Merzbow

Sugamo Flower compresses a particular 2011 moment in Merzbow’s practice into two long tracks that feel like one continuous, mutating organism. Both pieces are sourced from performances recorded that year, later repurposed as material for “Sugamo Flower Festival” on the split LP Freak Hallucinations with Actuary (2012), which gives the album a double life: document of an event and quarry for subsequent work. Central to the sound is the return of the Korg AX30 multi‑effect pedal, a unit Masami Akita had used extensively in the 1990s and brings back here as both nostalgic hardware and brute-force tone shaper. Rather than a retro gesture, its reappearance anchors the record in a specific, hands-on approach to noise where pedals are played as instruments, constantly tweaked to steer the storm.