Description
Antimonument was originally issued by ZSF produkt in 1986 in an edition of 225 copies picture discs LP.
Copies of the original are now very rare and very expensive.
This re-issue was remastered in 2014 by Masami Akita and contains extra material for a total of 61:55 in length.
This 2 x picture disc edition comes in a replica of the original artwork plus an updated version of the artwork by Masami Akita for disc 2 and for the cover sticker.
Edition of 254 numbered copies in 2 x Picture Disc in stickered gatefold pvc sleeve.
Track list:
A1 – Tatara (10:29)
B1 – Bardo Song (6:05)
B2 – 1560°(8:01)
C1 – Pleasure Dome (17:20)
D1 – Grid Module (13:20)
D2 – 3 Types of Industrial Pollution (6:40)
From Wikipedia:
Antimonument is an album by the Japanese noise musician Merzbow. It was originally released as a picture disc and reissued on CD by Art Directe in 1991. The CD is now considered a bootleg since the label did not pay the artists.
The CD has a bonus track, taken from the cassette compilation Infidel Psalm Vol. 1 (1986 Mental Decay).
On October 13, 2014, it was reissued by Menstrual Recordings as double picture disc LP with the bonus track included.
The album is “[…] a homage to the strange architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Goetheanum of Rudolf Steiner, Nishōtei, etc. – they all made their own pleasure domes.”
The sides of the record are named after the two main shrines of the Ise Grand Shrine.
In an interview with Arthur Potter, Masami Akita explains how this LP and Batztoutai were inspired by his native culture:
[…] musical composition and behavior are always related to the structure of one’s own language and way of thinking. I’d like to use Japanese-like images and words on purpose, as a way of randomly mixing significant cultural details. For example […] On the Antimonument picture disc, I used the sign of the shrine of “Ise” (shrine of the Emperor’s family) and ancient heterodoxine lettering. These were not presented directly, but as subliminal images. Of course, the Japanese did not respond to them in the context I placed them.
The reason those images were used was that I’d been researching misreadings of Japanese public history, and wrote about that in a book called Mannerism of Heterodoxa.
—Masami Akita
Akita then explains how the sound of his music changed over time, saying that Batztoutai “uses lots of loops” and that on Antimonument he “expanded the loop sounds with harsh metal ones.”