by Rick AndersonAccording to the press materials, Masami Akita (who records under the name Merzbow) spent the months leading up to the recording of this album "listening to Horace Andy, Dennis Bovell, Keith Hudson, and a whole pipe full of other dub mavericks." If you think that means that Akita's trademark hideous noise would be displaced on this album by rolling, bass-heavy grooves and dubwise special effects, then you're either remarkably nave or (like most people) simply unfamiliar with his modus operandi. Merzbuddha's three long tracks, titled "Mantra 1," "Mantra 2," and "Mantra 3" and clocking in at an average of about 19 minutes each, do offer something like a regular pulse, but that's as close as you get to anything like a groove. "Mantra 1" juxtaposes smooshed-up analog grunginess, including what sounds like a deeply messed-up modem, with an off-kilter 4/4 bass belch (and does it for 21 minutes, y'all); "Mantra 2" is made up primarily of layers of hiss and glitch undergirded with a lurching 11/8 rhythm; "Mantra 3" sounds like an extended variation on "Mantra 2," only with more hisses and blips and a nearly constant skiff of white noise. In other words, it's just another party at Merzbow's house, where all the drinks taste a little bit scary and skinny people with expensively bad haircuts nod their unsmiling heads to music that's supposed to be good for you. And who knows, maybe it really is.