Album of the day: Mammifer / House of Low Culture / Merzbow – Lou Lou… In Tokyo (2LP)

Praise for Mammifer / House of Low Culture / Merzbow‘s  Lou Lou… In Tokyo from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Another impressive release on Aaron Turner’s post Hydra Head label Sige, this one a three way live tag team between Turner’s House Of Low Culture, Mamiffer and Japanese noise legend Merzbow. Spread out over three sides (the fourth is an etching), this live show displays a surprising amount of restraint, considering the multitude of cooks in the kitchen, and considering one of those cooks is the iron chef Masami Akita.

The first side is all Mamiffer, aka Faith Coloccia, with gorgeous bit of dark, droney, cinematic chamber music, what sounds at first like solo piano, until you realize the piano is suspended in a field of glimmery soft focus buzz, atop deep rumbling swells, peppered with distant industrial creaks and groans. The piano occasionally giving way to long shimmering metallic tones, or thick dark blackened swirls, but always settling back in that haunting elegiac piano driven drift. Mamiffer’s side finishes off with a final eruption of grinding blackened churn, a psychedelic soft noise squall, that while still laced with melody, is still seriously ferocious.

The second side finds House Of Low Culture teaming up with Merzbow, which on the face of it has the makings of something seriously noisy, but instead, the two created a lush expanse of hushed dronemusic, delicate and haunting, all ominous low tones, and warm washed out thrum, streaked occasionally with feedback, and shards of skree. The sound grows more and more dense, still lovely, but with a sort of blackened cast, dreamily funereal, with mysterious vocals drifting in the softly roiling sonic shadows. A brief crescendo leads directly into another stretch of dark shimmer, peppered with bit crashing gongs, and thick crumbling black buzz sells, it’s not until the last minute or two, that things get downright Merzbowian.

The final (playable) side, features all three, a Mamiffer / HOLC / Merzbow collab, and is easily the noisiest of the bunch, a constantly shifting sprawl of undulating low end, blasts of hissy white noise, heaving slabs of crumble and crunch, corrosive and caustic for sure, but still textural and atmospheric, and strangely melodic. By HOLC / Mamiffer standards things definitely get pretty fiery and fierce, but by Merzbow standards, the sound is still relatively tranquil. A pretty fantastic chunk of spaced out abstract noise drone for sure.

LIMITED TO 330 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in super swank, black on black Aaron Turner designed matte jackets, with printed inner sleeves, pressed on clear vinyl, music on three sides, a cool etching on the fourth.

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Tags: aaron turner, Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Faith Coloccia, House of Low Culture, Mammifer, Masami Akita, Merzbow, Sige

This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2011 at 1:54 pm and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.