deathkvlt wrote:
Are the Merzbow collaboration tracks too noisy?
Oh, they're noisy.. the first one starts with dissonant, tinny piano while the initial bass note is held for over two minutes and heads into atmospheric static land. There's bass all the way through but it's still quite a noise composition, including a bit that sounds like someone chainsawing a dalek to death. I love this stuff but it's hard to listen to all the way through. At about three and a half minutes the bass gets an octave higher and akita is just fiddling with static washes and dials.. there might be a riff in here. :o it ends with the bass playing the same note every couple of seconds with a sort of reversed attack, or maybe it's just fretless bass..
Second one starts with distorted, feedbacking bass war, sounding like a motorcycle race circuit, and the computer feedback comes in a minute into the song but joins in the modulation with the bass, then mic feedback comes in at about 2:30, along with some spacey howls, more Dr. Who-like sound effects and at around 3:15 it degenerates into one droning fuzzy hum including a bit that sounds like the end of Radiohead's "Karma Police".. about 4:30 is part two of this composition, I think, which reprieves the opening modulated sub-bass and adds white noise washing from top to bottom.. everything stops but the static at around 5:45, with the only pulse coming from what sounds like very faint marching sounds, and an electronic whine builds and fades overhead, gradually morphing into some dissonant, bent chimy piano playing and everything else drops away at 7:15 while the piano decides what chord sequence it's meant to be playing.. noise gradually re-enters, sounding like a stampede from afar before a sudden static wash at 8:15 which drowns out all the other noises apart a few brief orchestra runs in the background.. a plane flies overhead and at 9:30 the static cuts out leaving the sound of an approaching hurricane? More faint army drills panned to the right.. twin bursts of static at 10:15 usher in some metallic sounds at the top of the register which morph back into the piano part from earlier, and run on for about ten more seconds before everything drops away apart from a slight fizz and a bassy pulse. Piano comes back in before long, sounding double-sampled.. the hurricane's getting closer, knocking down the telegraph poles and destroying someone's vacuum cleaner, then their music box.. the wind whistles between two concrete buildings.. at 12:30 the bass finally re-emerges and the winds have passed.
Short answer: yes. but there's beauty in the noise, I got all that from an impromptu listen..