Merzbow - Hyakki Echo (2017)

Crazy hybrid disc! Plays vinyl on one side, CD on the other. Whoa! Includes rubber vinyl adaptor. Limited edition (sold out at source)

Amamamazing, boundary-pushing new disc from Masami Akita aka Merzbow, making the critical switch from saturated psychedelic noise to free, instrumental improvisation with gobsmacking results, all pressed to a dual format disc befitting of the music’s experimental brilliance. Hard to think of any other artists who has broken the mould repeatedly quite like this guy!

The most compelling Merzbow masterpiece we’ve heard since his Japanese Birds series, Hyakki Echo weilds four pieces in 53 minutes, bringing us closer than ever to a form of Merzbow music which mimics avian chatter and flight, which has become a key, longterm theme to his music. Imagine, if you will, a feathered Zeitkratzer Ensemble fed on whizz-pepped seeds and let loose on one of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s installations, and you’re practically ducking between their swarming orchestra inside. But of course it’s all the work of one man, which makes it that much more incredible.

On the vinyl side there is the 3 minutes of Amadare Guitar, which forms our first introduction to this dizzyingly febrile new Merzbow style and sound remarkably better cut than we initially expected from such a novel format. The B-side’s CD meanwhile offers a father four pieces of avian free jazz delirium, at times cosign off like Mr. Bungle on hyper fast-fwd, at others like a mechanised Balázs Pándi battling time itself, or Reinhold Friedl happily severing his digits in a bloody frenzy inside the piano. But perhaps what’s most shocking is the space between Akita’s rapid flux, where, while cramming in as much information as possible to each millisecond, he still hold a gripping spatial dynamic and meditative centre amid the madness.