|
Post by japanesebird on Dec 18, 2012 20:55:39 GMT -5
has anyone ever asked him how his ears are doing? sometimes i will get ear ache from hearing merzbow and stop listening for a while. it is not possible that i am listening to it louder than he must listen to his own sound through headphones while drumming or the volume of his live shows. so does he have tough ears or does he wear earplugs live? at what volume does he record and playback his own or other music? does he have a significant period of relative silence in his day to rest his ears? i read somewhere that on one album - maybe ouroboros - it says to listen at full volume on headphones. this must be a joke? that would be very damaging, no? i considered it for a moment, thinking that perhaps extreme volume might trip the brain into some esoteric state. but alas, i am a pussy and fear hearing damage.
|
|
|
Post by Bucketfel on Dec 18, 2012 21:54:04 GMT -5
ive wondered the same thing.
|
|
|
Post by ashessehsa on Dec 19, 2012 2:14:48 GMT -5
Heh, fearing hearing damage does not make you a "pussy," that is a very legitimate thing to be cautious about if you love music and want to spend your whole life enjoying it.
I have also wondered about this before! It seems probable that his hearing is dulled. I know mine isn't always the best, but I've been taking better care of it over the past few months and it's gotten to be just fine again. It was mostly when I picked up drumming and realized how much I needed earplugs that things went from worse and back to fine again.
|
|
|
Post by trollh on Dec 19, 2012 6:36:42 GMT -5
As Im working as a sound-engineer I should highly protect my ears and my hearing, but when I'm drunken I fuckin' love to listen Merzbow on high volume, for a while...
After 10 - 20 mins I must stop it.
|
|
|
Post by japanesebird on Dec 19, 2012 20:27:08 GMT -5
Heh, fearing hearing damage does not make you a "pussy," that is a very legitimate thing to be cautious about if you love music and want to spend your whole life enjoying it. I have also wondered about this before! It seems probable that his hearing is dulled. I know mine isn't always the best, but I've been taking better care of it over the past few months and it's gotten to be just fine again. It was mostly when I picked up drumming and realized how much I needed earplugs that things went from worse and back to fine again. i have noticed a certain undercurrent of thought at rock shows, around rock bands, wherein the use of earplugs is dismissed as dampening too much of the sound. some people even seem offended if you use earplugs hearing them play. it's not because i don't like them, but because i don't like to feel like my ears have been raped. it is strange i guess that i'm so obsessed with merzbow and yet typically dislike other loud music. there is always something abstractly ambient about merzbow, even at his harshest i never feel that the intensity and volume is being used against me, as the carrier of a negative emotion, but rather that it is used as sound as presence, as perceptible presence, almost tangible in how you feel it filling the room. with a lot of rock music, i feel pummeled and raped by the sound. with merzbow, i feel liberated by it. the chaos masami akita whirls up seemingly effortlessly becomes the only harmony conceivable, it becomes the stuff of my internal landscape, my thought rides along the perception of the merzsound like a surfer.
|
|
|
Post by acsenger on Dec 20, 2012 0:09:36 GMT -5
There was a Merzbow special on a German music TV channel about 10 years ago (it's partly on Youtube) where Akita says his hearing is still good and he uses earplugs when on the streets and on an airplane.
I don't know about live shows, but I can't imagine him not using earplugs and still having good hearing after decades of playing live.
|
|
|
Post by japanesebird on Dec 20, 2012 11:00:45 GMT -5
There was a Merzbow special on a German music TV channel about 10 years ago (it's partly on Youtube) where Akita says his hearing is still good and he uses earplugs when on the streets and on an airplane. I don't know about live shows, but I can't imagine him not using earplugs and still having good hearing after decades of playing live. haha, so he wears them on the street? is tokyo that noisy or he just likes to isolate himself as much as possible? his music could perhaps be seen as an isolationist music. there is that quote where he said he wanted to use his sound to block out all other noise, "i suppose that is a fascist way of using sound". i hear a strong influence of nature in his music, he has often replicated sounds of cicadas, wind, water, variety of birds, various mammals or used samples in such a way that show a keen sensitivity to the flow of the natural world. the sound of the world, the birds, the wind, even the cars now, form a kind of earth symphony that plays day by day for millions of years. at dawn the birds wake up and begin singing, the main performance begins and lasts till dawn, then a subtle night symphony begins, with more relative spacious silences between parts, the mystery of darkness and silence. and it is all uncoordinated, with no conductor, no one running the show. "nature" personalized as "she" may not even exist, all conditioned things may simply function without any cosmic string pulling. it is a chaos with moments of psychedelic harmony. sometimes the doves that coo hoo hoo out of sync all afternoon suddenly hoo hoo together perfectly or appear one after another in precise timing i think this is similar to some merzbow albums. for example, anicca seems to be total noise chaos once the drums kick in, yet after what must be over 25 full listens to the album there are so many parts that stand out in memory, little 'noise riffs' that strike me as calculated and intentional rather than random - much like kurt cobain @ nirvana live & loud, during scentless apprentice, during the noise solo, he "pretends" to touch his monitor as if it's broken, and then run off to the amps behind him. in reality, he is fooling the audience, playing a rockstar trick, pretending to be playing unconcerned and at random, yet actually going into a well rehearsed 'noise riff' that required precise and exact and masterful playing. kurt cobain was as skilled with guitar noise as masami akita is with his own merztar noise and all else. likewise, in "live in fluc wan vienna with balazs pandi" the vinyl rip, there is a certain sustained note which sounds like a sample from a deathcore band like fuck your shadow from behind, or something similar, and the piece peaks around this ominous tone as if it were a rehearsed symphony.
