Richard Pinhas, Tatsuya Yoshida, Matsami Akita, Merzbow, Process and Reality

I've found out thanks to my blogging that what guitarist Richard Pinhas does gets my attention and keeps it. Here today is a new one with Tatsuya Yoshida and Matsami Akita, a.k.a. Merzbow, Process and Reality (Cuneiform Rune 432). It's a noise art summit meeting, certainly, and an especially good one. Continuity and flow are crucial--there is a constant complex white noise and drone carpet from which sounds emerge--some great Pinhas space guitar, some Merzbow oscillating noise, some insistent Yoshida drum tatoos. This could go on forever and I would be happy if it did--not however my neighbors or my partner. The press sheet (thanks, Joyce!) says it is a "serenade for a society on the verge of collapse." A few years ago that might have made me laugh, but right now I am not so sure! Industrial collapse? Hell, probably.

And with all that doom is a sound mass that, swear to you, puts you in a kind of alternate reality if you listen closely. Paradoxically that's what modern, avant art has often been about, advancing a new consciousness within the Trojan horse of ultra-hive-insanity commerce.

Richard and some or all (or none) of them are touring Japan right now. But if you aren't over there just grab this dystopian masterwork!