Search - Smegma, Merzbow :: Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays

Have no expectations

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 11/08/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"It's hard to go into an album like this without expectations. Two of the most venerable and vaunted names in noise, both of whom have now been around for more than twenty years, collaborating on a CD. And to be fair, most of the problems that plague this release are technical-- it was designed to be put on shuffle play, with short bursts of machine-gun-like sonic chaos, but at the processing plant, it was tracked wrong (and the CD contains only two tracks instead of the fifty plus it should)-- but that definitely affects the listening experience in a negative fashion. Still, this is an historic document, for what it's worth. Most of the split discs that came out in the mid to late nineties were just that, with Merzbow on one side and another artists on the other, with no real collaboration involved. This, along with a handful of others, showcases not only the noise-generating ability of the artists involved, but what happens when Merzbow gets hold of some of Smegma's material and re-creates it, and vice versa. This lends the whole disc a more finished, consistent quality that's lacking in many of the releases in this vein. Pick it up if you've developed a taste for either Merzbow or Smegma and want to hear them in a new light."