After hearing Kuma no Mori/Night by Merzbow, the imagery I imagined while hearing the piece was that of the transition between nightfall and sunrise. In the beginning, I felt like I was alone staring out the window at nighttime when the moon was up high. The vibrations felt like they mimicked the sound of the moon, feeling like an inanimate animate pulse. In the middle of the piece, as night begins to transition to dusk, the music felt like it began transitioning to include both day and night aspects. The music seems to evolve closer and closer to sunrise. When it finally reaches sunrise, the music from 4 minutes something all of a sudden moves to 18:05 which I interpret to be sound of day, unnecessary noise without soul. I think that this sort of expression of one’s soul with noise sound shows Russolo’s futurist ideology of using new noise to create sound rather than imitation of sound to create new repetitive composition. When I was immersed in the music, I found that I was able to identify new sounds that I don’t think I’ve heard before in natural compositions such as the sliding of the vibration with the inconsistent pitched noise. All in all, I think that I could feel futurism’s spirits within the piece without the aggression of the artist.
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