Merzbow number

the Merzbow number denotes the 'collaborative distance' between Merzbow and any other artist. it is based on the Erdős number, and follows the same rules:

any artist that has directly collaborated with Merzbow is given a Merzbow number of 1. any artist who has collaborated with that artist, will be given a Merzbow number of 2, and so on, and so forth. an artist operating under a different 'alias' we consider to be the same artist, and so this relationship does not increment the Merzbow number. any artist with shared membership in a 'group' is considered to be a collaboration, and so increments the Merzbow number by 1.

you can use the tool to search from any other artist other than Merzbow aswell, but the graph I am constructing starts from Merzbow. this is all based on information from the Discogs API. the idea for this webzone came to my friend during, as he speaks it, 'a long evening in the bergen queue...'. please enjoy!

search parameters

search from (discogs ID, ex: 12551, which is merzbow)
find id from name >
search to (discogs ID, ex: 1165, which is regis)
find id from name >
maximum depth (higher = deeper, ex: 5)

search type

i recommend breadth first.
breadth-first (finds the shortest path where one exists)
depth-first pure (suboptimal, will find longer paths than needed, but can be fun)
depth-first iterative (kind of the same as breadth-first, but just worse)

allowed relations

if you disable, for example, groups and aliases, you can find 'pure' connections on collaborative releases made under the same artist name.
groups (ex rob brown <-> autechre <-> sean booth)
aliases (ex regis <-> karl o' connor)
releases (ex juan atkins <-> Borderland (2013) <-> moritz von oswald)

search!

to date, we have indexed 332820 artists and 536822 releases.