Music from Japan

First Volume of a three CD project. Ground Zero makes a monster structure that starts screaming and gets more and more intense and massive until you don't imagine there is anywhere else to go. Then it gets bigger. A classic.

Otomo Yoshihide and frightening band deconstruct and rebuild the already sampled and reconstructed 'Peking Opera' of Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth. In conception, execution and in plain terms of aural excitement and intelligence, this is hard to beat. Stunning recording - with a drum sound to gasp at...

Just when you thought it would be safe... Ground Zero are back with a CD of extraordinary covers, some are massive, others strange, all add something to their originals and were selected because of their importance to founder Otomo Yoshihide's personal musical biography - all explained in his excellent accompanying notes. Just the version of Shed a Little Tear is worth the whole CD.

Remblandt Assemblage was recorded and mixed at home in 1980 and originally released on cassette the following year on own label. For the recording of this tape Masami used wide range of instruments: tapes, prepared acoustic guitar, tabla, junk percussion, microphone, radio, egg cutter & noise. Also this is the very first Merzbow album to use tape manipulations Only a few copies were made and distributed on cassette in 1981, but otherwise it was not widely available until being partially re…

Bamboo presents the first vinyl release of France Demo Tapes. "This just might be the single greatest side of OTT psych/noise guitar oblivion ever put to disc from the most legendary Japanese underground group of all time, Les Rallizes Denudes: the mysteriously-named France Demo Tapes have previously only circulated on wildly dubious CD-R burns, often with contradictory and conflicting track listings/material but the session (whether it was actually recorded in France or not) is consistently dat…

Constructed over the period of two years via mail collaboration this is a great and forceful collaboration between two artists that each have made a name for themselves with their unique approach to making sound. KKNULL is a master of feedback studies, working with looped scenarios to create dense and vital sound units. KKNULL has a long history as an experimental musician and is also the leading force behind proto-metal-group Zeni Geva and the dark-industrial project Absolut Null Punkt.John Wie…

LP version. Arashi presents Semikujira. Arashi is: Akira Sakata - alto saxophone, clarinet, voice; Johan Berthling - double bass; Paal Nilssen-Love - drums & percussion. The Wire about Arashi (TROST 130CD/LP), the trio's first release: "there are moments on this album when the energy is so furiously intense it feels like it's going to spin out of control and take someone's eye out. Sakata delivers wry alto phrases, as though from the corner of his mouth, before digressing into urgent flights of …

Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The moniker of Japanese Masami Akita was born in Tokyo in 1979. Inspired by Dadaism and Surrealism, Akita took the name for his project from German artist Kurt Schwitters' pre-war architectural assemblage "The Cathedral of Erotic Misery" or “Merzbau”. Just as Schwitters attacked the entrenched artistic traditions of his time with his revolutionary avant-garde collages, so too would Akita challenge the contemporary concept of what is cal…

First ever re-issue Lp re-issue of this classic Merzbow recording originally released on Chaos. Originally issued in 1983 in Lp format by Chaos in Japan. Masami Akita is aided here by Kiyoshi Mizutani. Classic old school junk noise for an intense and quite psychedelic album! A must have.Cover and labels are a near exact replica of the originals. Includes a 30 cm x 30 cm cardboard insert with cover artwork. Clear / white / yellow splatter vinyl! Edition of 302 numbered copies.

Akira Sakata, a legendary Japanese jazz musician active since the early '70s (Yosuke Yamashita Trio,Akira Sakata Trio) and a marine biologist, has toured and recorded with The Thing, Jim O'Rourke, Bill Laswell, Merzbow, Chikamorachi, et al. The Tale of the Heike is an intense solo performance originally released on CD in 2011, and now available on vinyl for the first time. This edition is expanded to include four pieces from the 2013 DVD release of a live ensemble performance of the piece. Akira…

Recorded at NHK-604-Studio on Nov & Dec 1991 Musicians: Akira Sakata,Tamai Toyooka,Asuka Kaneko, Kyoko Kuroda,Hiroshi Yoshino,Yu Fujii  Kiyohiko Semba,Atuy,Fusae Doi, Mishio Ogawa,Shigeri Kitsu,Norihiko Yamanuki.

