Interview:

The philosopher Georges Bataille’s idea of meditation was that it would have to be physical, that it would have to be difficult and full of fear. To go with this, it would also be an erotic ecstasy, which, even if fleeting, would be true “inner experience”. The state attained would not be higher, but a lowering of the human both out of normal constraints and into the materiality of bodiliness. Noise music at its fullest, like Merzbow, removes the possibility of thinking, or rational thought, although this can come later. Volume becomes physical, literally filling your spatial environment; listeners brought low, brought to their bodies, but as if to new “noise bodies”. The promise of transcendence, or even control over this, is dissipated. Instead of an “out of body” experience, the world as material floods in, and you are as far in your body, but also in that body as part of the world, as possible. Connection in a material community, but not communion. The principle is the same as in consenting masochistic “play”, and in fact like many mystical systems: submission takes you further than knowledge or control. In noise we have not just “low” meditation, but the process of lowering. Not for noise the arcane knowledge of admittingly very interesting rogue mystics. It is complexity that enforces simplicity in response. None of this is of course obligatory. Nor is it a matter for choice. It will occur or not.

“Noise music at its fullest, like Merzbow, removes the possibility of thinking, or rational thought.”
– Dr. Paul Hegarty, author of “Noise/Music: A History”