Music from Japan / All styles

Zai Kuning (g., vo., perc., misc.), Otomo Yoshihide (g., turntables, perc., misc.). 'The Asian improvisation of the present, a connection between Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong. A vivid 71-minute performance moving back and forth between turbulenc…

restocked! Originally released in 1975 as an LP on Offbeat Records (ORLP-1005). 'Fragment II: Gradually Projection'. 'Fragment III: Percussion Solo'. 'Fragment VI: Mass Projection'. All compositions by Masayuki takayanagi. Masayuki takayanagi New Dir…

Mail from Fushitsusha, which Keiji Haino himself calls 21st-century blues, draws out exquisite dynamics and 'space' - like a nerve being passed through the eye of a needle. Carrying out their sonic explorations while adhering to the Fushitsusha metho…

Vienna artist Klaus Filip plays music using nothing but sine waves produced with 'lloopp,' an improvisation software program he invented and continues to refine. Toshimaru Nakamura makes music simply by controlling a mixing board's internal feedback,…

The Japanese underground band Johari was create in 1990 by the magic duo Asahito Nanjo (High Rise) and Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and will became later, in 1995, this shamanistic avant-garde formation Toho Sara. “Hourouurin” is their third…

Sachiko M with two sinewaves on one empty sampler. Sachiko M is a musician who uses the sampler as an instrument. Rather than apply the device's original function of sampling recorded material, she makes music using nothing but its internal test tone…

Over the past few years, alto sax player Masahiko Okura has led an astonishingly full and varied musical life. Active as a soloist, as leader of the jazz-rock band Gnu, and as a member of the improvisational trio Bject (with Tetuzi Akiyama and Utah K…

Free jazz drummer Shoji Hano and German saxophone giant-leading European free improviser Peter Brotzmann first met in Japan in the early eighties. In 1990 Hano went to Europe for the first time and played with Brötzmann; then he invited Brotzmann to …

Kaffe Matthews (laptop), Andrea Neumann (inside piano), Sachiko M (sinewaves, contact microphones). Recorded live in Tokyo, 3/17/02. Although I and II include two and three tracks, respectively, each is a single work. They are divided into multiple t…

European free jazz/free improvisation pioneer Han Bennink (drums) made this studio recording with Kazuo Imai (guitar) in Tokyo in May of 2002. Imai, who in the '70s studied with Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi, currently performs both on his …

Taku Sugimoto is an extremely restrained guitarist who produces very few sounds in performance, allowing silence to be the controlling force. As an improviser and composer, he's garnered international acclaim, and also provoked strong reactions, both…

Tetuzi Akiyama has in recent years attracted tremendous interest on the Japanese and international improvised music scenes. In addition to performing many times in Europe, America, Australia, and New Zealand, he's been releasing a steady stream of so…

Toshimaru Nakamura's main instrument of late has been what he calls the 'no-input mixing board.' Rather than input external sound sources into the mixer, he treats it as a self-contained instrument by controlling its internal feedback -- the result b…

Taku Sugimoto: electric guitar, Tetuzi Akiyama: turntable without records, contact microphones, Yasuhiro Yoshigaki: waterphone, Kumiko Takara: snare drum, Masahiro Uemura: bells, Ami Yoshida: voice, Itoken: crotales, Mari Furuta: snare drum, Yoshimit…

'Trained as a classical guitarist, Akinori has more recently worked as an assistant and engineer to Tango-based sound artist and instrument builder Akio Suzuki. His debut album is an attempt to fuse guitar with electronic music, and this track includ…

This is a real blues album created as an expression of devotion to 20th-century blues. But not blues as a style - the object of devotion here is the blues spirit. You might even say this album is the successor to authentic blues. Those who get it, ge…

this mcd is surely enough to make me drool for more! Apparently inspired by an Eastern legend, this quite lengthy single track is a hypnotic power drone probably originated by manipulated string bowing. The repetitive playing tecnique is nerve-breaki…

"Live In Japan is the first official domestic live Boris DVD to be unleashed! The power, majesty and unique psychedelia that only Boris can deliver is perfectly captured in this stunning visual document. Professionally filmed on the last show of the …

Heavy, psychedelic, emotional rock'n'roll with loud guitar feedback, as only the Japanese can filter (come, on, you know the drill). Includes 40-minute bonus footage of MICHEL HENRITI (DUSTBREEDERS) and OVERHANG PARTY leader RINJI FUKUOKA in a dual-g…

This double album (divided into two LPs), recorded live at the Nippon Columbia Studio in Tokyo in 1974, was the group's final effort before disbanding. Here Kosugi and the Travellers blend Eastern and Western instrumentation, vocal cha…

