon's "Three Studies For Figures At The Base Of A Crucifixtion " .

Track Listing:

A1		Electric Pygmy Decollage	14:12
A2		Mechanization Takes Command	11:01
A3		Peaches Red Indian	10:46
B1		Sahara	5:44
B2		Iggy	3:15
B3		Suicidal Machine	14:17
B4		Ai-Da-Ho	10:19

DOWNLOAD and let Mechanization Take Command HERE!