Merzbow, Kikù Hibino

LP version. Rococo ∞ Echomatter is a full-length collaboration between the Chicago sound artist Kikù Hibino and Merzbow, the noise project of Masami Akita, released in 2026 by Superpang. Hibino sketched each track, Akita answered with noise, and Hibino then took a blade to the result. What comes out is Merzbow heard through someone else's editing.

Born in Nagoya, Hibino studied at Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus, known for its computer music laboratory. Around then, one night in a research lab, he came across a copy of Merzbow's Pulse Demon and stopped it partway through. In 2021 he started the imprint Signal Noise hoping to open it with a Merzbow record, and that plan brought the two together. His earlier Superpang albums went elsewhere: ambient on Fell to Fern (2022), beatmaking on Sky Trajectories (2024). The title came before the music. Rococo stands for the ceilings he saw in the Vatican and in Florence, ornament that leaves the eye nowhere to settle. The infinity sign stands for its lack of an end. Echomatter concerns a voice that stays on after a loss and becomes almost a physical thing, an idea he connects to Jean Cocteau's Orpheus. The work went back and forth as files. Hibino built the structures on a Prophet-6, an Antilope drum machine and Eurorack modules, and Akita added his noise. Hibino then edited it in Ableton, with abrupt cuts modelled on the jump cuts of Jean-Luc Godard. Alex Inglizian mixed the album at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. Eight tracks run just under 32 minutes. The opener, dB.XYZ, places the spoken French of Alexandra Cupșa inside gaps in the noise instead of over it, with beats and sub-bass pushing from below. saxxxrum sets the saxophone of Patrick Shiroishi against a wall of distortion and comes down to one held note and a low hum. Whitney Johnson (Matchess) adds viola and voice, and on ƒƒƒ fraa filum flammm her chopped vocals run into crashing textures that turn machine-like. The Quietus heard something "primal to the point of meteorological". Everything Is Noise and A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed both noted a Merzbow more measured and less abrasive than usual.

Limited-edition 12-inch vinyl. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M in Berlin, with design and cover artwork by Joe Gilmore.