Merzbow

One of the most essential early documents of Japanese noise, originally recorded and mixed at home in 1980 and released in 1981 on cassette by Lowest Music & Arts, now given the physical treatment it always deserved: a 2LP set housed in a natural birch wooden box with laser print, hand-numbered edition of just 99 copies. Ninety-nine! With a double-sided 42 x 60 cm poster, heavy card insert reproducing the original master tape cover, and black cardboard strip with album credits. An art object, plain and simple.

This is Masami Akita before the impenetrable noise walls that would define his legend - something rawer, more tactile, "a sound world still breathing and searching for its shape." Electric guitar, bass, tapes, electronics, prepared guitar, tabla, junk percussion, radio, egg cutter & noise - everything feeding into a tangle of wires and tape decks in a small Tokyo room. Across four vinyl sides, the sound unfolds as shifting collage: machine-like drones, metallic friction, detuned radio signals, tape manipulations and warped string sonorities. Like Kurt Schwitters building his Merzbau from found objects, Akita assembles sound from the refuse of modern life - "creating something greater than the sum of its broken parts."

Transferred from the original source, this edition reveals microscopic details the cassette could never deliver. Drop the needle anywhere and you're inside that 1980 room. Do NOT sleep on this one.