Merzbow

In the sphere of noise music, no practitioner commands greater stature than Merzbow, the principal pseudonym of Tokyo-born Masami Akita that has graced more than five hundred albums. The alias derives from Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau and signals Akita’s affinity for junk art together with his interest in ritualized eroticism. Self-released material began appearing under the name in 1980. Initial efforts such as 1981’s Remblandt Assemblage fused tape manipulations, metal percussion, and found objects. Late in the decade, exposure to death metal and grindcore prompted a shift toward live industrial electronics. Venereology reached wider listeners in 1994. A laptop entered the instrumental arsenal in 1999. Merzbeat initiated a run of deliberately rhythmic projects in 2002 that have continued at intervals alongside purely abstract works. The same year Megatone marked the start of a sustained partnership with Boris. A committed animal-rights advocate, Akita issued thirteen monthly themed “Birds” albums in 2009 honoring endangered avian species. Throughout the 2010s he recorded with Richard Pinhas, Balázs Pándi, and numerous others, among them Italian noise artist Maurizio Bianchi (MB) on the 2015 album Amalgamelody. Thirty releases appeared in the especially productive year 2019, among them Become the Discovered, Not the Discoverer alongside Keiji Haino and Pándi. The Boris collaboration resumed with 2R0I2P0 in 2020. Eight albums surfaced in 2022, one of which was Peace for Animals, while Noise Matrix opened 2023.

Akita entered the world in Tokyo in 1956. Psychedelic rock formed his early listening, and he took up guitar in progressive-rock cover bands alongside drummer Kiyoshi Mizutani, a frequent partner ever since. After secondary school he pursued literature and visual arts at university, where free jazz entered his awareness and he immersed himself in Dada and the surrealists—Salvador Dali exerted particular influence. He gradually disengaged from rock circles and began private experiments in his basement using broken tape recorders and feedback.

Lowest Music & Arts, his own cassette imprint, was founded in 1980 and issued the first of countless albums, Metal Acoustic Music. Penetrating the expanding underground industrial circuit, he issued successive cassettes housed in photocopied collage sleeves. His harsh noise diverged from the raw aggression typical of the milieu (Throbbing Gristle, Man Is the Bastard) and instead cultivated a Zen equilibrium, a stillness within turbulence. Mizutani contributed to selected early recordings, as did occasional guests such as Reiko.A, yet Merzbow remains essentially Akita alone. Modest live performances occurred in Tokyo, though primary attention stayed fixed on art production and writing—he is equally versed in twentieth-century art and the Japanese tradition of bondage.

Material Action 2 (NAM), Merzbow’s debut LP, emerged on Japan’s Chaos/Eastern Works in 1983. Transitioning from mail-art networks into specialty shops, the project began drawing notice. A second label, ZSF Produkt, followed and generated dozens of 7"s, EPs, LPs, and further cassettes. By the late eighties international labels expressed interest, notably Australia’s Extreme imprint. Collaborative, an LP recorded with Achim Wollscheid in 1988, carried the Merzbow aesthetic abroad and gradually opened additional territories. Mid-nineties recognition approached mythical proportions. European and American tours ensued alongside elevated-profile releases on Extreme, Release/Relapse, RRR, and Alchemy.

Extreme initiated production of the fifty-CD Merzbox in 1997; the set finally appeared three years later, encompassing thirty reissues reaching back to 1979 plus twenty discs of previously unreleased material and constituting the most extensive single statement in noise history. Broader distribution via Alien8 Recordings (Aqua Necromancer, 1998) and Tzadik (1930, 1998), paired with relentless global touring, elevated the artist from mythic to legendary standing.

Late in the decade Akita began side projects under alternate names, including Maldoror with Mike Patton and Otomo Yoshihide. Prolific output as both composer and performer extended into the following century with Frog (2001), V (2003), Merzbird (2004), the two-volume Minazo (2006), Merzbear and Synth Destruction (2007), Dolphin Sonar (2008), and the thirteen-volume 13 Japanese Birds series issued monthly from January 2009 through January 2010. Another Merzbow Records, issued by the U.K.’s Dirtier Promotions, arrived in April 2010. Merzbient, a Soleilmoon box set of ambient recordings from 1987–1990, followed in October 2010. Ten collections plus four live sets appeared in 2011; four further albums and the box sets Merzphysics and Merzmorphosis arrived in 2012.

