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Artist
Alec Empire vs. Merzbow
12+ albums
noisedigital hardcorebreakcoreindustrialexperimental
about
“Live CBGB's NYC 1998” is a live album by German digital hardcore/ breakcore pioneer Alec Empire and Japanese noise artist Masami "Merzbow" Akita, released on DHR in 2003. The two artists collaborated together during the legendary November 4th show at the 1998 Digital Hardcore Festival at CBGB's, New York City. It captures Alec in his DJ 6666 era, his harsh Death Funk sound of his previous DHR releases pushed to its noisiest extreme as he and Merzbow improvise sounds of distorted brutality. Empire shows off his DJ skills with obscure scratching techniques and hard breaks, while Merzbow is painting the apocalypse with shapes of white noise. As Alec puts it, all sounds created by “Masami Akita in the last phase of his analogue works, before he changed to a laptop. I used turntables and a microphone.” In 1998 critics celebrated this concert as “the defining end-point of the popular music era of the 20th century”. Also sourced from this DHR festival, "Alec Empire Live At CBGB's New York City 4-11-1998", a different set featuring MC'ing from Beans & Priest of Antipop Consortium and Hanin of ATR, released via DHR mailorder. ATR's swansong album/ noise maelstrom "Live At Brixton Academy 1999" continues in a similar vein to this Merzbow release, Alec and Nic Endo fighting it out with a vocodered Carl Crack MC'ing over the improvised chaos (something like how a "regular" ATR set would end), possibly the only thing as extreme. Merzbow would again perform with Alec as captured on hi
