MERZBOW + Nicolas HORVATH
“Pia-Noise”

Even the most experienced ear will not come out of Pia-Noise unscathed. Consecrating the meeting of two consummate artists, this release confronts their universe like a massive head-on shock in the eye of a sound storm. Masami Akita (Merzbow) has been surveying the territories of noise music for more than forty years, directing all sorts of instrumentaria, analogical or digital, instrument or software-based. For this record he relied on his favorite combination, a mix of various effects pedals and noise generators. Nicolas Horvath is a pianist of exceptional sensibility. More than well-versed in the classical repertoire, he also is fundamentally curious and multifaceted, as evidenced by his rescuing works and composers from oblivion, championing them on stage and patiently, carefully recording them. Nicolas Horvath also improvises and composes electronic music. Since the early 2000s, he has been active in the experimental and underground scene under many different names, especially Dapnom. A collaboration with Merzbow had already been considered some fifteen years ago. In the midst of forced isolation, it was all the more tempting to meet symbolically, following the ways of the World Wide Web. Pia-Noise is actually a project born from the health crisis and lockdowns, carried out from different homes in days of anguish and uncertainty. Both artists thus projected their worries about the ongoing crisis and today’s ecological disaster. The music produced took on the shape of a constant struggle between, on the one hand, Merzbow’s continuous release of energy, saturated sounds, masses, stridencies, powerful granulations, surrounding textures, chaotic rhythms and organized chaos, and on the other, Nicolas Horvath’s improvisations, sometimes lyrical, sometimes harmonic, always deeply rooted in his classical culture and personal pantheon, like a memory of a golden age forever lost. No listener will escape it as they lend a careful and sometimes all but desperate ear to the raging soundwaves. The two continuous musical lines often collide and even seem to ignore each other every so often, but they also meet and complete each other, helping the compositions breath. This confrontation generates a great opulence of sound calling for an extremely active form of listening. In the midst of a global wreck and a period of upheaval, two artists still manage to communicate from one digital raft to another, and render the poetry of a moment. Comes in four-panel digipack with eight-page booklet.