Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:00am

Live | Merzbow @ De Montfort Uni

I went to see Japanese noise musician Merzbow playing with the Dirty Electronics Ensemble.

It was an hour of quite intense "noise" made with 25 "sudofuzz" boxes and various laptops an other strange electronic instruments.

For something that could have been perceived as a racket(!) it was actually rather engaging and had a definite sense of composition.

I can't really claim to be a noise devotee as such, but I can now see where the interest lies. There is both a breadth of sound and temporal quality in the music which - to me - compensates for the lack of obvious melody and rhythm.

It also has a great "full-on" sensibility which resonates with my liking of anarcho-punk artists like Crass. Saying that, I can't guarantee Mr Merzbow is going to end up that high up in my last.fm statistics. More occasional listening I think :-)

Author: Sean Clark