Explorations in the Extreme, on the Fringes of Music: Pulse Demon and the Experience of Music

Hanatarash live

Extreme music has always fascinated to me, from being into Slipknot, as a teenager, for their aggressive sound and edgy imagery, to discovering black metal a few years later, to now being interested in a wide variety of extreme music. But what even is extreme music anyway? For the purposes of this column I will include everything that anything that aims for a high level of sonic intensity and/or is extreme in its approach to music making or performance, think of stuff like danger music for example Justice Yeldham or Hanatarash. Topics can vary from album discussions to artist histories or topical discussions. Today we start of with what is possibly the most widely known and (in)famous harsh noise records, Pulse Demon by Merzbow and what it can teach us about experiencing music.

Pulse Demon - Merzbow (1996)

Pulse Demon is a record released by Merzbow in 1996 and is probably the most well known and most listened to harsh noise record of all time. On Rate your Music this album has over eight thousand ratings much higher than most other  "full-on" harsh noise records and on youtube there exists a video of this record with hundreds of thousands of views. It was also my first harsh noise record that i can remember listening to and has experienced a similar phenomenon to Scenery by Ryo Fukui a Japanese jazz record that exploded in online popularity due to being discovered by many through their youtube algorithms. Pulse Demon is, all things considered, a pretty good Merzbow release from a time period when much of his harshest material was released like this record and Venereology. Over the course of its 73 minute runtime, Pulse Demon relentlessly assaults the listener with some of the most ear-piercing destructive noise ever recorded. But that's not really what makes this record such a landmark in the genre, although its extreme harshness does play a part in it, why this record is so important in my opinion is very simply it's reputation and notoriety. This record has, due to it's high listener count, been experienced by many previously unfamiliar with harsh noise. Naturally the reactions to the record are widely mixed, ranging from "completely unlistenable and pointless" to "well, this was interesting but wtf" to "well, see, this is good, but there are better Merzbow records". 

Merzbow live

These reactions invite a number of interesting discussions, most obviously discussions about what music is and wether this record is music. But the more interesting discussion, at least for me, is about how giving yourself the time to familiarise yourself with certain sounds, genres or albums can open up new worlds to you and be an interesting and fulfilling exercise. I think a lot of ,at least popular, music and also other entertainment is meant to be instantly enjoyable, there should basically be no barrier you have to climb and no thought you have to put into it to understand and enjoy it. It is supposed to be simple, catchy, take no risks and definitely not confront you with something new. This is also, at least in part, the reason why we live in the age of remakes and sequels: nothing is easier to digest then something you already know and that tries to produce and present nothing but a vague sense of nostalgia. And I'm not trying to paint this in too negative a light, these are perfectly valid reasons to consume something, and also functions that art and entertainment should fulfil, giving everyone a space to just exist and relieve the stresses of everyday life. But this record is not that and it does not exist for that, this is a record that when you listen to it for the first time you may be immediately turned off by it, you may be confused as to why someone would make something like this, or it may sound like 73 minutes of static and leave little impression at all. But if you keep listening, you may discover that the static will start begins to transform into different layers of sound and that the feeling of confusion you had before dissipates and that this seemingly abstract behemoth begins to reveal some emotion underneath it's mechanical sounds. This process may take some time, I was fascinated with noise music for a long time before i finally "cracked" it and nowadays there is still some stuff I stumble across that needs a lot of time to really reach me. But that is a good thing, and can be the most fulfilling way to experience music, to listen to it, to give it a little space in your mind, and to let it teach you to look at it and other art in a different way, that can only be achieved by experiencing art so bewildering that it enables you to do so.

𝑺𝑬𝑬 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑺𝑷𝑨𝑪𝑬 𝑪𝑶𝑾𝑩𝑶𝒀...