Merzbow

"The 12th series of the archive series, which started in 2018 and focuses on Merzbow's unreleased and unearthed recordings, includes "Drumorph", "Ensemble Drums", and "Arijigoku (Test Mix)", which contain recordings from 2008-2009, when Merzbow developed a style that incorporated drum performance. Arijigoku (Test Mix)", "Red Brick", "Groon Lesson", and "Pi-Eggplant". The boxed version of these albums is called "Drum & Noise".
Masami Akita was originally a drummer who was greatly influenced by psychedelic, progressive rock, and other free music of the 70s, but as Merzbow, he avoided the use of drums (except for the duo period with Sei Mizutani in the late 70s and Merzbow Null in the early 80s). This is the first time that Merzbow has used drums in a full-scale way in his solo works. Merzbow's most famous work in this style is the 13 Japanese Birds Series (Important Records), which was released over a year from 2008 to 2009. It all started in April 2008, the day after their London show, at Tin Pan Alley Studios, when they were recording for a new album to be released on Cold Spring Records in the UK. At that time, they recorded the live drums in the studio and combined them with computer noise, which became the beginning of their full-scale use of drums (this recording was included in "Anicca" (Cold Spring, 2008)). After returning to Japan, his drumming style evolved to include not only computerized instruments but also improvised noises, which led to "Arijigoku" (Vivo, 2008), "Protean World" (Noiseville, 2008), "Microkosmos" ( (Vivo, 2008), Protean World (Noiseville, 2008), and Microkosmos (Blossoming Noise, 2009).

At the same time, Akita met Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi, with whom he began to perform frequently overseas as a duo. The encounter with a drummer with whom he shared many similarities in musical background (familiar not only with metal and grindcore but also with Sun Ra and free jazz) led to Merzbow's pursuit of a style that incorporated drumming, and the duo became the basis for Merzbow's future work. As Merzbow returned to a drum-less style of music (i.e., a style that is not improvisational, even when drums are included), the recordings from this period that feature Akita's own drumming are valuable. The recordings in this box include some that show signs of full-fledged drum use, such as computer-based drum samples, some that were recorded in a rented studio and attempted to juxtapose live drum performance with noise, and some that were recorded using Roland V-Drums and completed entirely in Munemihouse, providing an overview of the flow involved in this approach." - Yorozu