Gensho, the latest sprawling collaboration from fellow Japanese experimental giants Boris and Merzbow, seems made and marketed to elicit the attention of Gizmodo or Mashable. The set splits 13 tracks unevenly between the artists; Boris takes credit for nine, while Merzbow can claim four. But compare the track lengths—add them up, even—and you'll notice that, collectively, the running time for Merzbow's contributions essentially equals that of Boris' drum-less recreations of its greatest hits. The halves are meant to be started and played simultaneously, so that the mixing between the two happens in real-time and at the high volumes facilitated by two separate sound systems. It's a more modest rendition of The Flaming Lips's Zaireeka, enhanced by the twist of partnership between these longtime collaborators.
Don't be surprised if, upon first spin, Gensho sounds like a mess, or if listening to the whole 75-minute cycle gets exhausting. Boris and Merzbow, of course, are dual institutions of loudness; the former has a classic called Amplifier Worship, the latter a masterpiece called Sonic Command. At times here, they seem to go at one another's throat, Merzbow's spirals of clipped-and-mangled signals lashing out against Boris' honeyed drone.
Each time you run this gauntlet, you will undoubtedly notice new cooperative nuances between the two acts, particularly moments when Merzbow seems to be working to fit inside Boris' world and to augment it. When the band lurches into "Sometimes," for instance, with sweeping guitar chords moving like tectonic plates beneath airy vocals, he locks into a sustained signal and guilds it with quick, near-manic cuts. It's as though he's adding a bass line and his version of a blast beat to the low, slow rumble. He's almost playful during "Akuma No Uta," countering the band's grand, ascendant riff with a crosstalk of dissonant bits and shards. Such moments, though, are either so few and far between or so constant (it's hard to determine which, really) on Gensho that the entire experience becomes more arduous than enjoyable. Both Merzbow and Boris have built enormous legacies by being monolithic in sound and singular in style, but those assets become liabilities here.
Listening to these sets separately is actually the more interesting experience. The two-part "Goloka" suite, which takes the middle 40 minutes of Merzbow's contribution, finds the master in all his versatile glory. He slides seamlessly between electroacoustic radiance and concussive punishment, between drones that are nearly pleasant and scrambles that suggest all the world's servers stalling at once. And the nine preexisting songs that Boris chose for this set—the tidal "Farewell," the snarling "Vomitself," the floating "Rainbow"—are among the landmarks in an enormous catalog. Re-created here without drums, they're newly fascinating, with forgotten elements pulled suddenly into the spotlight. Boris' side of Gensho is the band's most assured and purely pleasurable album in years. As if knowing they'll be overshadowed by Merzbow's volume, anyway, the trio seems to be enjoying itself here, delighting its way through the classics of its own canon. Perhaps it's best to think of Gensho, then, as a split box set.
Still, particularly for this era of instant, easy access to almost everything, Gensho is an intriguing, subversive concept. It makes the listener work to hear the music as it's intended, and that process allows the listener input as to how, exactly, the music should be heard. Which side should be louder? Who gets the right channel? Should the stereos used be the same? Gensho feels delightfully out of step with our present notions of convenience, our belief that music should practically come to us if it wants to be heard. It's not quite so extreme as the infamous Merzcar, in which Merzbow's Noisembryo was locked crypt-style into the CD player of a decrepit Mercedez-Benz, but it's certainly more involved than Adele circumventing Spotify.
Alas, that challenge is the most lasting aspect of the least rewarding partnership between Boris and Merzbow to date. By the fourth or fifth trip through Gensho, the idea begins to slip into pure gimmickry, as though this were a notion that sounded fun for old friends to try but isn't so fun to hear. What's more, Boris' decision to plunder its back catalog for such an album dovetails with the recent feeling that this band, no matter how hard it tries, is simply running out of ground and energy. They couldn't even be bothered to write new songs for this old, borrowed concept. At least it's good to revisit the ghosts of a force that seems to be fading.
