Dec 21

Dec 21 Album Review : Merzbow - Cafe OTO (2023)

Japanese noise legend Masami Akita has been recording music since before I was born. You might know him under his stage name Merzbow. The man is only four years younger than my freakin’ dad and released well over 500 albums over his forty-three years career. He’s to noise music what basically The Beatles, Metallica and The White Stripes are to rock, but all rolled up in one. You don’t ever need to get into noise, but if this is something you wish to pursue, you’d have a lifetime of music only with him.

My dude released a 50 CDs boxed set at some point and I have no idea whether anyone ever listened to the entire thing.

That’s why he’s “hood famous” in extreme music and basically no other noise artists are. Merzbow has seven releases to his name for 2023 alone on Spotify and while it’s not easy to keep track of what he does because he collaborates a lot, that number is probably higher. I don’t know whether Cafe OTO was released on November 3rd like its entry says or in 2017 as specified on Wikipedia *, but what I do know is that it’s one of my favorite Merzbow releases ever. It’s one thing I’ve learned about noise music: don’t bother with specifics. Just enjoy the chaos.

Cafe OTO is a whopping 105 minutes-long live performance split in two sets called Untitled Knife 1 and Untitled Knife 2. Both are over fifty minutes-long. They start the exact same way, with high pitched static that slowly gets overtaken by various other frequencies, like a shortwave radio attempting to communicate with the dead. Whatever you hear through the traffic jam of signals Merzbow is building is really up to what ideas you can conjure in your head, but I’m hearing growls and hisses in Untitled Knife 1 that make or may not be there. But it doesn’t matter if they are. A noise performance kind of needs a listener to make sense of its onslaught, so its meaning belongs to me as much as it belongs to Masami Akita.

My favorite part of Untitled Knife 1 comes when Merzbow starts playing with lower frequencies. At about the thirteen minutes mark, there’s this pulsating sound that might either be a washing machine or a flying saucer that adds a new layer to the performance. Starting from there, it evokes feelings of being caught inside a laundromat while something apocalyptic is happening outside and overtaking your senses. The clash of the highs and the lows in this piece is anxiety-inducing. It’s like reality is corrupted and starts slipping under your feet. This is exactly why I listen to noise. To get into these mental places that are inaccessible if you’re not actively bathing in this river of sound. It’s like having a nightmare in a controlled environment.

Untitled Knife 2 is more aggressively harsh than its twin performance. Once again. Merzbow uses white noise as a canvas in order to semi-consciously paint a portrait with sounds. He expertly distracts you with these aggressive glitches while he’s playing with the white noise frequencies on the other sides and triggers these voices-like waves that feel so terrifying. There’s so much going on that at some point you either surrender or start focusing on one element. What’s so brilliant about it is that he eventually inverts the two pillars of his performance. The white noise becomes louder than the glitches, enhancing that otherworldly shortwave radio feeling from Untitled Knife 1.

The pulsating waves make a comeback on this song also, like a malignant alien present that subdues almost all the other sounds at some point. It’s stifling the life out of the performance. Merzbow patiently built his mood back up by incorporating glitching high frequencies little by little until chaos reigns again. Untitled Knife 2 climaxes and ends up with these killer rhythmic patterns of various textures and frequencies that pulse at various, contradicting paces, celebrating the conflicting nature of existence itself. It’s both terrifying and soothing not to try and understand the music. To let it come to you and build meaning almost like a fractal would. When this second performance ends, you’re filled with sound, but empty of everything else. It’s a reset button for the soul.

Merzbow’s most famous album (or should I say infamous?) is Pulse Demon, but I can’t really listen to it for more than five minutes without making my eardrums bleed. There’s no right or wrong way to listen to his music, but Cafe OTO is as good a starting place as any. It has these harsh noise hallmarks, but its emphasis on hypnotic rhythms and its use of static shape it into somewhat of a recognizable object. I find the experience of listening to Cafe OTO akin to psychoanalysis. It’s a psychological experience you’re in charge of where you have to shape meaning. It doesn’t have any in and of itself, but it’s up to you what you want to get out of the experience.

Cafe OTO conjures powerful images and patterns inside your mind. Then it frees you up from other images and patterns that kept you prisoner. Noise music is something that chooses you more than you choose it, so I don’t need to tell you to listen to Cafe OTO. If it called you already, you know.