Merzbow — Takahe Collage
The CD release comes in a DVD sized card digipak which takes in on it’s front cover a rather nice, colourful & tripped out piece of collage artwork that takes in star fishes, pink flowers, crickets, layers of different textures, and a picture of some form of wading bird.
On offer here are three tracks that last between twelve minutes to just over the half an hour mark, and each track is built around a set & looped electro backdrops which Mezbow darts, slices, and sears with all manner of noise texturing & Merzgitar shapes.
First up we have the title track which is the longest piece here at the 32.26 mark. The track is built around a locked down churning & chopping line of mid paced electro texturing, and over the tracks just over half-an-hour run time Merzbow throws in a twist ‘n’ turning mixture of noise textures that take-in: whistling searing’s, galloping static layers, oscillating & mind expanding high pitch tones darts, squawking banks of baying noise, roaring chugs & drives, and beyond. The track kept my attention through-out, as Merzbow kept shifting & altering the noise textures, and the fixed repetitive texturing is fairly pleasing too. It’s just that the track sounds rather like similar stuff he’s done in the past with not quite the same inventive spark to it.
Next is the 29.29 of “Tendenko”, & this track opens with an almost complete noise-out of slowly spurting white static wash- that’s darting with chugging, boring, and slightly searing textural darts. Fairly soon things start to firm up with a little more structure & shape as mid ranged slightly alternating shifting /chopping white static textures propel the track along in a fairly lose yet shifting manner. Once again Merzbow twists & run through various pitchers of noise mater, including some nice stretched out fog horn like sustains. The track kept my attention fairly well through-out & it’s a well executed , but once again it sounded like something I’ve heard from the past from Merzbow in past.
Lastly we have “Grand Owl Habitat”, which is the shortest track at the 11.59, but for me it’s the most effective track here too. It's propelled along by a more defined & chopping rapid chugging electronic industrial tone- it has a almost stomping Indian dance vibe to it . Once again with have more noise trails & sears, but they seem a bit more urgent & forking having more merzgitar feel to it
So “Takahe Collage” is a competent & well made example of Merzbow’s psychedelic seared noise making. It’s just that most of it didn’t really grab me as doing some thing new or particular different from what he has done in the past