Music from Japan

Merzbow, Mats Gustafsson and Balázs Pándi, recorded at Victoriaville in 2018 and completed with new recordings in 2025: electronics, bass and baritone saxophones and drums in brutal noise and free jazz.

Powerful trio music by pianist Takehiro Honda, known for his strong touch and bluesy feeling, together with an American rhythm section. The album features a line up of compelling originals, including the overwhelmingly powerful "Minors Only" and the …

The first leader album by Ryo Kawasaki, a jazz and fusion guitarist whose talent was recognized by Gil Evans and who went on to work internationally. The album presents a cool cosmic sound, including "Agana," where Kawasaki delivers breath-taking gui…

A representative work by popular pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, known for his swinging and bluesy feeling. Backed by Tsutomu Okada and Hiroshi Murakami, Yamamoto gives elegant performances of famous standards such as "Stella by Starlight" and "Alone Toge…

The scent of fresh greenery rising into the air. A youthful Hidefumi Toki weaves a vivid and beautiful story through a one-horn quartet. Making his professional debut while still in high school, Hidefumi Toki went on to perform with groups led by New…

This is both a blueprint and a definitive masterpiece. Effortlessly transcending eras and genres, Terumasa Hino continues to captivate audiences around the world. His sound and presence are truly top of the tops. Long before Japanese jazz was labeled…

Recorded 1984-87 in Brooklyn and never before on vinyl, jazz pianist Masabumi Kikuchi's Rokudai cycle - Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Air, Mind - turns synthesizers and a Shingon Buddhist framework into improvised electronic music. Remastered by Taylor D…

Magic Hour, comes from FeLid, a member of the post-hardcore band the north end and an organizer of the festival platform MIMINOIMI. Combining improvisational and accidental guitar sounds, lyrical ambient drones, and high-definition sound editing, Mag…

RGL is a track maker known for his lo-fi house productions and analog-textured dance music, with releases on labels such as Diskotopia and Breaker Breaker. His new work, Untitled, showcases a wide-ranging sonic palette: alongside rhythm-driven tracks…

A door into the most private corner of the Japanese underground. With its La Musica series, Black Editions turns to the catalogue of La Musica, the tiny imprint run by Asahito Nanjo - the bassist and ringleader behind High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Tra…

Solmania's first album in 18 years: a single 64-minute slab of avant-garde guitar torture from Masahiko Ohno and Katsumi Sugahara, wrung from self-built multi-neck guitars bristling with extra pickups. Not a static wall but a continually evolving sto…

A 2015 collaboration between Jojo Hiroshige on guitar and Haruo Ueda on electronics, structured around the natural elements. The Hijokaidan founder steps away from pure noise into a more textural dialogue, his guitar set against Ueda's shifting elect…

An instrumental solo guitar album from Jojo Hiroshige, founder of Hijokaidan and self-styled King of Noise. Improvisation for solo electric guitar pushed to a dense, heavy extreme that is hard to believe comes from a single instrument. On Alchemy.

A 2015 meeting between Hijokaidan and Nasca Car, the Osaka electronic project of Nakaya Koichi. Two studio tracks and two live sets across more than forty minutes, the King of Noise's wall of sound crossed with Nasca Car's pulsing acid-house and new-…

Jojo Hiroshige - known and feared throughout the world not only as a member of the legendary ‘‘Hijokaidan,’’ often referred as ‘‘King of Noise,’’ but also as the owner of the prestigious label “Alchemy Records,” which has released countless “Japanois…

A 1982 cassette by Abe Kaii, the duo of Jojo Hiroshige and Toshiji Mikawa, named in sly homage to free jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe. A monolith of free jazz and psychedelic space rock from two future architects of Japanese noise, near impossible to hea…

A 2018 live document from Hijokaidan in their definitive musical form: Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Junko's voice, Toshiji Mikawa on electronics and Futoshi Okano on drums, fusing into a single dense wall of sound. The King of Noise captured live and un…

Harsh noise at full saturation from Incapacitants, the duo of Toshiji Mikawa (Hijokaidan) and Fumio Kosakai. No melody, no rhythm, no let-up, only a dense and strangely psychedelic block of electronics pushed toward ecstatic overload. One of the defi…

Gatefold LP edition + OBI.  There are few figures in improvised music quite like Akira Sakata. A marine biologist by training, he surfaced in the early 1970s inside the Yamashita Yosuke Trio, one of the most ferocious units Japanese jazz has ever pro…

Princess Mononoke (1997) is set in a mythic late-medieval Japan of iron foundries and forest gods. The young prince Ashitaka, cursed while killing a boar god maddened by hatred, travels west and finds himself caught between the people stripping the f…