Merzbow

 If Laptop Noise looks forward into the blinding glare of the digital, Tapestry of Noise looks outward and backward, unspooling an expansive grid of analogue and hybrid recordings that show how Merzbow’s classic language was woven together in the first place. Slowdown’s 6CD expansion assembles long, previously scattered or hard‑to‑access works into a single, overwhelming fabric that moves from twitching tape‑loop delirium to fully seared harsh‑noise architectures.

Early discs revel in collision and collage: proggy, chiming guitar figures, chopped easy‑listening fragments, ad jingles, radio ghosts and junk‑metal rattles, all overdriven and spliced into nervy, hyperactive constructions that hint at groove even as they constantly short‑circuit it. As the set progresses, the palette thickens; loops blur into sustained roars, metal percussion avalanches across the stereo field, feedback arcs and low‑end drones coalesce into the massive, immersive “walls” now synonymous with the Merzbow name.

Heard this way, Tapestry of Noise becomes exactly what its title suggests: a densely interlaced document of a pivotal era, one where playfulness and extremity, humour and devastation, constantly cross‑contaminate. The box set’s unified design and accompanying texts frame this not as a random trove, but as a carefully sequenced passage through different warp and weft of the same, ever‑evolving fabric.

CD1: Cloud Cock OO Grand (Another Mix);
CD2: Crash For Hi-Fi Tapes;
CD3: Travelling;
CD4: Untitled 1991 Vol.1;
CD5: Untitled 1991 Vol.2;
CD6: Untitled 1991 Vol.3.