VISUAL NOISE: THE ARTWORK OF MERZBOW

Like Kurt Schwitter's architectural assemblage that is the inspiration for Masami Akita's primary sound project,  the visuals that accompanied Merzbow's early work seem to be Dada influenced collages caught in flux. They form a visual analogue for an all enveloping excess incorporating eroticism,  sex,  death,  loss of self,  and conceptual obviation.  These visual cut-ups of cultural detritus  (Lowest Music & Arts, indeed!) are often color xerox skeins that incorporate both abstraction and realism in their convulsive surfaces.  The discomfort of fleeting form is their contribution to Merzbow's world of noise.

SCUM: SEVERANCES

Masami Akita (Merzbow) and I started our correspondence around 1987 or 1988 with a shared interest in sound manipulation,  mail art,  and the cassette underground.  I first became aware of his work through purchases of several early cassettes which almost immediately became totemic objects signifying a harshness and otherness well beyond their simple means (xerox upon xerox reproduction,  and scraped, looped,  bowed, and overdriven analogue sources).  His noise discouraged analysis beyond its own materiality.  I loved its lack of "musical" development,  its anti-virtuosity,  and its instantaneous envelopment of the listener. Here was postmusic without any concern for harmony,  pitch, consonance/dissonance,  or formal development in the traditional sense.

When I asked Masami if he'd like to produce something for release on my Discordia/Concordia cassette label, he sent me the cassette master that became SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Merzbow): SEVERANCES.  I created the package, artwork, and graphic design.  This was 1989,  and his aural eruptions seemed the perfect soundtrack to a world of broken, reconfigured excess,  and is still relevant today.  SEVERANCES is now only available on wayward copies of MERZBOX.