New Arrivals
Electronic Union
Electronic Union suggests synthesis, merger, coalition - multiple electronic elements combining into unified sonic statements. These mid-2000s recordings demonstrate Akita's mature integration of diverse digital techniques, creating hybrid approaches transcending any single method.
"Union" implies collective action, solidarity, workers organizing - perhaps the various electronic components forming their own labor movement against conventional music's exploitation.
Merzbird Variation
Merzbird (Important Records, 2004) stands among the most celebrated laptop-era releases. This "Variation" offers alternate perspectives on that material - different plumage for the same sonic creature. Bird imagery connects to Akita's growing animal rights consciousness while invoking bird-inspired composition traditions from Olivier Messiaen to contemporary field recording.
The bird represents freedom, flight, song - yet also vulnerability, threatened ecosystems, species extinction. Merzbow's b…
Plasma Door
The evocative title conjures thresholds between states of matter - solid becoming liquid becoming gas becoming plasma. Plasma Door captures Merzbow at a moment of material transformation, sound itself seeming to change state under extreme pressure. Plasma - the fourth state of matter, found in stars and lightning - represents extreme energy, matter pushed beyond normal limits.
The "door" suggests passage, transition - portals to altered perceptual states. Listeners passing through this door ente…
Sphere Sessions
Sphere Sessions suggests three-dimensional sound constructions - recordings enveloping listeners in dense, immersive noise environments. Akita's spatial awareness reached new sophistication in these mid-2000s productions - creating environments rather than merely sequences of events.
The sphere represents perfection, completeness, infinite symmetry - yet these sessions likely explode such ideals, fragmenting smooth surfaces into jagged shards. The tension between geometric perfection and sonic c…
1633+
1633+ exemplifies Merzbow's confident command of laptop production techniques refined over five years of intensive experimentation. The numeric title resists interpretation - perhaps a date, perhaps a catalog number, perhaps pure abstraction. 1633 saw Galileo's trial; the number might reference suppressed truth, forbidden knowledge, the clash between orthodoxy and innovation.
The "+" symbol indicates additional or expanded material, promising more than the basic number suggests.
Yoshinotsune Metamo
The title references Yoshitsune, legendary Japanese warrior-hero - though "Metamo" suggests metamorphosis, transformation. Yoshitsune's story involves disguise, flight, and tragic loyalty - themes resonating with Akita's own constant transformations. Akita's engagement with Japanese history and mythology runs throughout his work, counterbalancing Western avant-garde influences often emphasized in critical discussions.
The metamorphosis theme connects to Merzbow's endless mutations, each album tr…
Enclosure
Enclosure suggests both confinement and protection - sound as shelter, sound as prison. The title carries multiple resonances: the enclosures that contain animals in zoos and farms, the enclosure movement that privatized common lands, the sonic enclosure that surrounds listeners in dense noise. These transitional recordings capture Merzbow poised between decades.
The enclosed quality - density, refusal of empty space - anticipates the wall-of-sound approach characterizing the golden era to come.…
Antimonument Tapes
The "Antimonument" concept looms large in Merzbow lore - the original 1985-86 album is considered a landmark in noise history, a foundational text for the genre. *Antimonument Tapes* offers invaluable context, documenting the creative process that yielded one of the genre's defining statements. These session recordings reveal how Akita assembled the finished work from raw materials.
The "anti-monument" concept rejects permanence, solidity, commemorative function - Akita's sonic constructions exi…
Insect 801
Three tracks from the production of Konchuuki (Essence Music, 2015). The 28-minute centerpiece employs oscillator-modulated rhythms from a vintage Mach Rhythm Box RB-801, creating distinctive rhythmic patterns throughout—the album title references this equipment.
New oscillator synths and drone machines create uneven noise acoustics and drones with shifting graininess, introducing fresh sonic colors to the Merzbow palette. The first track title "Fuyumushi" (winter insect) connects to the insect …
Pi-Eggplant
The Merzbow Archive series by Slowdown Records, which has released ten editions so far, enters its twelveth edition. This edition consists of recordings made between 2008 and 2009, when Merzbow developed a style that incorporated drumming. Although Masami Akita was originally a drummer heavily influenced by psychedelic rock, progressive rock, and other free music of the 70s, he avoided using drums in Merzbow (except in the duo with Kiyoshi Mizutani in the late 70s and in Merzbow Null in the earl…
Groon Lesson
Recorded during the height of the 13 Japanese Birds series production, these three performances capture Merzbow at peak drumming-era intensity. The centerpiece - a commanding 32-minute second track - demonstrates the extended improvisational structures characteristic of this period. The encounter with Balázs Pándi, a drummer sharing similar musical background (not only metal and grindcore, but also Sun Ra and free jazz), led to Merzbow's desire to pursue drumming as duo collaboration. After this…
Red Brick
Test mixes for Arijigoku (Vivo, 2008)—Merzbow's first full-fledged combination of live drums with improvised noise performance. Drums were recorded separately in a rented studio, then mixed with noise at a later date. This preliminary version offers vivid documentation of the trial-and-error process underlying a landmark release.
