A bit about Merzbow's track: Most people who make music on a Game Boy and have been doing so for a while will know that the Game Boy Color's sound quality isn't exactly up to par with that of the other models since the headphone jack emits a low buzzing noise. Merzbow's track was made on a Game Boy Color and you can clearly hear the noise the headphone jack emits. Most people would say that because of this, his track isn't as well done as the others on the compilation. But, you have to remember that Merzbow is a noise artist, so that adding of the extra noise may have been intentional on his part. With that said, I think the track shows a lot of character for what it is. It's simple, but it gets the point across, after all, it is Merzbow.
This is an amazing release and a good place to start if you're new to the chiptune/glitch/idm genres and also want to hear what Nanoloop sounds like. Some people might say that some of the tracks on this record are poorly done, but they're not. Nanoloop is not as musical (although it can be) as the more widely used, Little Sound DJ app, and is used for more avant-garde productions. All of these tracks are really well done. Some are done with the help of editing software (like logic + cool edit), and other additional software; and some are done with Nanoloop alone. The track by Pyrolator shows you what Nanoloop is really capeable of and no additional devices were used. The tracks by Blectum from Blechdom, Scratch Pet Land and Hrvatski are also good pure Nanoloop tracks.
This is a cool album to say the least... BUT it came relativly late to the game, really.
Some history of Nanoloop music:
One of the first Nanoloop projects was by the girls from Robotnics Crossing (aka GoGo Goddess), Caro Spill (Something J's wife) and Caroline LZD (who took the
picture of BOMB 20 for the backcover of "Field Manual" and did that famous gameboy track on Homewrecker Foundation (Hecate's sublabel).
...and she's the girl that gave Alec Empire a gameboy music demo before he did "WE PUNK EINHEIT!" in 1999.
so obviously Alec Empire didn't release her music on DHR,.... he just took her idea and did it himself on DHR.
and he still uses a Gameboy on stage to this day.
This album is a mixture of musical technology, experimentation and a bit of promoting to the Nanoloop software. It's incredible how a Gameboy(TM) can produce such interesting sounds and loops (although most tracks were slightly edited later), however, some artists weren't quite able to actualy achieve good results...
BTW, this is NOT a typical playful/childish record... It contains some ear-damaging noise tracks (ex: «Pita - Nloopcbn» but also some outstanding pieces of sound like «Pyrolator - Nanodance» and the beautiful «Ostinato - Gameboy Girl», where the vocals and the sinthetic sounds connect flawlessly.
As I said before there are some tracks that are, at least, sub-par, like «Merzbow - Untitled», but in the overall, if you like glitch/noise/experimental or you're just looking for a different sound experience, this IS the record.