Merzbow Archive Series / Post-Earthquake (2011-2012)
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 prompted immediate creative response. Merzbow released Dead Zone (Quasi Pop Records, 2011), addressing radioactive contamination from Fukushima and Chernobyl. The cover of UZU ME KU (2012) features a cracked pillar from the Nagasawa Water Treatment Plant - physical evidence of disaster. The "sacred cows" trilogy (Kamadhenu, Surabhi, Gomata) for Hypnagogia continued animal rights themes, while works like Lop Lop and later Konchuuki explored non-direct approaches. New equipment—smaller oscillator synths, drone machines, and miniature kotos, strongly characterized the sound.
Gman+
Gman+ gathers some of the most elusive material from Merzbow’s 2011–2012 period and welds it into a single, punishing disc, four tracks that function as both archival rescue and self‑contained statement. The collection pulls together work originally …
Kotorhizome
Kotorhizome catches Merzbow in a phase where noise stops behaving like a vertical wall and starts acting more like an underground network. Recorded between 2011 and 2012 and released later as part of the Slowdown archive cycle, the album is built fro…
Bit Blues
Bit Blues sits in the middle of Merzbow’s Horizon cycle like a scorched signpost, three tracks cut from performances recorded at Munemihouse in 2011 and 2012 and later remastered in 2021. All the music is by Masami Akita, working with a small, intens…
Sugamo Flower
Sugamo Flower compresses a particular 2011 moment in Merzbow’s practice into two long tracks that feel like one continuous, mutating organism. Both pieces are sourced from performances recorded that year, later repurposed as material for “Sugamo Flow…
雲の絶対値 Kumo No Zettaichi
On Kumo No Zettaichi, Merzbow trades drum violence for a hall of hovering machines, two 2011 pieces where small drone boxes, oscillators, and minikoto threads knot into a dense but strangely weightless sky of electric weather. It is harsh ambient as …
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 th…