Cold Spring – 26th June 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
This release is something of a curio, in the sense that it’s a collaboration between two of the most famously prolific recording artists of recent times – Sun Ra recorded over 100 full-length albums, comprising well over 1000 songs prior to his death in 1993 at the age of 79, while Merzbow, active since 1979, has released in excess of 500 albums to date. However, this collaboration occurred posthumously for Sun Ra, and it’s worth quoting the context as given by the label, Cold Spring here:
Officially licensed from Irwin Chusid, who oversees the catalogue of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra, Cold Spring negotiated rare and unreleased tracks from the Sun Ra archive to be remixed and treated by Masami Akita (aka Merzbow). The tracks incorporate the jazz power of Sun Ra with the brutal excess of the Japanese noise artist Merzbow.
Originally released by Cold Spring a decade ago and long sold out, the music was spread across vinyl and CD, with completely different music on each format. The tracks have now been collected together for the first time, using the original master tapes and presented in the order intended (the vinyl format dictated the order due to optimal sound quality restraints).
Included for the first time on any release is a bonus two minute track entitled ‘Granular Jazz Part 5’, a special composition created for ‘Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone’, a weekly radio show on BBC 6 Music in the UK. It was broadcast ahead of Merzbow’s live concert at the FAC251 venue in Manchester in September 2016.
There are obviously practical reasons why the different formats featured different track listings on the original release, although these things can prove frustrating for fans finding themselves faced with the dilemma of missing material or forking out for multiple formats. This ‘complete’ reissue has the added incentive of an unreleased track, and while it’s only a couple of minutes of unreleased music, it does round off what is unquestionably a monster release – the six pieces having a combined run time of a massive 104 minutes.
So, to begin with a brief content comparison, the contents of the original CD – the 32-minute ‘Livid Sun Loop’ and ‘Granular Jazz Part 2’ (34 minutes long) makes up the corresponding first disc here, while the 2016 vinyl contained ‘Granular Jazz’ parts 1, 3, and 4. Chances are that some will still be dissatisfied that the CD tracks still haven’t made it onto vinyl, but you can’t please all the people all of the time, and as much as I’m a fan of vinyl myself, the longform nature of the compositions does seem well-suited to CD.
As for the contents of this ten-year expanded reissue… it’s no criticism or complaint to comment that it very much sounds like what you’d expect. ‘Livid Sun Loop’ encapsulates the album in its entirety in the first few minutes – shrieking horns flying in all directions against an apocalyptic churn of cement-mixer noise with the treble cranked to the max, feedback and flayed circuitry exploding like fireworks on New Year’s Eve. A squall of treble, scraping, screaming, like a Brillo pad scouring away at the inside of your skull. There are prolonged segments which are pure Merzbow, shredding digital noise, but then, suddenly, amidst the blitzkrieg, there are honking horns and random toots which pop through the raging wall. The track is a truly relentless assault, and brutally harsh. The frequencies very much favour the top-end, with howls and hisses of tinnitus-inducing quality tearing from the speakers with not so much as a second’s let-up. Every time you think that this must – must! – be the limit, Merzbow does the Merzbow thing of finding new frequencies with which to cause injury. Oh yes: this hurts. But what else did you expect? Some cozy club vibes, a bit of mellow sax and piano? Right. Merzbow brings the harshest head-shredding hell.
Twenty minutes in, there’s a segment that sounds like everything is breaking – not just the gear, I mean it sounds like a field recording of the collapse of civilisation, the absolute end of the world as we know it. And it just goes on. And on. What have I done to deserve this? What has anyone done to deserve this? Actually, perhaps this is the answer to the UK’s issues in the penal system. Being forced to listen to this a couple of times may be a viable altern alternative to shorter custodial sentences. But here I am, listening with great interest and even with a degree of perverse pleasure – although after half an hour, I will admit that I’m wilting somewhat, and not just because it’s 30C with 70% humidity in my office at 9pm. This is nothing short of punishment: it hurts. And it ain’t very jazzy. It’s a mangled mess of skin-peeling, face-melting horror.
But if ‘Livid Sun Loop’ makes for a long and challenging half hour, you’d better buckle in and brace yourself for the endurance test of all endurance tests. To dissipate any doubt, I am a big fan of noise, and enjoy basking in blistering waves of aural annihilation. And Strange City is special in its vision and scope, and its sheer enormity. There are fleeting flickers of strolling double bass which pep through the wild bleepery, woozy drones and sheet metal shredding.
‘Granular Jazz Part 1’ yawns and snarls, bibbles and bleeps and pulses and creaks and swashes and swinges its way through just shy of eighteen minutes of existential anxiety, but it’s simply a prelude to part 2. The slow fade-in and trickling digital cacophony is simply a lure, creating the illusion of listenability. And it does take some time to build. But, of course, build it does. A quarter of an hour in, and it’s reached a sustained crescendo or chaos that’s dense enough to crush your skull. The jazz quota is ratcheted up, too, and the result is something else. Finding the words for this is a challenger, but I’m starting to feel that it’s not words I need, but an ambulance.
Strange City is… intense. In large parts, it feel like Merzbo is the dominant party in this mash-up (which is essentially what it is), and at its best, Strange City makes for a fitting posthumous release for Sun Ra. But from whichever able ou approach it, Strange City is one serious blast of noise. Killer all the way.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 