The ensuing year brought ten additional live and studio releases, both solo and collaborative, among them Live at Molde International Jazz Festival on Smalltown Supersound, Katowice with Balázs Pándi, Cat’s Squirrel with Oren Ambarchi, Partikel III with Nordvargr, No Closure with Scott Miller and Lee Camfield, and the solo studio albums Tamayodo and Kookaburra. Only a single recording surfaced in 2014, a self-titled split with Full of Hell on Profound Lore; most of the year was devoted to writing and photography.

Solo and collaborative activity resumed vigorously across multiple labels in 2015. Solo titles included Nezumimochi, Wildwood, and Konchuuki, while notable joint releases encompassed Level with Askew, Flying Basket with Akira Sakata, Jim O’Rourke, and Chikamorachi, and Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper with Mats Gustafsson, Thurston Moore, and Pándi on Rare Noise. The Boris partnership was renewed with a joint appearance at Fever. Gensho, issued by Relapse in 2016, placed drum-free Boris re-recordings—including a cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes”—on its first disc and a new Merzbow studio recording of matching length on the second, intended for simultaneous playback. The Japanese Daymare edition added the double-live Gensho at Fever 11272015. As Masami Akita, the duo album Kouen Kyoudai with Eiko Ishibashi appeared on Thrill Jockey in spring 2017, followed that summer by An Untroublesome Defencelessness with Pándi and Keiji Haino on Rare Noise. Live at FAC251, documenting a September 2016 performance with Pándi, reached stores early in 2017 alongside reissues of Escape Mask and Remblandt Assemblage. Cuts Up, Cuts Out, another Gustafsson–Moore–Pándi collaboration, surfaced in 2018; the same year Dais issued Achromatic, a project with HEXA (Lawrence English and Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu). Room40 then released the live recording MONOAkuma from 2012. Noise Mass, an updated edition of the 1994 album Hole packaged with a twenty-eight-page book, arrived on the same label in 2019 and constituted one of twenty-six releases that year; additional limited and digital titles included Bluedelic and Phillo Jazz on Slowdown plus Become the Discovered, Not the Discoverer on RareNoise, again featuring the power trio with Haino and Pándi.

Akita responded to the global COVID-19 pandemic by expanding rather than contracting his release calendar. Twenty-three solo or duo recordings appeared between January and autumn 2020 across several imprints. EXD and StereoAkuma emerged on Room40, while Broken Landscapes, a duo with clarinetist Gareth Davis, appeared on Moving Furniture Records. Nineteen further titles—both archival and newly recorded—were issued by Slowdown Records and included Material for Structure I (2001) and Necro 2000 (1999); Process 9611, Tauro-O1, and Tauro-O2 date from late 2019. RareNoise delivered the eighty-six-minute Cuts Open with Gustafsson and Pándi in September. Between 2018 and 2019 Merzbow participated in more than fifty albums. Slowdown also released the ten-chapter 10x6=60CD Box Set in 2018, presenting previously unpublished material stretching back to 1979, with individual volumes offered as downloads.

Another extensive slate of new and archival releases marked 2020; 2R0I2P0 with Boris, recorded separately, appeared in December. Thirty albums total emerged that year, followed by thirty more in 2021, among them Black Crows Cyborg with Prurient and Red Brick. Twenty-plus albums surfaced in 2022, including the widely praised Animal Liberation: Until Every Cage Is Empty, whose cover directly adopted the graphic style of anarcho-punk collective Crass, plus collaborations with Lawrence English (Eternal Stalker), Bastard Noise (Retribution by All Other Creatures), Eraldo Bernocchi (Patterns and Mechanisms), and Pinhas (Coda). Slowdown issued 35 CD Box, chapters eleven through fifteen of the excavated catalog beginning in 2006, together with the retrospective 2017-2020. Noise Matrix arrived in February 2023.