MERZBOW - Achromatic

It was only a matter of time: the latest, pitch-black expressionist drift of Lawrence English has already seen him working alongside members of Swans and, in the Lynchian-themed project “Factory Photographs”, alongside Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. His growing interest in the most disruptive phenomenologies of sound reaches its likely peak with the enlistment of Masami “Merzbow” Akita – already paired with Stewart three years earlier (“Merzxiu”, 2015) – for an abstract concept that, predictably, unfolds as a raw, uncompromising drone-noise flood.

Then again, over nearly forty years of sonic terrorism, Merzbow has never shied away from building a wall of sound that is born and develops right in the listener's foreground, like a thin yet impenetrable screen of seething, primordial electroacoustic matter. As in other cases, collaborating with other projects is the best opportunity to try to make such an all-consuming aesthetic more pliable, and in this sense HEXA's contribution lies precisely in lending greater depth and concreteness to Akita's formless input.

There isn't much else to say, in practical terms, about what one will hear on “Achromatic”, which with the neutrality of non-color once again reaffirms the notorious japanoiser's indifference to the semantic placement of his work, even as it builds a bridge toward the pictorial avant-gardes of 20th-century America and Europe.

Two suites for two sides of an LP, in which each faction takes turns handling the other's production and mixing. “Merzhex” unfolds across four uninterrupted movements: an oppressive distorted pulse pushes and branches off in every direction, as if digging an underground tunnel ready to swallow everything around it; a fury that momentarily subsides into the windswept, funereal expanse of the second section, from whose bowels sinister, abrasive exhalations nonetheless keep surfacing, before a cadenced clangor announces the plunge back into the horror-laden understratum.

It's the ripples in the viscous flow of noise and other para-rhythmic elements – alarm sirens and other remnants of industrial memory – that make us aware of an uneasy passage of time, in the midst of which only focusing on the mere outward development of the sound can distract us from the sense of claustrophobia and morbid stirring within an undesirable scenario.

By comparison, the seventeen minutes of “Hexamer”, in which the imprint of English and Stewart is immediately more evident, follow a more regular development with a less brutal impact, taking on the character of a slow pan across the departments of a factory that is anything but well-lit, a resonating chamber for the tireless automation of machinery. Presses, milling machines, pistons and circular saws sketch themselves out chaotically, forming a dehumanized chorality that once again fulfills the futurist prophecy, but where Akita's revived digital frequencies also gradually pile up, the absolute emblem of post-musical utopia.

It's no surprise that the near-perfect alignment of intent among the three sound artists makes “Achromatic” a listening experience whose imaginative potential far exceeds that of the typical tours de force released under the Merzbow name, a trademark as iconic as it is “feared” for its unyielding commitment to the blindest noise fury. The depth and perspectival effect provided by HEXA are the soul – however dark – of a noise practice that has rarely (and not for a long time now) manifested itself with such galvanizing results.

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03/08/2018