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Merzbow

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Wikimp3 information about the music of Merzbow. On our website we have 70 albums and 26 collections of artist Merzbow. You can find useful information and download songs of this artist. We also know that Merzbow represents Electronica genres.

Biography

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There is no need to argue: Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The favorite moniker of Japanese Masami Akita appears on hundreds of albums. The name comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' famous work Merzbau, which he also called The Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Akita's choice reflects his fondness for junk art (through Schwitters' collage method) and his fascination with ritualized eroticism, namely in the form of fetishism and bondage. All these elements constitute the Merzbow persona.

Akita was born in Tokyo in 1956. He grew up with psychedelic rock and began to play the guitar in progressive rock cover bands, in particular with drummer Kiyoshi Mizutani, who would remain a frequent collaborator. After high school, Akita studied literature and visual arts in college. There he discovered free jazz and studied seriously the ideas of Dada and the surrealists (Salvador Dali remained a big influence). Akita gradually withdrew himself from the rock scene and began experimenting in his basement with broken tape recorders and feedback.

In 1979, Akita created his own cassette label, Lowest Arts & Music, and released the first of many albums, Metal Acoustic Music. Infiltrating the then-burgeoning network of underground industrial music, Merzbow lined up one cassette after another, packaged in Xeroxed collage art. His harsh noise eschewed the primitive anger found on this scene (Throbbing Gristle, Man Is the Bastard) to reach a Zen state, calm inside the storm. Mizutani occasionally appeared on some of the raw material, as would other musicians (like Reiko.A), but in essence Merzbow is Akita and would always be. The artist/group made low-budget live appearances in Tokyo, but his main focus remained on his art production and his writing (he is erudite in 20th century art and the Japanese tradition of bondage).

In 1983, Akita's first LP, Material Action 2 (NAM), was released on Chaos/Eastern Works in Japan. Out of the mail-art network and into the specialty record shops, Merzbow began to attract some eyes and ears. Akita started a second label, ZSF Produkt, which put out dozens of 7"s, EPs, LPs, and more cassettes. By the late '80s, other record labels had begun to pay interest, namely the Australian Extreme. Collaborative (1988), an LP recorded with Achim Wollscheid, brought the Merzbow sound to more international listeners, and slowly Akita invaded other territories. By the mid-'90s, his reputation verged on the mythical. He toured Europe and the U.S., and had high(er)-profile releases on Extreme, RRR, and Alchemy.

In 1997, Extreme announced it was putting in production a 50-CD box set, Merzbox. It was finally released three years later. It includes 30 reissues dating as far back as 1979, and 20 discs' worth of unreleased material, and remains the biggest musical statement in the history of noise music. More widely available albums for Alien8 Recordings (Aqua Necromancer, 1998) and Tzadik (1930, 1998), combined with constant worldwide touring, have taken the artist out of mythical status and propelled him into the legendary. In the late '90s, Akita started to collaborate with other artists outside the Merzbow moniker, namely with Mike Patton (as Maldoror) and Otomo Yoshihide. Both a prolific composer and performer, Akita continued his string of Merzbow releases into the next century, including Frog (2001), V (2003), Merzbird (2004), the two-volume set Minazo (2006), Merzbear and Synth Destruction (2007), Dolphin Sonar (2008), and the multi-volume 13 Japanese Birds series issued monthly between January 2009 and January 2010. He followed this massive undertaking with Another Merzbow Records, released by the U.K's Dirtier Promotions imprint in April of 2010. Ever prolific, and with a huge backlog of archival material, Akita released ten collections in 2011, as well as an additional four live sets, and four more albums appeared in 2012, along with the box sets Merzphysics and Merzmorphosis. ~ François Couture, Rovi

Title: Anicca

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Rock, Alternative

Title: Merzbuddha

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock

Title: Mercurated

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock

Title: Merzbeat

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Metamorphism

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Alternative, J-Pop

Title: Scandal

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Experimental

Title: Dust of Dreams

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Arijigoku

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock, Classical

Title: Ikeburo Dada

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Spiral Honey

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock, Pop

Title: Monoakuma

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Zophorus

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Offering

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Merzbuta

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock

Title: Konchuuki

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Industrial

Title: Nezumimochi

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Tomarigi

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Techno, Dancefloor, Dance Pop

Title: StereoAkuma

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Hard Lovin' Man

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Fantail

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Puroland

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: Green Wheels

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Title: CATalysis

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Experimental

Title: Split w/ Bastard Noise

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Rock

Title: Dolphin Sonar

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica, Rock

Title: Strange City

Artist: Merzbow

Genre: Electronica

Collections

Title: Berghain 09

Genre: Techno

Featuring albums

Title: Our Last Day

Artist: Discordance Axis

Genre: Rock

Title: Sol

Artist: Seeming

Genre: Electronica, Industrial, Synth Pop, Indie

Title: Auditory

Artist: Various Artists

Genre: Electronica

Genres