Merzbow — Cafe OTO

Café OTO is a double CD set that brings together two fifty-minute sets from Japan’s master of noise Merzbow. The recordings date back to 2016- when the japanoise artist played at London’s Café OTO. 

The two CDs come presented in a matt mini gatefold- on its outside we get a picture of Merzbow’s set up for the sets, and on its back cover is a picture of the chalkboard detailing the show's times. A nice simple-yet-effective bit of packaging. The two sets date from Saturday, October 1st 2016.

So on disc number one, we have “Untitled Knife I” which runs at fifty minutes and six seconds.  The track opens with a wide 'n' thick mid-ranged searing tone roll- like a slipping hand break amped-up. As we move on we shift through blends of cluttering mid-range chop, underfed by buried higher pitch sustain.  And dragged-out wooshes meeting baying tone loops. By the twenty-one-minute mark, we find a more set throbbing purr meeting swirling lines of mid-to-high pitch fork, race, and rattle. Around the thirty-two-minute mark, things get nicely manic- with rapid slicing highs, seesawing oscillations, and buckling gallops. 

Moving onto disc number two we have “Untitled Knife II” which rolls in at the longer fifty-four minutes and fifty-four seconds mark. We open with the thick blend of bludgeoning to hissing mids- which are topped by grating highs. At around the twenty-two-minute mark things pare back to just a blend of wayward electro chop ‘n’ drift- this is fairly soon added to by mixes of hiss, fork, and galloping roast. With the track taking on a faint rhythmic pulse from this point on-as we move from rapid cluttering slices, onto spinning hiss, phaser pull, and baying stretch/ pull.

Both sets here are fairly thick & often knotted in their layout. They are both fairly eventful in their unfold, as well as shifting in both texture and tone. I can’t say that this is top shelve Mezbow- as he does tend to reuse certain elements- yes there are a few surprising shifts along each set's length, but nothing too startling. So I’d say that both sets rather sit in the mid-range of Merzbow’s work- but that’s not to say you won’t be entertaining/ pull you in- it’s just all a little by the book.

So, finishing Café OTO will most certainly appeal to long-term Merz fans- as these are two solid enough noise sets. I say it may be all a bit too dense/ samey for those new to the project, but maybe play some samples to see if you get sucked in.