A brand-new monster emerging from Urashima's dedicated effort to reissue gems from Merzbow's expansive back catalog, comes Green Wheels - originally issued in 1995 - in its first ever vinyl pressing, expanded to include two never before released tracks and taking up two LPs. A sonic assault of blinding texture and tonality, filled with remarkably intimate detail, it stands among the best of the best within the project's many offerings.

When it comes to Japanese noise, few projects have pushed boundaries or risen to a more iconic status than Merzbow. The mutant child of punk and experimental music, the project's blistering sounds - as singular and wild as they are unique - are among the movement's most important, definitive statements, continuously laying the groundwork for countless artists who have followed in its wake. Like so many artefacts of Japanese noise, Merzbow's output - often released on small labels in tiny editions - has largely remained difficult to access and highly sought after. Fortunately, over the last few years, the Italian imprint, Urashima, has made serious inroads to making the project's back catalog available via a dedicated reissue effort.

Merzbow came roaring onto the Tokyo scene in 1979, and remains, to this day, one of the most prolific and aggressively forward-thinking artists in experimental music. The moniker of Masami Akita, the project took its name from German artist Kurt Schwitters' pre-war architectural assemblage, The Cathedral of Erotic Misery or Merzbau, and quickly set out to challenge entrenched notions of what music could be. Embracing technology and the machine, even in its earliest iterations, Merzbow broke boundaries and pushed toward new territories of the extreme, arriving at a sonic space of pure, unadulterated noise that has continued, now for over 40 years, to set the pace for the entire genre of noise.

Originally released by Self Abuse Records in 1995 as a CD accompanied by a 5-inch vinyl record - remaining out of print and highly sought after ever since - Green Wheels is Merzbow at its best; straightforward, direct, genuine, and in the most uncontrolled and refined form. Comprising 5 tracks - the first three from the CD and taking up an LP side each, with the remaining two from the 5-inch, plus two previously unreleased tracks, on the fourth - in its totality, the album rises as a body of sound moving into a transcendent form. Vocalizations mesh within a blanket of harsh, immersive textures generated by unplaceable sources, flirting at the borders of a new imagining of ambient music for a darkening and aggressive world. Unrelenting, while remarkably intimate, detailed, and considered, after all this Urashima's brand new edition closes with the stunning counterpoint of two unreleased tracks from the same fantastic mid-1990s period that present a beautiful release after the journey taken with their intensity and musicality.

A monumental work of few parallels and full-on immersion in sonorous texture, even two and a half decades on, Green Wheels still manages to challenge the fundamental notions of what music can be perceived to be. Absolutely brilliant.