|
|
|
Post by acsenger on Dec 21, 2012 11:06:59 GMT -5
Apparently he wears them on the street, yes. Given that Tokyo is one of the largest cities on Earth and the population density is probably insane, I'm sure it's very noisy. I don't know if he also wants to isolate himself. I've also thought of wearing earplugs on the street, but I think the parts of Sydney where I tend to walk aren't noisy enough to warrant that. Of course, it still wouldn't harm.
|
|
|
Post by ashessehsa on Dec 21, 2012 14:08:48 GMT -5
there is always something abstractly ambient about merzbow... Absolutely, I have thought this for a ling time. Merzbow's work is very often strangely ambient in my view. You also said "i think this is similar to some merzbow albums. for example, anicca seems to be total noise chaos once the drums kick in, yet after what must be over 25 full listens to the album there are so many parts that stand out in memory, little 'noise riffs' that strike me as calculated and intentional rather than random" Interesting you should mention that, because the first time Merzbow "clicked" for me was one night when I was listening to 1930 half-asleep. For some reason it just really seemed to make sense and I was reminded of a guitar solo on the last track. I remember trying to explain this to people but failing.
|
|
|
Post by japanesebird on Dec 22, 2012 14:33:38 GMT -5
you may be aware that the technical name for that half-asleep state is the hypnagogic state. or 'the twilight zone'. it is akin to a third mode of consciousness; not waking, not sleeping, but inbetween. with the eyes closed, the mind interprets the other sensory information [hearing, feeling, etc] in a subtler way. visual processing takes up a lot of memory in our brain computers. it is like a battle for attention. evolutionarily speaking the reason is obvious: mankind relied mostly on sight for safety, with hearing being second and the rest all equally less useful. ancient man did not dwell in blissful unawareness inside office buildings, apartment complexes, etc. he lived in the wilderness around the wild predators and other deadly creatures of the jungles and woods and had to be aware at all times of what was around him.
so our experience of life is compromised by this outward-focused use of the mind, focused on outer phenomena rather than inner phenomena which seems to arise out of the ether of the mind and subside back into it. however, it takes but a few preparations to allow the mind to inwardize itself and enter the hypnagogic state. relaxation, motionlessness, closed eyes. these are basically all that is necessarily. one should simply sit without moving, totally relaxed, with eyes closed. the mind will begin the process naturally by itself if you provide these conditions. the mind does not want to remain in the left-hemispheric conscious mode all the time, that is just survival mode basically. it wants to revert to the more impersonal, primordial right-hemispheric subconscious mode wherein it can experience the suchness of reality with psychedelic, synesthetic enjoyment rather than left-hemispheric conscious apprehension, stress, confusion, existential agony, and all the other qualities of our mundane conscious minds.
merzbow of all music i've heard really comes to life in the hypnagogic state. i've heard it on various drugs, they can enhance it, but never like just listening sober, in the hypnagogic state. then the right brain takes over and interprets the noise in richer ways, as if unlocking secrets of the sound.
to induce the most hypnagogic merzbow experience i would suggest listening in complete darkness with eyes open for a while gazing into the dark until they close naturally. sit in a chair, don't lay down or you'll fall into an unconscious sleep. to enter hypnagogic state, the idea is not to go totally unconscious but to slip through the gap and remain conscious while notably introverted within oneself. then you can simply abide within like that and come out back to normal level again if you need to and then go back again.
it is interesting what relation hypnagogia has to drug use. many drug addicts would benefit immeasurably from a knowledge of hypnagogia and the practice of meditative methods to enter the hypnagogic state while sober. it is that that they are seeking - their 'true self', 'inner self', right-brain self that is void of the self-critical left-brain ego. they become reliant on their drug even when it fails them. there are better highs, better states, better trips to be had without drugs - via the hypnagogic state. and it has no side effects, it is energizing and healing to the brain and regular meditation has been proven to benefit the brain.
it was via the hypnagogic state that i realized experientially how our visual processing occurs in frames and does not perceive a complete flow of movement at all. it happened when the image of geese drifting across a lake in triangular formation, leaving ripples behind them, appeared in my mind from the memory of a lake i go to regularly. while seeing it in person, i had mistakenly thought the perception was flowing. however what i saw in the hypnagogic state was a series of frames like those little stickers they used to include in cereal boxes, which we put on the corners of pages to flick through them and see a moving, changing picture.
|
|
|
Post by ashessehsa on Dec 24, 2012 0:52:23 GMT -5
All very interesting! I find myself enjoying Merzbow the most when I'm half-asleep, so yeah, I pretty much agree. I'll have to make a point of listening to his stuff more when going to sleep.
|
|
|
Post by Bucketfel on Dec 24, 2012 3:51:24 GMT -5
I listen to music when im distracted in my computer. Is when i click the most often with any given musical piece.
|
|
|
Post by japanesebird on Dec 24, 2012 13:30:03 GMT -5
I listen to music when im distracted in my computer. Is when i click the most often with any given musical piece. oh, same here, most of the time. i spend a lot of time reading books on the computer and 99% of the time have music playing and for the past several months it's mostly been merzbow. i'm feeling burned out on noise today though, so i'm listening to the smooth sounds of tatsuhiko asano's album space watch. i am no stranger to enjoying yellow magic orchestra's first album and dancing around my room with cosmic joy. sometimes i feel that the universe is so empty of substance and inherent meaning that all we can do is float on our rock through eternity enjoying the scenery. we are the flow of time-space experiencing itself. i enjoy isolation, loneliness. it pushes me to some kind of revelation of the nature of the cosmos.
|
|