‘Minazo is Merzbow's tribute to the beloved male elephant seal who lived life in captivity at a Tokyo aquarium. Masami Akita often visited the seal at the aquarium and was allowed to access Minazo behind the scenes. Minazo includes many phototographs and an essay by Masami Akita as well as illustrations by Jenny Akita.’
These are the words used to describe Minazo on important records releases page:
A ringing sound, quickly followed by bleeps and a thumping- almost like a hear beat. The bleeps continue and deeper thuds come in, things begin to get more chaotic the sounds are coming from all angles. You hear a screaming guitar- the sound of minazo crying out? Merzbow seems to respond to this cry with furious bouts of noise. He’s angry.
On minazo merzbow takes a step back from his recent releases exploring beats and focuses on manipulating sounds designed to represent the live of minazo and his treatment. The guitars scream and sing in a manner that allows minazo to allows minazo to be heard through all the oppressive noise. The bleeps sounds strangely natural and organic and the whole thing seems to feel as if it is being heard under water.
It is often difficult to describe the sound merzbow creates with out having heard it for yourself. But the atmosphere he creates represents the isolation of the confinement Minazo lived in and the relentless of this album allows little room for escape there are periods were the intensity drops slightly but these often come back to ferocious sounds displaying clearly the anger of this releases. Although merzbows discography is so wide and difficult to explore this release is a good starting point to a collection, merzbow is not for everyone I would go as far as saying he’s not for most people but people who can put aside any preconceptions and allow the sound to do it’s stuff will find a vast collection of complex and emotional works.
Samples of merzbow can be heard on important records website.
