ABOUT EVENT

Fukuoka-based experimental music event hertz, centered on noise music, proudly presents a rare appearance by Merzbow, a legendary figure who stands at the very core of Japans experimental sound culture.
To speak of experimental and noise music in the present day is to inevitably arrive at Merzbow. Emerging from Japan in the 1980s, noise grew into a global movement, and Merzbow has remained its pioneering force and singular symbol ever since. His work does not merely define a genre, but continuously questions what music can be, here and now.
Often associated with intensity, physicality, and rupture, noise music resists simple definition. Within Merzbow’s sound, however, destruction is never the end point. At its center lies regeneration, a constant process of rebuilding perception through sound itself.
Experience the coexistence of reason and instinct, and encounter a formless music that rises with the presence of architecture, inviting you beyond noise and into its living structure.

Merzbowは秋田昌美によるヴィーガン・ストレイト・エッジ・ノイズ・プロジェクトである。1980年代初頭のノイズ・インダストリアル・シーンに参加して以来、ノイズ音楽の象徴的存在として、時に神話として語られるほどの影響を与え続けてきた。1990年代には、ノイズアーティストとして初めてデスメタルの名門レーベルRelapseからリリース。2000年代には、ラップトップによるライブ手法を採用。グリッチ的デジタル・ノイズを経て、2003年頃から「動物の権利」の観点からヴィーガンを実践しており、近年はAIアートを導入するなど、境界に捕らわれず、音を通して、21世紀の我々の在り方を問い続けている。

Merzbow is a vegan straight edge noise project led by Masami Akita. Since his involvement in the noise and industrial scene of the early 1980s, Merzbow has remained an iconic presence in noise music, exerting an influence so profound that it is often spoken of in mythic terms. In the 1990s, he became the first noise artist to release work on the renowned death metal label Relapse. In the 2000s, he adopted laptop based performance methods, moving through phases of glitch oriented digital noise. From around 2003, guided by a commitment to animal rights, he has practiced veganism. In recent years, he has also incorporated AI art into his practice, continuing to question how we exist in the twenty first century through sound, while refusing to be confined by any single boundary.