My wife's voice tumbled down the basement stairs, a mix of genuine curiosity and anticipatory bemusement. It hadn't even occurred to me that she could hear what I was listening to, so I was surprised to hear her askng about it. I think she expected me to tell her I was enthusiastically pursuing yet another misguided project, like drilling holes in something because I read somewhere online that it'll make something else sound better. She wasn't sure whether to believe me at first when I told her I was listening to what was ostensibly music.
Merzbow's 1979 recording OM Electrique sounds, for the most part, like a malfunctioning household appliance. Think, perhaps, of a furnace with a loose bolt rattling around in side. Now imagine someone recording that sound for thirty minutes and releasing it commercially. That's about all you get out of early Merzbow. There are tones that sound like some sort of feedback, and these could be described as "notes", I suppose, but they do not form a cohesive scale of any sort. Anything that might be called a rhythm is far too irregular to bob one's head, let alone dance, to.
And yet I'm already drawn in. I've listened to the album about a half a dozen times in the past couple of days and I actually find myself looking forward to listening to it again. It sounds monotonous at first, but there's a subtlety beneath the surface that slowly gathers my attention, until I'm listening closely without realising I'm doing so.
I'm at work. A few minutes ago, I was listening to the title track on headphones again when I noticed another sonic level I hadn't heard before. There was a rattle that seemed to echo the main clanging sound on the track, as if he was using some sort of delay effect. There was also a sort of distance to the way the sound was mixed, like he was using some kind of delay to make the sound seem to come from in front of me to the right. When the track ended, the sound continued, and I realised it was coming from the air vent in the ceiling.
I don't usually listen to music at work, so I'm used to the office being silent, but right now it's deafening. I can hear the buzzing in the ceiling vent, the hum of the air unit behind me, a slight whine from my computer monitor, and occasional muted bits of street noise from out the window 48 storeys below. It's as though listening to manufactured noise has conditioned me so that I am no longer able to ignore actual noise. I know it probably sounds like that should be driving me nuts, but it's not. If Merzbow's work is music, then there's music all around me all the time.
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