gk. rec. – 30th March 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
There’s a clue in the album’s title as to what Gintas K’s latest musical venture is about, and while neither Merzmania nor anything else in Gintas K’s catalogue comes close to the harsh noise of Masami Akita, there are clear connections and parallels between the two artists, in particular the prodigious output, and their propensity for taking experimentation to its absolute limit. Oh, and the occasional pun. Merzmania very much seems to echo Merzbow’s revelling in self-referential ‘Merz’ prefixes with album titles like Merzbeat, Merzdub, Merzbear, and Merzbuddha. It’s by no means an homage or stylistic lift, but a simple and seemingly sincere acknowledgement of a thread of influence. But anyone familiar with the work of Gintas K will already be aware that he is a unique presence within the field of experimental electronic-based audio works.
As he explains regarding this release, ‘Merzmania is electroacoustic live electronics pieces made using my own instrument made from a computer, Plogue Bidule software & midi controller assigned to VST plugins. All software parameters controlled, altered live in real time during performance using knobs & sliders of midi controller attached to VST plugins parameters. Performance made from synthesized sounds. Merzmania is a piece connecting classical music skills with today’s noise music (slight allusion to noise icon – Merzbow). Merzmania’s main playing method is real time interaction with the computer which I am using on all my live compositions’.
The tech stuff goes over my head, if I’m honest – but I’m more interested in the output than the input, and Merzmania provides 75 minutes of sonic mayhem. From swarming, skittering microtones which crowd in a dizzy delirium, through warping drones and groans, fairground organ sounds, and the occasional subaquatic detonation, it’s all going on, and often simultaneously, as is very much the case with the first piece, the 9:41 ‘merzmania#1 main’. Five minutes in and my head is spinning and I’m experiencing a huge anxiety spike and a sense of being overwhelmed. ‘Mania’ is very much the word here.
‘merzmania#2’ is the sound of a thousand digital hornets clustering around a dial-up modem struggling to connect – for nearly eight minutes, while ‘merzmania#3 dreaming’ makes you wonder what kind of dreams this guy has. It’s by no means nightmarish, but the rush of discord very much instils the sensation of rising panic, the palpitations of an anxiety dream. There’s something that fleetingly resembles a break from some drum ‘n’ bass, and again, the fact that there’s so much going on, all at once is… headspinning. And I mean… holy shit. Just when you think it couldn’t get any wilder, any more frenzied, any more overloading or intense… Gintas K manages to take it up not just another notch, but another two or three.
‘merzmania#5 slow’ does offer some respite from the insanity, but its syncopated toots and scratches and hums and crunches are far from soothing, and the space becomes increasingly sonically crowded as it progresses. The stereo panning is nothing sort of brain-melting, and nowhere more so than on ‘merzmania#6’, tinkling chirps and motorised hums and drones, the sound of a piano being played by a dozen cats while an engine revs… the hum of the power lines…
While employing much of the same technology and largely the same performance techniques of previous releases, something about Merzmania feels like a step forward for Gintas K. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what, but that’s likely because my head is swimming with a tonal assault. But also, it is different: many of the sounds are more piano-like, more overtly ‘keyboardy’, in place of the bubbling froth which dominated many of his past works.
There’s distortion and fizzing static and pure noise on ‘merzmania#8 spare’, and ‘merzmania#10 hum’ essentially speaks for itself. And even with all of the live demos posted on his YouTube channel, just how Gintas K conjures this wild mash-up is difficult to assimilate. Because, but really, how…? It’s a lot to process. Life, the world, everything, really. And this latest Gintas K album does not help. But if it wasn’t this, something else would assault the senses, in other ways. Gintas K’s work will never offer a diversion or escape, but it does provide a different kind of mental overload. The final track, the second ‘slow’ is very much more gentle in the main, a tinkling taking the lead, but some roars like the revving of a motorbike overtaking, and explosive noise obliterating the finale.
Merzmania finds Gintas K at his experimental best, and pushing beyond the parameters set out on previous works, which were in themselves boundary-pushing. This, then, is the outer limits… but there’s a sense that he’ll still go on from here, too.
AA
Aural Aggravation 