Brand new LP from Kawabata Makoto, his second for Blackest Rainbow following on nicely from where 2008's 'Rainbow Of Love' left off. White Summer of Love Dreamer continues to develop Kawabata's experimentation into psychedelic drone music using a var…

New psychic territorial landscapes the cosmic cartographer mapped yesterday before tomorrow. Acid Mothers Temple main man Kawabata Makoto links up with LSD March guitarist Michishita Shinsuke to create another amazing platter of fantastic sounds and …

Takehisa Kosugi is an inter-media artist and performer who started his career back in the '60s in Tokyo. With his first band Group Ongaku (free anarchist-conceptual improvisations) he was introduced to the Fluxus avant-garde movement. During the '70s…

With a title like ‘Improvisation Anarchy’, you pretty much have the blessed assurance that the record will be either a right-on, spontaneous surge of electricity, or at least an entertaining disaster. Recorded in 1978-79, this patchwork quilt of stra…

Mubomuso is a neologism, made up from two extant words. Mubo suggests the unadorned and unaffected, while muso means to be in a state without thought or preplanning. All parts of the release lead the listener towards the consideration of a very sp…

'It was on a night when sleep simply would not come, not matter how long I sprawled on the grass or how many pages of my book I leafed through. The black shaggy 'thing' expelled all the breath in its body. Phu phu phuu. And as it did so, something gl…

Originally released in 1976 by Nippon Columbia, this is the final album by legendary Japanese space/psych-rockers Far East Family Band. Droney and far-out electronica influenced by German producer/electronic music composer Klaus Schulze is more pr…

Phoenix Records reissues a digitally remastered edition of People's sole album, the legendary Ceremony -- Buddha Meet Rock, originally released in 1971 in Japan. Nobody's sure if the musicians on this recording ever performed as a group or whether Ce…

Masahide Tokunaga: alto saxophone. Recorded by Taku Sugimoto at Studio Slubmusic, Tokyo, October 4, 2009. Mastered by Taku Unami. Drawing by Reiko Shioda

To start with, we've always commended Japan's Doubtmusic label for the handsome packaging job that each one of their digipack cd releases invariably receives. This one, though, we'd probably be inclined to buy just 'cause of the especially cool cover…

Composed by Taku Sugimoto. Tetuzi Akiyama: guitar. Recorded live at Loop-Line on October 23, 2009. Recorded by Taku Sugimoto. Mastered by Taku Unami. Drawing by Taku Sugimoto.

From the one sheet "Sound track collections of BORIS that continues activity. This album puts, listens to the novella from the sound source, & there is a concept where the image flows to the other side of the eyelid of the person who read. Chaos in t…

Final solo alto sax blasting from the late legendary Japanese underground hero Kaoru Abe. Abe was an inspiration to free/jazz and Japanese noise lovers world-wide, lived a fast and hard life and ripped his guts inside out on each and every of his man…

As part of its Japan focus the 1999 Biennial Festival for New Music in Hannover also presented Toshio Hosokawa's exploration into the music of his "musical ancestors." This CD was recorded live during the performance and includes three works from the…

The soundtrack for the movie Blue (directed by Hiroshi Ando and starring Mikako Ichikawa, winner of Best Actress at the 2002 Moscow International Film Festival), which was based on acclaimed comic artist Kiriko Nananan's comic book of the same title,…

Originally released in 1975 as an LP on Iskra Records (ISKRA-001). 'First session 1: Gradually Projection'. 'First session 2: Gradually Projection'. 'Second session: Mass Projection'. New Direction Unit are Masayuki Takayanagi: electric guitar. Kenji…

Outstanding double CD Featuring a mindblowing line-up of contributors, this double-disc release pays homage to noise music pioneers The New Blockaders, with tracks recorded by some of the avant-garde's leading lights, including Merzbow, Incapacitan…

"Led by infamous Fluxus member Takehisa Kosugi, Tokyo's Taj Mahal Travellers were one of the prime examples of a band more heard-of than actually heard. Their vinyl legacy (the 1972 LP July 15, 1972 released on CBS/Sony Japan; the 1974 2LP August 197…

Heavy, ominous psychedelic free-improv from Tokyo, Japan. Julian's Cope album of the month . Tetragrammaton is a trio featuring Nobunaga Ken on drums and percussion, Cal Lyall on electronics and guitar, and TOMO on hurdy-gurdy, saxophone and electron…

Originally released in 1984, this Hidjokaidan side project Ultra Bide, lovely and far more listenable than most Japanese noise-rock bands, throwing space-rock, psychedelia, electronica, traditional Japanese sounds