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Post by neokorosu on Nov 21, 2013 16:18:21 GMT -5
We all know, that Akita is a very versatile artist. Beside music, he had also worked on books, visual arts and even a film. This thread is dedicated to Akita's visual arts, a place for a general discussion. Beside album covers, I would like to know where on the internet are paintings/collages by Akita. The only source I had found is this one: merzbow.tumblr.com/These pictures were definitely from the animal rights period. Earlier, in the documentary "Beyond Ultra Violence" he mentioned, that his oil paintings were exposed in a gallery. I wonder, how his painting style looked like in that time. Since most of us can't read his books, I think his visual arts are an another way of understanding his mind. Sure, a picture doesn't give so exact information like a written word, there is just too much room for interpretation. But I think this is just one more interesting branch of the whole Merzbow project which shouldn't be underrated.
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Post by andypandy380 on Nov 22, 2013 5:45:05 GMT -5
I quite like his paintings, although some of them are a whole lot better than others. I like the cover of Jigokuhen and the card that comes with loplop... Takahe Collage and Samidara are also pretty nice. I'm not really sure about his work outside of the album covers. The art for Mikrocosmos was from an old collage of his, I can only assume his earlier artwork was more that, cut-outs and things. I wonder whether his earlier paintings were more abstract? Don't really know, but I do find all this interesting too.
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Post by neokorosu on Nov 22, 2013 14:15:41 GMT -5
The artwork for "microcosmos" is reminding me of "camouflage". I had noticed in "camouflage", that there is a connection between the track titles and the artwork from the inner side of the sleeve. This is the only album where I saw something like that. The cover from "samidara" looks also great, it is one of my favorites. Compared to his other collages, this one is much simpler and it is not made of so many tiny pieces.
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Post by acsenger on Dec 2, 2013 2:26:44 GMT -5
I like some paintings on merzbow.tumblr.com/. Just yesterday I listened to Merzbuta (http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=533678) and the inner drawing is atrocious, I think (and not because of what it depicts which is a different matter altogether). Overall, I'm not sure about Akita's animal rights-period paintings although I like some of what I've seen. From his earlier, abstract period, some examples are the artwork of the Grav, Rainbow Electronics, Antimonument and Green Wheels CDs. Those artworks are very much avantgarde. I don't have the necessary knowledge to judge them but most of them I quite like. In the 80s a lot of his tape covers were porn/erotica or mixed with porn. I've only seen a few on the net so I can't comment on them.
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Post by andypandy380 on Dec 2, 2013 11:39:12 GMT -5
yeah, I find the inside art to Merzbuddha kind of funny actually, some of his drawings do seem a little childlike, the cover for Zophorus being another example, as much as I like that album. Anyone who's ever used photoshop could probably do a better job of colouring the original version of Sha Mo 3000... I do think there is a certain amount of talent in his paintings though, the cover of Hiranya is pretty cool, I would describe the visual style of that and the Jigokuhen cover as more playful than childlike. I very much like it when musical artists do their own artwork, it's really an extension of the music itself, if the visual comes from the same mind as the music it feels like more like one whole package, even if the result isn't perfect on a technical sort of level. Many NWW albums are great examples of that. I too don't really know what to think of the packaging for Merzbow's earlier works. The early cassettes do seem more like just that, packaging rather than artwork, just found images that suit the theme or catch attention. I find Jenny Akitas covers a little hit and miss also, on a whole I'm not completely keen on them. I don't like the cover of Minazo part 1 at all really, Dolphin Sonar is sort of a novelty, although I do think the artwork of the 13 Birds works reasonably well throughout the series.
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Post by neokorosu on Dec 2, 2013 13:16:45 GMT -5
The inner artwork from "Merzbuta" is not at all my taste. Altough, I am very interested in Akita's thoughts, but the animal rights-thing just don't fit in to my personal mind. Some of his artworks are too provocative. Another example is the cover for "Senmaida". I see myself as a very anthropocentric person. Perhaps it sounds absurd, but I feel quite insulted when I read a phrase like "Kill people not piggies". I respect other opinions, but I hate it, when people have to share their toughts in a militant style.
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Post by acsenger on Dec 2, 2013 14:28:13 GMT -5
Yeah, statements like "kill people, not piggies" are militant oversimplification of a subject that can't be declared or discussed in short slogans like that. On the whole, I'm also not sure about Jenny's artworks. Some are good but there are hideous ones too (there was a thread about this earlier). Akita's visual work under the name of Abtechtonix I usually like better although there are some duds there too (New Takamagahara, for example -- I wonder if that was a printing mistake or was it meant to be the atrocity it is?).
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Post by neokorosu on Dec 2, 2013 16:01:06 GMT -5
Haha, the artwork from "New Takamagahara" is indeed funny. I like the front cover for some reason, but the artwork from the inner- and the backside of the CD is just ugly. Is that an indian tribal chief on the backside?! ;D
I agree, this sentence could almost come from myself. By the way, this is reminding me of a great composer from the early 20th century: Arnold Schönberg, also known as the inventor of the twelve-tone-technique. He was also a painter and developed a strange chess variant, called "coalition chess".
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Post by andypandy380 on Jan 4, 2014 18:10:52 GMT -5
I've only just seen the last couple of replies on this thread, don't know how I hadn't noticed them before... Yeah, statements like "kill people, not piggies" are militant oversimplification of a subject that can't be declared or discussed in short slogans like that.). I very much agree with that actually, It reminds me of the vegan groups (and others, political etc.) you get on social networking sites. They are mostly fighting fire with fire with shock value or about patting each other on the back using daft pictures. Seeming to achieve very little. Not that I know how to change the world... It's kind of removed from all that, but to me, for album art there isn't much worse than those metal album covers featuring very nicely rendered, but utterly and downright boring scenes of apocalyptic/dystopian landscapes. It's back to that 'vague representation' again. I'd almost admire a band for doing something remarkably silly and admitting it's completely meaningless, more so than doing something poor just because they 'ought' to be saying something. Each to their own though. I bought a Merzbow CD on ebay where the seller had included a ton of flyers, postcards, stickers which they had collected. not all of them Merzbow. This was one of them. I assume by looking at it that it was made by Akita, there is no writing on the back of the postcard. Not sure where it came from... might be part of the Microkosmos thing.
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Post by neokorosu on Jan 4, 2014 18:39:33 GMT -5
Oh, this could be indeed by Akita! Thanks for sharing! With regard to that, I just checked out the images from Mikrokosmos Vol.1 on Discogs. Funny, there is this dog from "his masters voice" on the backside of the cover. ;D
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