Review Summary: A noisy yet ambient soundscape. Most of the time, anyway.
Merzbow continues to evolve his combination of loops, noise, and ambience, with greater effect than his previous albums. With this album he leans far more into ambient loops, and uses the harsh noise as a bit of a background setter. The real meat and potatoes of this album is the title track, but the first and third track more so experiments with noise rather than ambience.
The first track, 1339, uses more harsh noise and the ambient loop is more in the background. I think it overstays its welcome a bit at 13 and a half minutes. But I do like that most of this album subtly shifts into different loops over time, as with this track. It's a bit more reminiscent of his earlier work, but the loops do make it more accessible and easier to listen to. A pretty solid first track, I would have trimmed it down to 10 minutes personally.
The longest track, Dust of Dreams, is 37 minutes long. And I really feel that it's a perfect amount of time for everything Merzbow wanted to do. It’s very calming as the noise lets the loops slowly transition into each other. Sometimes he lets the noise take over, but eventually the calming loops kick back in. It’s hypnotic and everything contracts just enough for everything to work. Enough variance to keep a more in depth listen worth it too, which is pretty much all i can ask for in this more ambient era of Merzbow. Top tier Merz right here, I would advise to at least listen to this track, above all else.
The last track, 0716, has heavily bitcrushed and distorted loops with harsh noise to go alongside it. I do enjoy that he’s experimenting with his new loop/harsh noise method with more abrasive noises. The repetitive loop is heavy as he kind of just goes wild with the harshness of it all, which is a very stark contrast to the 37 minute ambient session that we just listened to. I kind of look at it like a jumpscare to make sure you’re still awake. It calms down for a little bit before he goes right back into the abrasive noise.
If you like noise, listen to this. If you like ambience and don’t mind a bit of noise alongside it, listen to this. If you don’t understand noise and don’t want to, don’t. This is still a Merzbow release. It brings the best of both worlds for this era of his sound. Noisy and engaging music alongside calming ambience.
Recommended Tracks: Dust of Dreams, 0716.
