Review: Merzbow “Sha Mo 3000” CD

This is yet another release in Merzbow's massively extensive discography, though on this particular outing (apparently his first for any South American record label) the most notable name in experimental noise takes a significantly different turn from most all of his past work that I've come across. The title of the disc is apparently derived from the meshing of the names of a Japanese gamecock (Shamo) and an old Brazilian psychedelic rock band (M?dulo 1000), though aside from a few such references in the artwork and some quick samples of percussion, I'd never really associate this with much of a psychedelic rock influence. It's definitely a bit more streamlined and repetitious than what I'm accustomed to hearing from Merzbow (even in his digital age), though there are still a good number of layers swirling about, with a few more chaotic snippets in tow. For the most part, however, things are fairly calm in texture compared to his renown days as the king of harsh noise. Distortion is employed, of course, but it's often rather thin and wispy, with lots of softly rumbling low-end, excursions into concrete rhythms (no actual beats, sans the samples, but definitely a lot of tangible tempos), and so on. The songs tend to be very long, with only one running less than nine minutes (quick opener "Suzunami"), but there's actually a pretty effective delivery within such timeframes, as the 19+ minute title track winds around nicely with a few distinct changeups in dynamics and overall tonality - building into a great pulsing industrial rhythm (very unexpected) towards its latter chunk with some nicely biting high-end. "Ghost Hide Your Eyes" uses a persistent drone amidst scratching sounds and more chaotic movement that juts in and out with varying levels of acerbic volume, at times hitting on some pretty spacey effects. I don't really care for this piece as it's a little more random and jumbled, which just isn't my thing when it comes to these particular types of sounds. The 22-minute "Dreaming K-Dog" is the longest piece, made up of the machinated ringings, clickings, and churnings of alarm clocks. Some slightly musical textures seep in to thicken things up, but sounding sort of like a thick and ominous synth loop it's not anything very song-like in musicality. Later on some of the ultra distorted sounds do start to have a progressive rock kind of thing going on, so maybe some of those influences are playing more of a constant role that can be truly perceived? Some of the repetition gets very tiresome in this composition, though... it might have been better broken into two separately developed pieces. "Hen's Teeth" ends things out by starting out with truly blatant prog rock sounding material, probably sampled and manipulated from a fuzzed out 70's riff or something. Surprisingly that's how the track carries out for more than 12 minutes as well, at times getting thicker and more chaotic, but always maintaining a watery sort of drone. The sampled percussion is certainly most effective here, though. Sound-wise I have no gripes. Things are crisp and clear. There's definitely a little more of a digital bite here than on some of Merzbow's other work, but I find it to be more of a stylistic aesthetic than one that has to do with the actual recording process. The glitchy nature of the material and the prevalence of certain rhythmic elements definitely has a kind of laptop aesthetic, and I do think that those elements are somewhat weak in this context, but it's not a real problem for me. As expected, the mastering is loud as hell, too. This one's beautifully packaged in a thick gatefold digipack sleeve with shitloads of vibrantly colored artwork that blends psychedelic patterns with illustrations of roosters and plant life. Totally strange, but it looks pretty slick if you ask me. The CD is limited edition, but out of 900, so it should be readily available for some time. Not his best work, but I still find it to be more consistently listenable than some of his "classics". The industrial-esque final chunk of the title track really is awesome, so I'd love to hear that direction developed further!