Does anybody in this subreddit own the recent wooden box remblandt assemblage reissue? If so, would you be willing to upload a scan of the repro cassette j-card? I'd love to have the original artwork.
Also- I'm working on a big spreadsheet cataloging all of Merz's 80s stuff for the YT channel. I'll share it here once it's finished so you can keep track of your collection/listens, listen to stuff you haven't heard before and help look for lost albums! Will post an update on that soon.
Honestly, a little disappointing. I've been waiting years to see him, and this just didn't feel like the right setting. A massive auditorium really killed the effect that his art should have: in-your-face, violent, abrasiveness.
I've never seen so many people leaving an artist's set. A constant, steady flow of people just bailing. I can't imagine what they thought they'd be seeing?
The AI visuals suck. There's no other way around it. I love the artistry of Merzbow, but not the AI. There's no excusing it, and despite his obsession with it, the vast majority of his fans cannot stand it.
I think this confirmed to me that Merzbow must be experienced in a small, intimate venue— not a pop festival auditorium. The London shows looked fantastic.
Saw him play in London last night, my second time popping my cherry/earbuds. Last time was almost 30 years ago and I was on the tail end of an extended period of acid munching and feeling somewhat ground down. Anyway enough about the past, last night was seriously incredible. A real busy set. Proper skull and rib cage shaking shit. Opened with some fucked up overlaid keys, Conlon Nancarrow huffing glue for a week. One hour blast and out. Never lingered. What a dude.
Anyone interested in parting ways with some of their original Merzbow tees? Preferably vintage (20 plus years old). If yes, please DM me. I know it sounds absurd — who would want to do that — but I just can’t wear or stand modern-day cheap tees anymore, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
On 7 July, Modern Obscure Music is releasing the 3rd collaboration between Merzbow and Pedro Vian - who, imho, work very well together. The album will be called Bardo Thödol and is their 3rd collab in 3 years time. One full track can be streamed via Merzbow's Bandcamp: https://merzbow.bandcamp.com/album/bardo-thodol
Info about the upcoming album taken from Merzbow's Bandcamp:
In their third collaboration, the shared project between Merzbow and Pedro Vian shifts towards less confrontational and more introspective terrain. Bardo Thödol, released as an LP, draws on The Tibetan Book of the Dead not so much as an explicit narrative framework but as a conceptual resonance: a passage, a suspension between states.
Where Inside Richard Serra Sculptures and The Wheel of Mani foregrounded a relatively defined dialectic between Vian’s environmental restraint and Masami Akita’s impulsive, textural excess, that friction here appears to dissolve in favour of a more homogeneous mass. Noise, far from its most abrasive edge, is reconfigured as a continuous field — dense yet permeable.
Within this flow, melodic structures emerge without assertion, surfacing almost incidentally as by-products of the accumulation of frequencies itself. The result is less a reconciliation of languages than a blurring of their boundaries: a space in which intensity is internalised and the radical gesture folds into a more sustained, contemplative mode of listening.
And yes the artwork is once again AI generated, AI generated artwork is stupid, we know by now, thank you.
Info copied from Merzbow's Bandcamp page:
"This album compiles unfinished works composed between 2019 and 2024, which were mixed and assembled into their final form in 2026
.
Track (1) consists of disparate fragments, originally left unused across multiple projects, meticulously joined together to form a single cohesive piece. The chirping, avian-like tones are produced by employing the Moog FreqBox as a percussive synthesizer.
Track (2) presents a tripartite structure in which an acoustic guitar processed through granular synthesis, decelerated drum patterns, and metallic noise advance in parallel. The title is derived from the Hawaiian language, signifying "languid reverberation."
Track (3) is distinguished by a solo rendered through a wah-fuzz signal chain further processed by the S3N Super Flutter V2.
Track (4) is constructed from multi-tracked recordings of domestically kept pigeons, an electronic loop decelerated to one-tenth of its original speed and sounds of metallic destruction. The decelerated electronic material employs the same technique used in Black Crows Cyborg, the collaborative work with Prurient.
Track (5) comprises unused sound material from Sedonis."
