Pulse demon is a
CD of noise by
Merzbow. It comes packaged in an
op art sleeve - wiggling black and mirrored lines of featureless detail, shimmering with rainbow flakes, like waves in some
industrial sea.
The track listing is
- Woodpecker No. 1
- Woodpecker No. 2
- Spiral Blast
- My station rock
- Ultra marine blues
- Tokyo times ten
- Worms plastic earthbound
- Yellow hyper balls
Total time 1:13.
Favourite track: I cannot tell them apart.
All composed and preformed by Masami Akita. Credited instruments are "Metals, Noise Electronics, EMS, Audio generators, Tapes, Shortwave, Voice"
Reactions to playing Pulse Demon are:
Immediate: You turn down the volume. Seriously, it's mastered with all the knobs turned up to 11, so if your volume level was comfortable for whatever you were listening to beforehand, it will be too loud now.
After a minute or two: You begin to wonder if the CD is in fact defective. It sounds damaged, like it's skipping or corrupt.
After a few more minutes: You realise that the CD is in fact not damaged, but you begin to fear that your CD player will be.
After a while: you begin to hope that your CD player will give up the ghost.
Pulse Demon is easily the hardest listening CD that I own. It's basically not music. It's an ocean of distressed feedback/grinding noises. After a while though, waves on the surface of the ocean become apparent in the ebb and flow of white noise. The featureless sheer volume of it leaves you grasping at straws of texture in the whirlwind.
In conclusion, this is not a CD for listening to, this is a CD for laying down and avoiding. Bring out on the rare occasions when you want to sandblast the inside of your skull, or when you're in the blackest of moods. It's also good for getting guests to leave. Listening through to the end takes determination.