Review Summary: WARNING: MAY CONTAIN BIRDS
What sets Japanoise legend Merzbow’s 2013 release apart from his other 400+ “musical” endeavours is how, rather whimsically, its sonic halls are constructed almost entirely out of
birbs. The mangled drumwork, for example, was actually produced through the use of mummified barn owns, each banged and beaten like bruised bongos throughout this 20-minute fuzzbomb. See, too: one mighty death-squawk of an ex-frightened-and-now-sadly-pureed goldfinch, the congealed-squishy remains of meat-grinded pheasant + hole-punched peregrine, and some rather disgruntled but mostly unmolested “coos” of a lost city pigeon. Each cry and tweet forms the meat and bones of black white and red all over
thing. Despite its apparent abattoir aesthetics, though,
Grand Owl Habitat is, unexpectedly, really quite pleasant: a feathery, warm embrace of round edges, pillowy pastures and certainly not containing any ear-splitting heart-shrivelling head-cracking screms oh no no no no…
Okay i lied im sorry:
Grand Owl Habitat is, disappointingly, bird-free. However(!), it does have a rather bird-like quality (bear with me). The only discernible motif within this smol-noisy-boi is this weird desperate glitchy shrill
caw, raven-adjacent /// eagle-esque, which is stretched and pulled and morphed and forcefully
willed into all manner of contorted balloon animal shapes across this brisk-manic listen.
This birdsong starts out as a rave gone wrong, jostling w/ big bassy dark DnB (ish/notreally) shenanigans before being buried beaten bloody beneath toxic gristly sludge. The patterns, then, shift: the chirping dances with-in-under-around the fuzz, the pairing coming together with a lot less rhythm and a lot more
cocaine. Violent tweeting becomes psychedelic and zoomy and you’re spinning god you’re spinning as you listen faster spinning faster and then still spinning oh yes it opens slowly then wider then fully and then there’s space and structure and less spinning and and and and--
Peace. Things quiet down at the 10-min mark. You breathe. Industrial things begin to whirr to life. It is okay. Do not be afraid. Everything is going according to the plan. The birb is still there. He is made of metal now. He is going to kill you. He has succeeded. Oh.
The afterlife is louder than you expected. It bubbles and spatters and overflows into circa-riffy-almost-grind territory, the fuzz giving way to reckless aggression and a dreadful,
dreadful pounding. The totality of it all is (clearly) indescribable but, if you would like some words, please consider sinister, unforgiving, relentless, crimson, chrome, ears, ringing, death, and becoming. What do you think? I kinda like it.
So, how does
Grand Owl Habitat actually stack up against Merzbow’s gargantuan back catalogue? Do not ask silly questions. ‘Tis but a drop of hell in a sea of hell on a planet of hell that I am not qualified to summarise. What I can confirm, however, is that for the uninitiated, like myself, this bleak-barbed birdbox is a mystifying and beguiling place to visit, which, perhaps, is the greatest compliment I can give to any album in a genre I know nothing about. I want to hear more. I need to hear more. I don’t know if I’ll like it. I don’t know if I care. Maybe you’ll feel the same.
