This does not bode very well for the rest of the Merzbox -- though like John Zorn's Early Recordings album, the point was to release really early stuff (here, from 1979).
In any case, it's not uninteresting, but it's still not the Merzbow I know and love. This is fairly minimalist. The first 40 minutes are of this hum and what sounds like Masami Akita beating on a pipe with a spoon. Yes, 40 minutes -- there are little changes in rhythm (not that there was really any) and there is some squelchy stuff every now and then, but all in all the title track (parts one and two) is pretty intense in its single-mindedness. (The other tracks features more drone and a poorly-executed drum solo -- the sound, really, of someone who knows how to play drums but is in this case trying to sound haphazard about it.)
It's the hum that is the most telling, and shows the noise in his future: it's not a nice, om-like, Lull drone, nor even an Alan Lamb electrical hum, but it's a deep, grinding, slightly metallic buzz that makes your teeth hurt. At any moment you almost expect William Bennett to yell "My cock's on fire!"
Posted by the wily filipino at March 30, 2003 10:00 PM