01.25.07

Of Noise and Data, Pt. 1: “Noise”

Posted in Bands, Music, Society and Culture at 10:37 am by Moody

Merzbow: Metamorphism

Noise — true and unadulterated noise — is not the chaos from which order emerges, it is the great annihilator that devours all order. The television, the radio, the movie, the CD; the text, the word, the letters; emotions, senses, thought; in the end, noise consumes them all, consumes everything but itself. Noise is the yawning void, the infinite string of random ones and zeros tangling and raveling in a blinding light of overload and feedback, simultaneously attack and decay. It is the amorphous and indefinite haze of shattered alphabets, all babble and insentient glossolalia wrapped, bound and layered over and over in and by and with discordant choral voices saying nothing. It is the utterly unstable, timeless, roiling destruction of all alphanumeric and otherwise information-bearing codices. Noise cannot be reasoned with; it neither hates nor loves, fears nor desires, hopes nor despairs, laughs nor weeps; it is not simply illogical or irrational, it is nonlogical and arational. It lays all composition to waste, and no composition may overcome it.

So it may seem odd, right from the start, to discuss a “noise composition” like Merzbow’s Metamorphism [iTunes link]. Then again, the four tracks that comprise this release are not only or not simply noise — there is, in fact, some recognizable instrumentation — although anyone who’d deny that they each attain a level nearly tantamount to ultimate noise (and for almost unbearably sustained intervals) has apparently not yet listened to Metamorphism. What instrumentation there is is ultimately broken and violently obliterated. But what should be considered here is that Masami Akita, like minimalist electronic music composer Ryoji Ikeda (see “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’”), is the composer of the sound we finally hear and interpret for ourselves. The point is that however thought-numbingly anti-harmonious or deafeningly destructive/deconstructive each song is in-itself, it was an ordered mind that made it and laid it out before us. So, then, let’s ask a useful question. What motivates Masami Akita; why does he make noise?

What drives Akita is of course best summed up by him, and in his answers to the questions posed by Perfect Sound Forever, the following exchange is illuminating:

PSF: Your work has little connection with what we think of as music- melody, rhythm, chorus- [what] are your thoughts on this?

I like melody and rhythm and I was listening to many different types of music. But my project is in a very different way. My music is not only my reaction against other music. It’s just my way.

PSF: What are you trying to communicate through your music?

My own sensation. I don’t see it as something that I’m communicating. I’m not of any special opinion about this. I’m just doing my work. Of course, I need listeners to hear my work but I have no control about how they hear it.

How does one hear Merzbow? That depends on a number of factors more or less obvious. For instance, what are the presuppositions at the point of exposure? Let’s assume two things: assume that 1) whatever Akita’s intentions/reasons, you alone shall hear what you hear, and 2) whatever you think or feel about it, whatever you’ve presupposed, the noise that Akita has created/composed shall defy you — it will persist as noise regardless of your or my or his interpretation or attitude regarding it.

As to why one would want to listen to Merzbow, I am sure there are any number of reasons. One that comes to mind — and perhaps it has come to yours, possibly colored by sarcasm — is masochism. This is not at all a bad answer. But let’s remove any ambiguity by providing the straight, general definition: masochism is “the enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome” (source: Apple Dictionary). Masochism is also “the tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from one’s own pain or humiliation” (source: ut supra). In short, control issues lie at the heart of the matter. There is, in listening to Merzbow or to noise compositions generally, a risk of losing control, consciously engaged in, or a willing relinquishment of control. The subject may be further illuminated by pointing out that early Merzbow releases were frequently wrapped in pornography and images of bondage (taken by Akita). However, by presenting a triad of masochism-bondage-noise, important as it may be, I am opening the door to a subject too abstruse to be comprehensively taken on here. Caution must be taken. And in the end I can do no better, pragmatically speaking, than to recommend “Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music” by Paul Hegarty, who tellingly said,

Noise music becomes ambience not as you learn how to listen, or when you accept its refusal to settle, but when you are no longer in a position to accept or deny.

and then cite at length from another interview with Akita:

You have been quoted as saying, “There are no special images of ideology behind Merzbow”– unlike the early Industrialists such as Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Whitehouse that used shocking imagery. Yet you have repeatedly used pornography. Isn’t pornography a shocking image that creates a certain ideology, whether intended or not?

