CAT'S SQUIRREL by Merzbow & Oren Ambarchi

Cat's Squirrel is a live recording of Masami Akita & Oren Ambarchi's performance in Sydney, Australia in May 2012. Although Akita & Ambarchi have known one another since 1993 & performed together as part of larger ensembles, this was their first performance as a duo. Together they create a massive wall of sound that moves from the cavernous to the blisteringly psychedelic, laying down shifting low-end structures over which pointillist details ricochet across the stereo field. Akita & Ambarchi's voices blend together into a sonic morass.

Moving through a number of episodes, from deluges of reverberated metal screeches to rapid-fire iterations of visceral electronic tones, the record reaches a high point midway through the second side, where Akita's electronics gradually thin out into a stream of skipping chirps & screeches while around him Ambarchi builds up a dense mass of phasing low-end guitar tones; the duo patiently developing an impenetrable wall of ecstatic, psychedelic noise.

- Francis Plagne