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Post by japanesebird on Nov 16, 2012 11:45:26 GMT -5
one of my cats stays in my room whenever i'm there and i always have merzbow playing. she never seems to mind and actually seems to prefer it to more conventional music which is less atmospheric. merzbow even at his most intense is still abstract and impersonal like nature. today i played spiral honey, yaho-niwa, and dead zone to lull a 2 week old kitten to sleep. worked like a charm. spiral honey as the new music for babies? instead of mozart for babies, merzbow for babies. how to raise space age children.
spiral honey is one of the best albums. alien abduction rock and roll. yaho-niwa and dead zone make a perfect pair. i think non-merzbow fans think that all his music must sound the same. but my experience is that each album is very unique although morphing through time developing and refining. for example the high pitched alien mind deprogramming sound that is featured on lop lop, surabhi, dead zone, kamadhenu, etc seems like a recurring attempt to unlock a code with the sound. i think surabhi is the peak of that particular sound induction. you have to blast surabhi and be ready right from the moment you press play. you can't start it low volume and gradually raise it. the charm of surabhi is how it is an instant blast into merzparanoia.
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Post by trollh on Nov 16, 2012 14:03:49 GMT -5
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Post by japanesebird on Nov 16, 2012 14:36:24 GMT -5
the kid looks like he's getting sleepy. i find this phenomenon interesting - that nonhumans and infants are more receptive to merzsound than most adults.
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Post by trollh on Nov 17, 2012 2:09:49 GMT -5
So the noise is from the tribal universe which we modern adult have lost
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Post by ashessehsa on Nov 17, 2012 14:57:03 GMT -5
Yeah, I was just talking about how noise is almost like music come full-circle with a friend of mine. Early human music was tribal and less structured, more about the interest in sound itself. Recording technology and such has made noise as it is today possible, and it is unstructured and concerned with the sound itself. It's neo-tribal music.
Remember my talking about overcoming preconceived notions of music in order to enjoy noise? Maybe young children would be more receptive to noise/experimental music, because they have fewer preconceptions about what music has to be. When you've listened to music for years and then discover noise, you have to let go of, or at least expand, a lot of your notions about music and general aesthetics that you've amassed over the years. A child doesn't have as much of that to let go of.
Heh, reminds me a chapter from the Tao Te Ching:
"In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can't be gained from interfering."
Just as we develop a sense of musical aesthetic over the course of life, human musical aesthetic has been developed over the course of humanity. It's all right and good and important, but in the end you have to be willing to let go of it all. It's just like life!
Eastern philosophy aside, I actually like Yaho Niwa much more than Dead Zone, but yes, they're similar. Spiral Honey is one of my favorites, a top 30 for sure.
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Post by ashessehsa on Nov 17, 2012 15:05:35 GMT -5
Oh! And the original thing I was going to say in response to this post, forgot. I once shared a Merzbow track on a friend's facebook, and apparently he opened it without realizing his computer speakers were all the way up, and it blasted really loudly when his cat was asleep. Scared the shit out of the poor cat, apparently it hissed and ran out of the room.
So yeah XD
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Post by japanesebird on Nov 18, 2012 2:36:55 GMT -5
excellent quote from mr tzu.
this is a great point. my tastes changed subtly as if in preparation for enjoying merzbow. i had been interested in eliane radigue and she has one early album in particular which reminds me of merzbow. i think they share some similar ideas as to the structure of a piece. in radigue's music like jetsun mila there is a musical narrative focusing on the meditative journey and enlightenment of a tibetan buddhist saint. there is a similar kind of mind bending going on but at a much slower rate. merzbow is almost always chaotic as if pushing hard to awaken the mind into higher functioning. such as the third track of anicca [another of my top favorites] where it starts whirling around - that IS the sound of anicca, the flow of impermanence. eliane radigue would totally get it if she heard it.
anyone find that after exposure to merzbow you find ordinary 3-5 minute songs very unsatisfying? they just whizz by in an instant. merzbow is perfect meditation music. live at henie onstad art centre. it's like what idoser pretends to be.
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Post by acsenger on Nov 18, 2012 3:35:02 GMT -5
Our cat doesn't mind noise at all. So far it seems she hasn't been annoyed by any kind of music. Although when I recently played a CD by Sachiko M & Philip Samartzis, she sometimes seemed focused on the sounds. I don't know if she was disturbed by them. I'd like to know how those really high, piercing sounds (and really low ones) affect cats. I believe their hearing range is much wider than that of humans. In any case, she wasn't visibly disturbed. As for the origins of music, it'd be very interesting to know what the first music played by humans sounded like. I don't know if there are any theories about this (there probably are, I just haven't looked for them). I think Derek Bailey wrote about this in his book about improvisation, although I haven't read it so I don't know if it's speculation or an accepted theory (I think he writes the first music must've been improvised).
