MERZBOW & AKIO JEIMUS / ANY OTHER UTTERANCE
2025年にカナダのレーベルHONEY FARMからリリースされた、当店定番のメルツバウと、日野浩志郎率いる不確定リズム探求バンドgoatのドラマーでもあるAkio Jeimus（アキオ・ジェイムス）による、スタジオセッションと2025年3月2日に東京・神田POLARISにて行われたライブパフォーマンス音源で構成されたコラボレーションアルバム!!! <a href="https://honeyfarm.bandcamp.com/album/any-other-utterance">Any Other Utterance Merzbow & Akio Jeimus</a> Since adopting the Merzbow moniker in 1979, Masami Akita has collaborated widely with artists across noise, free jazz, and experimental music. 2025 saw him recording with Akio Jeimus, a Chicago-born, Japan-based drummer who has worked with Toshimaru Nakamura, Akira Sakata, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Otomo Yoshihide, and currently performs as a member of the Osaka group goat (jp). Jeimus approaches the drum kit with restless, intuitive physicality, marked by a fondness for chance interplay and extended techniques. Consisting of studio sessions as well as recordings taken from a live performance in March 2025 in Tokyo, Any Other Utterance captures noise and drum set locked in motion, where patterns continuously form, self-destruct, and collide. Opening with the studio track "Florescent Silhouettes", the record bursts out of the gate with a flurry of cascading drums as Masami's electronics roar and churn. Midway through, the noise condenses into a stuttering, squirming pulse as cymbals and snare drum volley in response. By the end of the track, the electronics pierce through the percussion, a high-pitched squall stretching into a sustained howl. The B-side, comprised of "Fusia's Joule 1" and "Fusia's Joule 2" (perhaps named after the color of the dynamic lighting at the venue that night), captures the duo in raw, unrestrained form on stage — a storm of noise introducing itself immediately and refusing to relent. But the storm suddenly cuts out six minutes in, leaving only Jeimus' clattering percussion, unrelenting in its own way. He moves between percussive bursts and crashes of cymbals and bells, scraping and smearing the kit to draw out blurred textures. Masami soon returns with sharp, surprising stabs of sampled piano. Interlaced with blasts of distortion, the piano punctures the air of the 70-person venue in downtown Tokyo, as the performance mutates into a kind of twisted free-jazz duo. Across both halves, Any Other Utterance documents a shifting relationship between the drum set and noise: two forces chasing, interrupting, and reshaping each other in real time. What's left isn't resolution, but the sense of motion itself. ──Jake S. ▼Track List Side A 1. FLORESCENT SILHOUETTES Side B 1. FUSIA'S JOULE 1* 2. FUSIA'S JOULE 2* ALL MUSIC BY MERZBOW & AKIO JEIMUS RECORDED AT MUNEMIHOUSE & AVANT CHOP STUDIOS 2025 MIXED BY MASAMI AKITA AT MUNEMIHOUSE * RECORDED LIVE BY KI MOON SONG AT POLARIS, TOKYO MARCH 2, 2025 MASTERED BY CEDRIK FERMONT AT SYRPHE PHOTO BY AKIO JEIMUS INNER POSTER ARTWORK BY MA AI GENERATED DESIGN & LAYOUT BY PARKER THIESSEN Format：LP Label：HONEY FARM (CAN)
