Nikola Tamindzic, Merzbow
I shot Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) a couple of weeks ago for The New Yorker. Here’s an excerpt from Sasha Frere-Jones’s just-published piece on Akita and Justin Bieber:
“Like many child stars, Bieber must invoke romance but avoid sensuality, which makes him the exact inverse of Masami Akita, who has used explicit sexual imagery since the start of his career. But the two are linked by a faith in their respective machines: Akita believes that his circuits and software will, with some urging, bring something out of themselves that reflects the human better than the human can. Bieber, like many pop listeners, is equally comfortable entrusting his career and his public person to a squad of professionals. Both reflect a diminishment of the self and an ability to accept a lesser agency in the face of what works. (What would Bieber’s songs sound like without Auto-Tune?) What works for Masami Akita is amplification, and the many outcomes when amplification is doubled and trebled. What works for Bieber is tracking and then carefully pitching to every living demographic, insofar as the data allows.”
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