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Post by japanesebird on Nov 18, 2012 7:34:37 GMT -5
if aliens were interested in the highest evolution of noise processing genius they would focus exclusively on merzbow and ignore mozart and all the rest. merzbuta - merzbuddha - surabhi - spiral honey - yaho niwa - dead zone - lop lop - anicca - dolphin sonar - dead leaves - hodosan - japanese birds vol 1,2,8,12,13 - frog - live in fluc vienna - live henie onstad - akasha gulva - those are the albums that come to my mind first when i think about how awesome merzbow is and how much i appreciate his output. there is just so much good stuff, amazing masterpiece level albums like anicca/merzbuddha/surabhi that are continually rewarding in the appropriate set and setting.
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Post by japanesebird on Nov 18, 2012 7:43:13 GMT -5
merzbow is a good reason to be alive
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Post by andypandy380 on Nov 18, 2012 13:18:20 GMT -5
This is a subject i keep finding my self thinking about, ive not really gone all that in depth with it, researching and stuff. but i have personally found merzbows music to have that kind of a quality, laying on my bed with earphones on feeling the most relaxed i've ever felt, obviously ive drifted off to other types of music before but i dunno, that just seems to be a good way to listen to merzbow. i've watched interviews with genesis p-orridge of throbbing gristle etc and he/she/it (?) has talked about early music and tribal music as a means to escape from the body and the physical realm, like a deeply spiritual thing, i dont remember exactly. apparently people experienced some very peculiar things at throbbing gristle shows... i dont really know if im a believer in all that, but i find it fascinating nonetheless. there was always a violin on stage at throbbing gristle shows because they believed that a certain combination of notes would open a sort of wormhole and transport them to a different dimension.... that's not the kind of thing you hear everyday on the subject of cats... i used to listen to a lot of thrash metal and junk as a teenager, and there's a bit in metallica's 'disposable heroes' where the intro riff fades out and there's this loud sample like a whooshing sound before the chugchuggachugga riffing comes in.... I've never seen my cat look so scared, suddenly sat bolt upright, not sure what she thought was going on haha. maybe i'll have to try some more noise experiments
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Post by ashessehsa on Nov 18, 2012 14:31:16 GMT -5
I don't know about the whole "if aliens were interested in the highest evolution of noise processing genius they would focus exclusively on merzbow and ignore mozart and all the rest" thing. There are a lot of problems with that statement. For one, why Merzbow exclusively when there is a lot of just as complex and interesting experimental music out there? And, for another, there is a lot of merit to plenty of classical music and to plenty of music that is conventional. I think the quote reeks of mindless pretension, to be honest.
As far as seeing music performed live being a spiritual experience goes, and I say this as a person who considers himself a pretty secular athiest, I'd say that seeing a good concert is about as close as I ever get to a spiritual experience. I just about live for music, and when I see a good show, it puts me in a fantastic place, a trance of sorts.
One more thing. This:
"anyone find that after exposure to merzbow you find ordinary 3-5 minute songs very unsatisfying? they just whizz by in an instant. merzbow is perfect meditation music. live at henie onstad art centre. it's like what idoser pretends to be."
YES I DO. I remember thinking that songs longer than 10 minutes were REALLY REALLY LONG, but after listening to so much merzbow, I don't see them as being as long as I used to. It really depends on the genre of music, though. 3-5 minute noise pieces seem really short to me a lot of the time, shorter than 3-5 minute "more musical" works. More interestingly, I can listen to a good 9-14 minute long song (some good post black metal type stuff pretty commonly has tracks of this length), and it doesn't seem too long for me at all. I feel like 7 minutes is sort of the point where one might usually start considering a song to be long, and I wouldn't disagree with them, but I don't tend to feel the longness of a song anymore unless it's longer than 10-12 minutes. But it really depends on the song. Some songs do NOT need to be as long as they are and they just drag on.
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Post by Bucketfel on Nov 19, 2012 3:01:26 GMT -5
2 things i would like to adress here:
1- Whoever suggests that Merzbow is better than any other musician arround should really reconsider. There is no way to determine if an artist is better than other, we only have our own notions of music and if you listen to noise you should be very well aware of this fact.
2- I like my long songs. Every band i listen has some long songs and all of them have taught me different things. I started developing more patience about how songs develop because of Sigur Ros, i learned to let improvisation take its course with Buckethead and meticulously crafted pieces from Dream Theater, and ive learned to respect that no matter the length of a song, its the idea that matters and it could be an amazing burst of creativity of 2 minutes or an epic journey of 25. Doesnt really matter as long as its engaging to me.
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Post by ashessehsa on Nov 19, 2012 14:00:55 GMT -5
I agree with Bucketfel 100% here! Saying Merzbow is "better" than X, Y, or Z is an entirely subjective statement, even if it's one that you support with a well reasoned argument. Merzbow is good for a number of reasons, and enjoying experimental stuff of the sort does require a certain mindset, but having that mindset doesn't make you a "better" appreciator of music necessarily. Just one of many different valid kinds.
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Post by trollh on Nov 20, 2012 2:46:16 GMT -5
Merzbow cannot better than everyone, because he is a comletely different world. Completely different from the other classical japnoise bands too!
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Post by whatjames on Nov 22, 2012 6:54:43 GMT -5
i played that utube clip to my 3year old son and he thought it was hilarious, so after having to play it to him numerous times i put some merzbow on stereo to give him a good listen, he only lasted a couple of minutes and ended up sooking and wanting his mum, the funny thing was my 1 year old was loving it.
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