Both pervasive collaborators, the stylistic strengths of Merzbow and Prurient have – to my knowledge – never met prior to this LP, each previously staking out quite different territories even across sizeable discographies which both traverse a wide experimental ground. Nonetheless the shared aesthetic of ‘Black Crows Cyborg’ is immediate and maintained, an acknowledgement of the negativity of familiar environments which finds the collaborators bound to a common experience which manifest in different concerns on each piece.
Side II’s “Cylinders Raven” is how I expected the collaboration to sound, opening grounding buzz and scrap metal soon enveloped into Masami Akita’s nihilistic sprawl. Recent Merzbow has – when in outright noise mode – tended for dark, charred distortions, and to this Prurient adds a fractured unease with blisters of synth thud and shudder and fragments of crude electronics thrown across the stereo spectrum, the layers contorting in an uncomfortable flux as Dominick’s contributions swim through the bloodstream of the piece, met with hostility by Merzbow’s midnight squall.
Superficially “Cylinders Raven” wants to be as relentless as most of Merzbow’s recent harsh noise fluidity, but beneath that surface Prurient plays a strongly divertive role, objects thrown in to divert and ultimately reduce the current, the second half of the piece in particular retrogressing to the junky crudity of 1980s Merzbow as half-alive electronics, scraps of angular metal, and whirlpooling distortion all float in a few inches of soupy gloam, with the depth of the work only revealed at the end, layers stripped away to reveal single elements which were clouded by the larger work billowing from the speakers.
Side I’s “City Barbarism Melancholy” brings clearly owned elements into a very different collaboration. A moody chordal drone hangs in the air like a Charlemagne Palestine concert leaking through a closed door, as independent lines of junk manipulation wrestle on either side of the stereo spectrum, and occasional fissures of pressurised electronics and near-white noise flare up at or near the surface of the piece. While “Cylinders Raven” compacts layers to keep out the light, “City Barbarism Melancholy” breaks the skin of a penetrative melancholy, its intangible drone hanging purposefully out of reach while its scrap metal blows are intentionally raw and bruising. Meanwhile the spurts of angry noise which fall across the piece are swept away by the pervading atmosphere, ejections of pent up despair which quickly fall back into the singular mood which motivates the piece.
Notwithstanding the cities attributed by the liner notes to each piece, I hear each artist studying the other's experience: of Tokyo’s fast pace but problematic underbelly, its problematic elements attempted to be swept away but remaining once all is gone; and of New York’s flashes of immediacy sinking into an isolating experience even when hit by a crowded, unkind jostling nearby – as well as that of its artists who have dug into their histories as well as expressing their modernity, blocks of their respective discographies revisited for quite prominent components of the LP even as a common gloom settles over both collaborative sides.
The presentation of the LP draws the listener into that too, mangled and painted mesh (which has been highlighted with a matching embossing), trash circuitry and electronics refuse all strewn across the cover, and splatter vinyl furthering the effect. I find something rewarding to ‘Black Crows Cyborg’ every listen; sometimes new, sometimes revisited – furthering the urban references which influence the LP – and there have been a lot. The two have managed to create a work in which each collaborator’s materials are easy to discern, but which feed a larger whole which works as its own creation.
