Merzbow – Kibako

Rustblade

Disc one of Kibako, and “Nigatsu Nijuugonichi”‘s abrasive banquet of blow torch and bruised industry is definitely  a room clearer. Lurching around in shifts of attacking energies,  fearsome, intense – full of percussive dynamite snipping at squalling hordes. It’s a weird kind of rapture,  overwhelming the senses with spiky shards, enforced further by the screaming inferno of the following track “Operation Musashi.” Those clashing hertzological blizzards taking Schoenberg‘s gasps of tonality to their ultimate conclusion as a golden garbage of percussiveness under-runs a frantic exorcism of melody. Jackbooty BPMs hitting hollow snarings, drum solos spiralling off in quartzy whirls of dentist drill and Venetian Snares fuckeries of tempo.

“Askayama Shita Moeru”‘s harsh snowstorms kiss your senses with unintelligible yells and scrubbed perspex; it sounds like a demented Punch and Judy with angst-ridden strings thrown under its funnelling cortex. A scalding sink hole over which a dry rub of violin levitates like a bloated chorus of dolphins shadowing the steam train tractions, crippled in corporal punishment below. Screech and scorch stiletto(ed)  over in energised corruption. The experience has been super loud so far, and listening on headphones it’s literally stabbing my temples so I’m  thankful the torrent is eased for “Kikoezu Mori (0303).” A controlled semi-ambience of slow ill-ease that gives me wows a plenty. Those roulette canters and ghost bows let over to a monstrously satisfying drama of splintering heaviness.  Literally feels like it’s crumbling in on itself, like early SPK meeting a Byzantine Flower(ised) catechism. A rheumatoid drone and zithered aftermath to die for, that lush almost cinematic zeal of falling architectures.

Disc two returns you to piercing assault, to which a liberal sprinkling of bongos is applied – somehow incongruously in all that fury until the other layers cut and chase them around in retractive slides. The violin doing its own redux of “Black Angel’s Death Song” swept in clawing brackets of pink and white displacement.  A dribble of aqualung sucking perversely at this well crafted affair, finally machine gunned to death. You’re expecting more of the same to follow, but “BBB” cuts out the high end sting in a rhapsody of  incessant sawing and an unzipped latex cupboard of tumbling drum kits, questions replaced by  questions as the visceral mixture slams your lobes like a nasty toddler banging on pans to the thawing of ice caps…

“FFF” furthers this in a tasty low-slung rebound encircled by volatile violin. It’s all bracket fed and ratchetty, the  tambourine showers like falling nails as a shoal of jabbing sharks raspily collapses into a battle with typewriters and PVC-clad shopping trolleys, the air throttled in metallics and flaking resin. “‘STSTST”  –  what’s with all these reductive titles? An attempt to label the sounds with some comic book Kaaapowww? – If that was the case they would surely be infinitely longer… more expressive? This Schimpfluch flower of a track certainly deserves more, those tone choked weals are awesome, the echoed metal too. Everything’s roaring out of the speakers like an industrialised animal blasted sideways, cross sworded in peaking texturals. A valve-played flood of Test Department(s) rupturing in numbed punches, obscured, then pulled gregariously into focus, only to be given over to angry swarms and pumping sine slides of sci-fi(ed) Theremin in a factory dissonance of hummingbirds in violent convulsion.

Brilliant stuff… Mr Akita Masami certainly delights in another tortured bout of ecstasy.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-