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Chameleon Body

by Merzbow

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about

The sixth of Merzbow Archive series features material from 1993-1995. This period saw the production and release of some of Merzbow's most well-known and highly regarded works, including "Metalvelodrome", "Noisembryo", "Hole", "Venereology" and "Pulse Demon". These masterpieces have been actively reissued in recent years. For this series, DAT masters were used for all the works, rather than the cassette masters that have been used for most of the previous series, and they have been newly remastered. The DAT masters are of higher quality than cassette masters because the cassette is used as a mother tape and has been edited as a finished product. As a result, the works in this series, including the small pieces, are tightly organized in terms of development, even if they are performed over a long time.
"Chameleon Body" was recorded in 1995, and the first nine minutes or so can be found on the 50-CD box set "Merzbox" under the title "Chameleon Body" on the disc "Red Magnesia Pink". Merzbow has deliberately avoided the use of synthesizers in the past, with the exception of some of their early 80's work, but on this album they use an EMS Synthi 'A' that they purchased in late 1994. After that, Merzbow started to use EMS Synthi 'A' and EMS VCS3 more frequently. With the introduction of the synths, the raw sound textures and distorted balance of sound clashes receded somewhat compared to the style before this, which was mainly composed of metal and extreme effects. The clarity and density of the sound has been improved by the presence of electronic noise that fills every corner of the space. Although the recording was made at a point in time not long after the purchase of the synth, a very present sound that is not inferior to the extreme sound of metal and other materials has already been created, and in the splendid antagonism between them, the birth of a new Merzbow-Sound can be heard.

yorosz(aka Shuta Hiraki)

credits

released October 18, 2021

All Music by Masami Akita
Recorded & Mixed at ZSF Produkt April 1995
Remastered at Munemihouse, Tokyo 2019.
Yasuyuki Nakamura (slowdown records) : A&R

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Merzbow Tokyo, Japan

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