Meat Beat Manifesto & Merzbow - Extinct

When Jack Dangers and Masami Akita entered the studio between November 2023 and January 2024, the result was never going to be easy listening. And it is not. Extinct, released on Cold Spring in April 2024, is a collaboration between two artists who have spent their careers pushing music toward its breaking point from completely different directions, and what they have created together is something that deftly blurs the lines between musicality and atonal noise, a harrowing yet cathartic trip through walls of harsh industrial sound that rewards those willing to meet it on its own terms.

As Dangers himself has described it: "We may not speak the same language, but in the vortex of sound there is a raw, primal understanding that transcends words. Noise can be art. Pushing boundaries with Masami wasn't just a musical adventure, it was a masterclass in sonic anarchy." Merzbow, born Masami Akita and the undisputed king of Japanese noise with over 400 releases to his name, brings his signature unrestrained textures to a collaboration that is grounded and given shape by Dangers' industrial breakbeat precision, the two approaches creating a tension that drives the record forward with hypnotic momentum.

The 20-minute opener "¡FLAKKA!" takes constantly evolving breakbeats and drives them through a filter of harsh noise, blending mutant broken beats and hints of dub into rhythmic noise of the highest caliber. "Burner" takes the record to its ultimate conclusion, an initial drum beat gradually dismantled until it is barely recognizable, pulsating distortion and high-end audio fragments bleeding into each other before the whole thing slowly unravels, degrades, and falls apart. Electronic Sound included it among their best releases of 2024. Robin Rimbaud of Scanner called it music guaranteed to wake the dead.

This is not background music. It is an immersive experience that demands full attention and gives back something genuinely extraordinary.