Repressed. Les Rallizes Dénudés are one of the earliest and most revolutionary Japanese psychedelic rock bands, and existed off and on through four decades. The band formed in November of 1967 at Kyoto University, inspired by Exploding Plastic Inevitable-era Velvet Underground as well as the over-amplified rock of Blue Cheer and Mario Schifano's avant-garde ensemble Le Stelle. By 1968 they were gigging live and even began a regular collaboration with an avant-garde theater troupe, which ended th…

Yes, you’re reading this correctly. A legit, non-bootleg vinyl reissue of one of the holy grails of fourth-world avant-ambient synthesis, and believe it or not, this was a Record Store Day release in Japan this year.  Originally released a few months after Haruomi Hosono’s 1978 Paraiso LP — famous for featuring the first trio grouping of the band that would become Yellow Magic Orchestra — Hosono’s Cochin Moon, an album credited to himself and famed graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo, who provid…

Masahiko Satoh’s fourth album is a duet with German pianist and composer Wolfgang Dauner. Dauner is one of very early European avant-garde jazz pianists, and he recorded the first free jazz album in Germany back in 1964. Dauner played with Eberhard Weber and Jean-Luc Ponty, and in the late 60s, he experimented with choral music. Being a passionate innovator and experimenter, in 1970 he discovered electronic devices and started using them in his music. He experimented with ring-modulated Hohner c…

2014 repress. The Flower Travellin' Band's first musical outing, Challenge, was released in 1970 and was essentially a series of covers of Cream, Hendrix, Big Brother andJefferson Airplane material. However, Satori appeared a year later and forever changed the way the group would be perceived, both in Japan and in the musical world at large. Possessing the vision to select Akira "Joe" Yamanaka as their vocalist, the Flower Travellin' boys elevated themselves above other Japanese bands of the tim…

Atsusaku is the collaborative output of Gareth Davis (Oiseaux Tempete, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, Machinefabriek etc) and Japanese noise mastermind Masami Akita aka Merzbow. A massive wall of sound over two tracks that moves from the shifting low-end structures and the ricochet of howling reeds to the blistering haze of dense white noise and rapid-fire electronic tones. The title Atsusaku, suggests pressure or mechanical compression and it was from this starting point, the idea of Davis' reed sound…

2026 Repress. Guitarist Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi (1932-1991) was a towering leader in the Japanese jazz world. His first influence was Lennie Tristano, but through the 1960s and 1970s he explored and pushed the boundaries in free form jazz, leading a group called New Direction, among others. Ever a fighting spirit, in 1982, shortly after recovering from a life-threatening medical condition and surgery, Takayanagi decided to take on a challenging task for any guitarist: To record an entire solo…

One of the most compelling albums Steve Lacy recorded during the 80s – a spare set of duets with Japanese percussionist Masahiko Togashi, who really helps shape Steve's style on the record! Togashi approaches his instruments with a very introspective, almost tentative style – hardly the bold rhythms of other drummers, and instead this subtle stepping forward that almost feels, at times, as if Masahiko is discovering his instruments for the first time – and figuring out the sounds in a careful wa…

Jinya Disc presents Three Improvised Variations On a Theme of Qadhafi. A live recording board that includes live performances of improvisation by Action Direct, which was performed on the theme of "personal image" of Muanmar al-Gaddafi rather than ideology or political position. Jim O'Rourke refers to Three Improvised Variations On a Theme of Qadhafi as "a constellation of moving celestial bodies, expanding gas, exploding stars densely packed" and "a corridor of endless possibilities and discove…

Mass Hysterism: In Another Situation, a 1983 record by the late Japanese noise-guitar hellion Masayuki Takayanagi (1932–1991) is one of those albums that always going to be lurking in my attic, so to speak. I can put it away for a while, but it never goes to sleep—it's always calling me. Even if it takes a few years, I'll be back. (As an illustration of this, I obsessed over Takayanagi in a February 2007 post as well.) It's a bashing, clanging exorcism: two electric guitars (the other played by …