Masami Akita & Eiko Ishibashi — Kouen Kyoudai

With this album, the oddly matched pair of musicians take an unusual approach to collaboration, hiding Merzbow's piercing squalls at a near microscopic tamed volume behind Eiko's delicately rippling reverberant tonal drifts, which would be easily overwhelmed if the levels were anything like balanced.

It is an attempt at a tasteful, ambient presentation of Merzbow's sound, which is often the most jarring, shrill and penetrating sound texture possible.  His intensely physical and abrupt sound is like a blade that cuts into the mind and the eardrums.  I find it quite therapeutic, as it seems to neutralize all restless thoughts in the mind with its arresting immediacy, but certainly it is lacking the sensation of restfulness and space which exudes from Eiko's contributions here, an emotive form of chordal melodic ambience sounds created from heavily processed piano improvisations, not unlike the work of Troum.

Akita does not hold back with the thrashing ecstatic brutality of his harsh noise performance for the majority of this recording.  On the contrary, the only reason this is the most ambient Merzbow recordings is because Akita is mixed at least 20 decibels lower than Eiko for most of the album.  He fades into violent prominence for dramatic effect on several occasions, later receding or completely disappearing for several minutes, resulting in sections with only Eiko's soft, watery and organic tones.  The introductions and removals of Akita's violence are skillfully handled, and the result is a very listenable album.

The two sounds do cohere in the end, a more active and rigorous mental journey than presented by the zone of elysian restfulness Eiko's sounds create on their own.  Her sounds form the prismatic halo of emotional meaning around Akita's towering and austere astral architectures, shapes burned forcibly into cochlea.

The 2nd track of the two, "Junglegym", is less sonically dense and abrasive to the ear, but actually feels more uneasy and dissonant than the album's first half.  Here, Eiko too engages in forboding discordance, a sustained anxiety with unknown purpose.

Those truly appalled by the sound of Merzbow's work may still remain unconvinced, as the man's love for the scorching power of unhindered static has not diminished since the 1980's, but this album is what it sets out to be, the most artful and subtley musical presentation of Merzbow's psychic disruption tools thus far heard.  As a long time fan of Merzbow, this is undoubtedly one of the most memorable and replayable recordings in his long discography.