merzbow_sunra

Cold Spring, the UK based label, that also handles the Manchester date of the upcoming Merzbow tour (dates and info here) is coming out with another release from the God Of Noise… and a quite interesting one at that. Merzbow’s always been known for his collaborations: he has worked with almost everyone who is connected to noise music in any ways, but he was also part of a lot of more unexpected collaborations. Now we get another one of the later and probably one of the most surprising ones so far, as thanks to Cold Spring label boss Justin Mitchell, Merzbow got access to several rare and unreleased tracks coming straight from the estate of Sun Ra, the jazz musician / legend, who was known for his extremely diverse and experimental music style and was also regarded as a pioneer of Afrofuturism, thanks his stage shows, costumes and album covers, mixing elements of ancient Egyptian culture and space age sci-fi imagery (and also his claim, that he came from Saturn).

Merzbow (aka. Masami Akita) reworked the tracks, added his trademark wall-of-noise, as the press release says: “(…) tracks from the SUN RA archive to be remixed and treated by Masami Akita. The tracks incorporate the jazz power of SUN RA, carried into brutal excess by the legendary Japanese artist, MERZBOW.” So, it will be strange jazz vs. extreme noise, which sounds pretty damn exciting. The release itself will be a bit weird however: It will be out on vinyl and CD, released separately, however both versions will have completely different music, so it is more like a double album actually. It will be out late September, it will have beautiful cover artwork, it can be pre-ordered from Cold Spring’s online store and there is already a sample up on soundcloud, so check that out below:

Sun Ra / Merzbow: Strange City
2016.09.29
CD
01. Livid Sun Loop (32:11)
02. Granular Jazz Part 2 (34:03)

LP (CSR229LP)
A1. Granular Jazz Part 1 (17:50)
B1. Granular Jazz Part 3 (13:22)
B2. Granular Jazz Part 4 (5:05)