I have two directions in the use of pornography. In my early cassettes and mail art projects I used lots of pornography. I made many collages using pornography as it was a very important item in my mail art/mail music. I thought my cheap Noise cassettes were of the same value as cheap mail order pornography. These activities were called “Pornoise”. In this direction, I would say that I used pornography for it’s anti-social, cut-up value in information theory. I soon started to release Merzbow vinyl which was very different from the cassettes of this same time period. I think my vinyl works concentrated more on sound itself because I think vinyl is a more static medium. So, Merzbow went in two separate directions in the ’80s- a cassette direction and a vinyl direction. In the ’90s, these directions were mixed for one Merzbow. I know you’re thinking I’m still using porn images like bondage but these images are not porn to me. I use bondage images only for the release of connected works like Music for Bondage Performance I and 2 and Electroknots. My reasons for using bondage images are very clear- not for shock element but for documentary value. In fact, all bondage pictures I use are taken by myself. I know who the models are and who tied them up. I know the exact meaning of these bondage pictures. This is very different from people using Xeroxed bondage images from Japanese magazines. I know that there are many bondage images associated with Merzbow releases. But many of these releases use stupid images without my permission. I should control all of them but it is very difficult to control all products abroad. I don’t like the easy idea of using images without the knowledge of the image itself. So, it’s meaningless to create ideology by using pornography without the correct knowledge of the image itself.

I don’t wish to stray too far afield, here. What I am driving at is simply this: one submits to Merzbow, one submits to noise. There is, in Merzbow, a distinct BDSM quality and an implicit association with it. Fans of W.S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard will immediately get this. In listening to Metamorphism, all that is allowed, in a de facto sense, is the experience of hearing. One’s conscious attempts to find order or sense in the extremely cacophonous assault are beaten down over and over, one’s thoughts sheared off at the root. The apparent order that on occasion arises in the four “songs” comes not as a false hope, and not in bad faith, but as a prop made for destruction that, in its destruction or in the process of destruction, brings about a more profound submission by the listener. It is, or it can be, a liberating experience, even if most people would not find it even remotely pleasurable per se.

It can also point to a more subversive understanding of control structures generally, structures which noise inherently undermines. For example, what is more patriotic than a march (vide “The Military March Form”)? Here we see structure with intent. In the military sphere, the uniforms (uniformity, homogeneity), the discipline of order, the very specific patterns displayed in a myriad of ways, all serve to strengthen the military structure, and this structure reflects the implicit goal of maintaining an ordered, harmonious society. The march is the heartbeat of the structure. It is the celebration of order opposed to chaos. That it may also become dangerous, especially when left unchecked to pursue its own ends, is apparent to anyone with some knowledge of the history of fascist, imperialist, communist, dictatorial and totalitarian regimes. In these may we see how the circle runs round. Consider the following: order needs structure, which in turn needs discipline, which in turn needs submission. In submission we have returned to bondage, which noise destroys (as it destroys everything but itself). Noise is, in terms of the discipline of the march, the war. It is no small point that all discipline, structure, and order eventually fails in a war, just as stone succumbs to the sea. But noise is not simply, militarily speaking, war, any more than it is, politically speaking, anarchy, any more than it is, medically speaking, cancer, any more than it is, sexually speaking, BDSM. One may submit to noise but, unlike the submission to order, that submission will ultimately be annihilated. The listener (the body reduced to being an ear) will be left to wonder about the realities of submission. In the submission to order, so long as it is maintained, so long as the march is kept up, there is no allowance made for asking questions or for self-reflection as such would be perceived as indicative of indiscipline and disorderly conduct. Thus it can be concluded that the submission to noise, however flawed, is or leads to the act of subverting the rule of order, discipline, structure, and society, if only in oneself. Put another way — in the tyranny of the mind, noise is the act of terrorism itself.

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On to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’“

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