Merzbow & Lawrence English: Eternal Stalker

- Somewhere in the smoky, discarded backrooms of my mind, I have convinced myself that I’ve heard and/or owned a previous project from the pairing of Lawrence English and Merzbow. However after finding out this is their first official release together, I’m forced to reconcile the fact that this simulacra has come about due to the staggering amount of collaborative releases both artists have with other artists and how natural it sounds for these two to work together on an album. Eternal Stalker and its trim run time may be an allusion to a movie that I’m far too dumb to comprehend but as auditory consumption, it is something to behold. Here we have a seamless blend of English’s sound sculpting ability and Merzbow’s propensity for nauseating walls of noise and it all combines to occupy an uncomfortable but still transcendent space. To describe something which so adamantly bypasses rational analysis and instead plays fast and loose with your emotional state is something I always struggle with. It’s hard to do so without using overtly flowering and seemingly self-indulgent words. On the flip side however, being able to listen to a project that elicits such a response is an absolute pleasure.

Crashes of thunder awaken us to The Long Dream and although it does sound like a state of other consciousness, it is a claustrophobic and unpleasant one. Aside from the thunder, we’re dropped in the middle of a questionably secure dwelling, in a callous place with the wind bellowing ceaselessly outside and drops of water falling without an end in sight. It’s cramped and there’s not a great deal separating us from the ruthless elements of the storm outside. Again, bursts of thunder bring in a new track, this time A Gate of Light. Initially, its much the same. Swirling chaos is safely out of reach but as it goes along, the volume rises, and rises, and rises until the turbulence engulfs us in ebullient noise. Between the high points on this record, with their wretched screeches and overwhelming sense of despair, Eternal Stalker is propped up by more mellow, introspective moments. The Visit, The Golden Sphere, and Black Thicket all rein in harsher sections and opt to stew on a melancholic malaise, a dour navel gazing in the valleys of this record. There’s not a great deal that shines or offers clarity on these three either, these moments are merely a quieting of the dirge.

When Eternal Stalker truly erupts as it does during Magnetic Traps and A Thing, Just Silence the noise and chaos aren’t gratuitous and it’s a great compliment to both artists. Take A Thing, Just Silence: the noise is built off the back of found sounds of trains careening down the line, metal scraping against metal and when it reaches its climax around the halfway mark, the additional cacophony feels as though it was the natural progression of everything that came before it; the final burst of life before slowly receding intro atrophy.

On another personal note, once a year I’ll spend a day listening to nothing but noise as something of a palette cleanser. It’s a ritual I’ve stuck to and Eternal Stalker has been released at the most opportune time for me to use this as my yearly purge. The sound design on English’s behalf forms the basis for Merzbow to launch into blasts of noise that seem called for, if not perfectly placed. Lawrence English and Merzbow certainly seem to combine perfectly, greatly complementing each other’s styles, such that this record is greater than the sum of its parts. The maelstrom grows more intense, ever and again as this Eternal Stalker wanders, unchecked, through the corridors of my mind.

- Matt Lynch.