"For many years, I collected every new Merzbow release. I stopped when I realised I couldn’t keep up with playing them; some were still in their shrinkwrap after a year. I didn’t keep up with Merzbow’s output in the last 15 years and only heard what I was sent. I had no idea what a collaboration between Merzbow’s Masami Akita and Agencement’s Hideaki Shimada would be like. The latter is a violin player whose first two LPs from the late 1980s are classics with hectic playing and might include some tape manipulation. Shimada returned in recent years with slightly more traditional improvised music, so how would that work with Merzbow’s stream-of-noise approach? Would he drown all violin sounds and electronics rule over instruments?

I was in for a surprise. I don’t know how this album was, together in one studio, separately recorded at home (the cover indicates the latter). Still, the violin is recognised as a violin, and there’s no wall of electronics approach by Akita here. If anything, I’d say Merzbow mastered max/MSP and delivered a live sampling of the violin, transforming these sounds in the computer and playing them in the mix. There is a lot of granular pitching, all very short and just as improvised as Agencement’s violin. We often forget Masami’s start in music was playing improvised percussion. On a few occasions, it seems Masami uses a bit of the old effects, and in a few instances, one might think it’s all going to explode in traditional Merzbowian noise. Yet, it only happens briefly and returns to the heavily processed acoustic side. That said, the music has a noise aspect, especially how it was recorded. It has that direct, close-to-the-microphone approach, scratching and rubbing strings loudly and forcefully. It is a great release of noisy improvisation and a surprise for Merzbow fans (unless I missed something in the last 15 years in Merzbow’s development)." - Frans de Waard