Keio Line

Double CDs, each w/ 3 long tracks: Richard Pinhas is a French old school guitar tape loop noise’ster that I really cant distinguish from Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics (no doubt he hates hearing that but I am pretty sure that Fripp pre-dated him). Of course, as “its not a race”, Pinhas’ stuff is sublime, rich in tones looped upon themselves and musical and droney and hypnotic and stands on its own beside Fripp. Merzbow of course is synonymous with the ultra core Japanese scene, doing stuff that inspires gouging out ones eyes (though he has done plenty of other surprising collaborations and releases, still, he is usually associated with the hardcore noise stuff). So based on what I described, picture them both thrown in a wood chipper (remember Fargo?) and this CD is what would be the resulting mess on the snow. Merzbow is a bit of a slut; Pinhas isn’t. I would say that the latter chose the right one-night-stand in this case: its really good, all of it. Long tracks like these make me wish I had a 5 hour time slot each week (feel free to play portions for your afile).

CD1:
1) typical Pinhas Frippertronics drones get thickened with time with lower end lush hypnotism, but after about 7 minutes it feels like Merzbow takes over and makes this uglier, more old school industrial noise
2) starts very Pinahas/frippy but gets sorta ugly and industrial pulsing about 5 minutes in, midway its bordering on demonic animal growls, but the Pinhas echoey loops come back and take control
3) a crunchy noisey layered start, builds to a peak then midway the Frippy Pinhas sorta punches through but the piece ends up loopy and noisey, if not rhythmic.

CD2:
1) shortest (i.e most radio friendly) track, but note the very quiet intro (start this track with about 15 seconds remaining on your previous track) but it builds into a very representative amalgam of these two artists (maybe that’s why they made it short)
2) builds in such an epic manner as to be high drama and mind blowing, its no wonder these tracks are long: they are worth it!
3) true swirling psychotic noises evolve after a couple minutes, grow dense and pretty, but at about 9 minutes remaining a distinct beat begins to rear its ugly head and develops into some serious, if subtle noise rock (fast forward to 9 min left?), then things get chaotic but organic, drums flailing, some of the best noise rock since F/i and Boy Dirt Car