Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays Smegma | |
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Studio album by Smegma & Merzbow | |
Released | October 29, 1996 |
Recorded | 1996 |
Studio | ZSF Produkt Studio, Smegma Studios |
Genre | Noise |
Length | 39:03 |
Label | Tim/Kerr |
Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays Smegma (also known as Plays) is a collaborative album between Smegma and Merzbow, in which the artists rework material submitted by each other. [2] As Tim/Kerr was part of PolyGram, this is one of the rare Merzbow releases on a major label.
Smegma is an American experimental noise group formed in Pasadena, California in 1973. Author Richard Meltzer became their vocalist in the late 1990s. The group was included in the Nurse with Wound list and was featured on the cover of the August 2006 edition of The Wire.
Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita. Merzbow is best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise as exemplified on the 1996 release Pulse Demon. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.
PolyGram, founded in 1962, acquired by Universal Music Group in 1998 and merged into that group in 1999, was a Dutch entertainment company, which started as a major record label founded by Dutch Philips and German Siemens as a holding company for their music interests in 1972. The name was chosen to reflect the Siemens interest Polydor Records and the Philips interest Phonogram Records. The company traced its origins through Deutsche Grammophon back to the inventor of the flat disk gramophone, Emil Berliner.
The CD booklet claims the disc is split into fifty tracks, and to "use shuffle play for unique compositions every time", but in fact only has two tracks.
No. | Title | Length |
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1. | "Electro Smegmacoustic Music" (1–26. Merzbow's World) | 19:37 |
2. | "Smegma Plays Merzbow" (27–50. Smegma's World) | 19:27 |
The Optigan is an electronic keyboard instrument designed for the consumer market. The name stems from the instrument's reliance on pre-recorded optical soundtracks to reproduce sound. Later versions were sold under the name Orchestron.
Region | Date | Label | Format | Catalog |
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United States | 1996 | Tim/Kerr | CD | 644 830 140-2 |
Picture disc | 644 830 140-1 |
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