Merzbow (JPN) with Special Guest Lawrence English

“Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita, best known for a style of harsh noise music. Since 1980, Akita has released over 500 recordings and collaborated with numerous artists.”1

I had heard of Merbow through a work colleague a couple of years ago. I had heard similar work while at University doing media arts in the early 90s. I could have heard his work at some point as well but I was learning a lot at the time.

“Lawrence English is an Australian composer, artist, and curator from Brisbane. His work is broadly concerned with the politics of perception, specifically he is interested in the nature of listening, and sounds’ capability to occupy the body. He is the director of the imprint Room40, started in 2000.”2

Lawrence English I hadn’t heard of before but his work was definitely something felt as well as heard. I found his set a little invasive body wise but I slowly felt that I could trust his set and relaxed finding a rhythm or pulse to the noise.

Merzbow was somewhat more relaxed even in the chaotic movements of sounds that at times seemed to create frequencies that probably were not meant to be there. It was like a wall of sound that other sounds interacted with. There were brief moments of patterns that then were overcome by competing noise.

With Lawrence English I could have been in a warzone at certain moments, the industrial death machine of war and carnage then softly turned to circadian rhythms and inner circulation. It was immersive and as I said prior invasive.

Overall I felt like the two performances illustrated a certain kind of personal freedom from the everyday by highlighting the industrial nature of sound in the supply chains we exist within. Then turning that into a distraction, a much needed distraction. A distraction worth paying for and making a momentary escape from one machine into another machine.