The progression across three tracks demonstrates the range achievable through drum-noise synthesis: from the opening track's carefully balanced spatial composition to t…
Ensemble Drums
Alternate mixes from two essential albums: Protean World (Noiseville, 2008) and Microkosmos (Blossoming Noise, 2009). Drumming was recorded separately in rented studio space, capturing Akita's return to the instrument after decades.
The first track fuses drumming with improvisational noise - drums rampage at high velocity without steady beat, pure kinetic energy. The second and third tracks reveal different performance flavors: gradually intensifying roughness merging with noise, interwoven with…
Drumorph
Primarily computer-based but incorporating sampled drums, this album documents the earliest experiments leading to the full drum integration that would define this period. Finely cut drum sounds ricochet through space in the first two tracks, with fierce original drum performances unexpectedly emerging between the processed fragments—allowing listeners to experience drums in multiple transformed states.
Recorded just one month before the Anicca sessions, Drumorph captures the pivotal moment when…
Eternal Music Society
*300 copies limited edition* Eternal Music Society is a Swedish supergroup emerging from the fertile experimental scene of Göteborg and Malmö, centered around the visionary Discreet label. The band unites members from some of the most distinctive underground projects of the past decade, Enhet För Fri Musik (Discreet), Skeppet, Frihet, Neutral, Leda (Knotwilg), and Kröppskanedom (Morc) to name a few. Each known for pushing the boundaries of free music, drone, and avant-rock.
Together, they form a…
Elephant
*400 copies limited edition* Brooklyn-born trumpeter and composer Adam O’Farrill, hailed as a leading light of the new American jazz scene, announces his bold new quartet project Elephant. With this ensemble, O’Farrill expands his sonic language into a fresh, genre-blurring space that fuses the intimacy of the jazz quartet with the emotional depth of 20th‑century minimalism and the rhythmic urgency of contemporary electronic and dance music.
Elephant features a powerful lineup: O’Farrill on trum…
Tonight At Noon
"Tonight At Noon" compiles tracks from two earlier recordings sessions: one session from 1957 with Jimmy Knepper on the trombone, the drummer Dannie Richmond, Saxophone player Shafi Hadi and the pianist Wade Legge, which were released on the album "The Clown" (Atlantic 1260). The second session took place in 1961 with Booker Ervin and Roland Kirk on the saxophone, Knepper, the bassist Doug Watkins, Mingus at the piano and Richmond on the drums, and was released on "Oh Yeah" (Atlantic SD 1377).
T…
Wearing Words
“I constantly felt like wearing clothes that don't belong to me, a bit like borrowing a sweater from your partner or pants from your sister who is slightly taller than you.”
Particles, Peds & Pores
*200 copies limited edition* "Jaime Fennelly, as Mind Over Mirrors, makes music that pushes the known to the lip of the unknown, where it rocks precariously and in exhilaration. He scrambles the familiar and tweaks the comfortable, not through aggression, but a throbbing estrangement. When placed at a distance, these require longer reaches to grasp. The reward for this effort is an enlarged field of perspective, experience, and also of feeling. This is deeply feeling music to feel deeply.
In al…
Muzan No Bi (Beauty Without Mercy)
40th Anniversary Release!! Recorded in 1985 and released by Polydor in 1986, Kazuki Tomokawa's seminal 1980s album “Beauty Without Mercy”. To mark its 40th anniversary, this long-awaited reissue arrives on vinyl! This defining album of the 80s features tracks including “He Was There” about his friend Takohachirō, “Beauty in Tragedy” about his brother's death, “God Was Crying in the Well”, and his signature song “Waltz”. Nakahara Chūya penned the lyrics for “A Fairy Tale” and “Boy”. Numerous dist…