Sold Date: November 12, 2023
Start Date: June 15, 2023
Final Price: $35.00 (USD)
Seller Feedback: 3009
Buyer Feedback: 0

Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The moniker of Japanese artist Masami Akita was born in Tokyo in 1979. Inspired by dadaism and surrealism, Akita took the name for his project from German artist Kurt Schwitters's pre-war architectural assemblage The Cathedral of Erotic Misery or Merzbau. Working in his home, he quickly gained notoriety as a purveyor of a musical genre composed solely of pure, unadulterated noise. Embracing technology and the machine, first in an absolutely analog way and then welcoming digital innovation, Merzbow broke boundaries and pushed toward new territories of the extreme, arriving at a sonic space of uncontaminated, straight noise that, from its base in Tokyo, has continued, now for over 40 years, to set the pace for the entire genre of noise. Exquisitely recorded and mixed between February and May 1995 at ZSF Produkt Studio, Masami Akita’s home studio from the late 80s to late 90s, Magnesia Nova is stunning immersion into the world of Merzbow during one of the project's most engrossing and important period. Inspired by the intersections between Greece and Japan and between Western and Eastern civilization along with work of Athanasius Kircher (all of the track titles have been taken from Kircher’s works ), is a true blasts of noise, meticulously crafted into gorgeous sound collages. For the first time that this seminal document from Merzbow’s '90s period has ever appeared on vinyl, in double LP, featuring last side of second LP with 20 minutes of unreleased bonus track took from the same period of the recording sessions. Like all of his work since the early nineties, Magnesia Nova is an uncompromising cascade of brutal noise. In this album you find nothing of the minimalism of his early 80s, completely overwhelmed by synthesizers and handmade objects that become his unconventional weapons to create bursts of noise. The album begins with ‘’Rituale Lucis’’ and ‘’Magnesia Nova’’, a parade of overloaded, layered and pulsating synthesizers and feedback. Two minutes are enough for the artist to take us to the territories of the most creative experimentation in the history of noise. They are sounds from a parallel universe suspended in time and straight out of an old amp that mumbles before going back to freaking out with synth razors. The sounds are unlike anything else played before or after. You find yourself in the world of dreams and the rhythm of the sound construction thickens, until the great progression of eternal noise materializes. On the second side of the first record the crashes of noise return and the gates of primordial chaos open with ''Oedipus Organum '', while '' Specula Naturalum '' comes to an end, as if it had never begun: perhaps it has been there since the beginning of time, an explosion of synthetic sounds, which seem like the spatial drifts for minor chords by Klaus Schulze . The second record open with ‘’Pantometrum Erotica '' that begins with a dark modulation, where an obsessive rhythm alternates with screams of noise and the now familiar synthesizer sound and continue with '' Sphinx Mystagoga '' where everything collapses into a single otherworldly synthesizer voice that explores an uninhabited planet. 
SHIPPING / ORDER INFORMATION: Orders with a value of $30 or less: $5.50 per order: USPS Media Mail (includes tracking).  Orders with a value of $30 or greater: $6.50: USPS Media Mail (includes tracking, insurance). In either case, if you paid multiple shipping charges when checking out, all overage will be refunded to you! 
Some items may have a mandatory service based on value or type of item (for example: USPS Priority). Examples: high value and non-media items. 
All packages ship media mail unless requested by the buyer to ship another method (the difference for upgrading will be covered by the buyer). Orders are shipped out twice per week, but not on set days - it just depends on the volume. You will not see tracking info posted until the package is ready to go out the door (from which point they get dropped off that night or the following day depending on when they're being worked on).
SHIPPING and PACKAGING (updated 10/09/22): Shipping is a flat $5.50 per order (apologies on the $4.50 referenced on the listings - these will slowly be changed). Orders over $50 include insurance. Orders over $100 ship for free. All packages ship media mail unless requested by the buyer to ship another method (the difference for upgrading will be covered by the buyer). Orders are shipped out twice per week, but not on set days - it just depends on the volume. You will not see tracking info posted until the package is ready to go out the door (from which point they get dropped off that night or the following day depending on when they're being worked on). Records that are shrink-wrapped will ship sealed unless otherwise requested by the buyer. Records that are in poly-sleeves or resealable sleeves will be removed from the jacket to prevent damage. For LPs, we use brand new mailers, Bags Unlimited's standard- design heavy duty mailers. Please note we do not do refunds for minor wear that occurs during transit (corner dings, seam split on a sealed record, etc). The orders are packed with quality supplies and a lot of care, but once in awhile we all get packages that get have been roughly handled along the way. If you're preferring your order to be packed a specific way, just send over a message and we can sort it out!
TRACKING ISSUES (updated 05/15/22): All packages are dropped off at the Phoenix, AZ hub. The benefit of this is it will save a couple of days of transit (as all AZ mail is processed through the hub before leaving state). The disadvantage is that they are not consistent in doing a receival scan. With many packages, your first scan may not pop up until it arrives at another distribution center (sometimes with a phantom AZ scan minutes before it). Some packages are making it to buyers across the country in three days, some are sitting for a month on end in various USPS black holes (Phoenix Annex, Jersey City, Bell Gardens - if you ever look at tracking info, these names are surely familiar to you)! Because of this very abnormal and sporadic delay, orders will need to be considered "in transit" for the duration of the time that USPS indicates the order is still "in transit" which is an annoyance that requires patience from everyone involved.
CONDITION (updated 05/15/22): Almost all of the records for sale are NEW. Although there's been records made new without being sealed for decades, some people are convinced that all records come sealed - of course they do not, but as a precaution it's being disclosed. (Believe it or not I have had PayPal claims come through because of a record being "new" but not sealed). When the records are NEW, but not sealed, the record is not removed from the inner sleeve to inspect for quality. The first time it is pulled out will be when the buyer pulls it out. This is important to note as increasingly, new records frequently come with light surface marks, finger prints - etc - doesn't matter if it's DIY release or a professionally packaged-at-the-plant release, these things are packaged by hand. If you're unhappy with the quality of a NEW release, the suggestion will be to contact the label that released it. There is always the potential for minor wear to the corners to occur during shipping even though the Bags Unlimited mailers are heavy duty and nice. If a release arrives from a distributor with observable wear, it will be noted in the listing.