2013 release. If Jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the 'sound of surprise,' Cuts, an intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent collaboration between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (AKA Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson, is the 'sound of shock and awe.'