★PSF Records
Watashi-dake
Much needed reissue of the first solo Haino from 1980. The extreme personal depth that every Haino release exudes. This CD adds previously unreleased track of 28 minutes!
Solo 1973.3.30 Pit Inn Tearoom
Latest (and final) volume of the long dormant J.I. Collection - PSF's groundbreaking collection of rare Japanese free jazz recordings from the early 1970s! Kaoru Abe was easily the brightest shooting star of the late sixties and early seventies Japanese free jazz scene, a wilful iconoclast who specialized in solo improvisations on alto sax and bass clarinet that seemed to slice and dice the air, glittering with a dangerously honed edge. Abe would burn himself out by the late seventies (he…
Outside darkness
Michel Henritzi, lapsteel, guitar, effects. Fukuoka Rinji, violin, bells, effects, vocals. A stark and moving collaboration between the French avant-garde guitarist Michel Henritzi and Fukuoka Rinji, formerly of Overhang Party and currently of Majutsu no Niwa. The track titles of their first duo album limn a cosmos out of joint, hopeless and despairing - suns in eclipse, falling angels, the ghosts of Fukushima. The mood is emphasized in the bleak, dystopian photography of the jacket with …
Krewton the Knewtron
'Previously unreleased material by the legendary Rick Potts of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), to commemorate his solo tour of Japan. Raw, lo-fi avant-garde experiments with field recording, improvisation and tape music, recorded in the late seventies when Rick was in his early twenties. Featuring contributions by Le Forte Four and Doodooettes on one track, and two recently recorded unreleased tracks. " In 1977 I wanted to make an animated film filled with the strange creatures…
Free rock
Dennis Duck (ds), Fredrik Nilsen (b), Tom Recchion (mock cello, strangaphone), Keiji Haino (g), Rick Potts (g). Recorded in 1982. A definite, honest-to-goodness blast from out of the deepest vaults, bringing together Haino and a trio of wildly surreal pranksters from the Los Angeles Free Music Society scene. An amazing archive find!
Aum air
Meeting of 3 guitar players. Recorded live at Penguin House, Tokyo on January 22nd, 2005.
Chikatetsu - Sax Solo
Fushitsusha Tokyo underground legend Tamio Shiraishi in solo alto saxophone solos from different subway stations in Queens, NYC, a unique voice interacting with an extreme urban environment. "Alto saxophone - Tamio Shiraishi. A set of unique site-specific live recordings from one of the true legends of the Tokyo underground, taped at a number of different subway stations in Queens, NYC. Tamio Shiraishi is one of the legends of the Japanese underground. For over thirty years he has continued to …
Natsu No Sebone
Alto saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and percussionist Toshi Ishizuka recorded this extended improvisation at Tokyo's Apia Club, quietly ferocious music with a unique physicality. "Thrilling, blood-shaking, soul-scraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans. Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation -- ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. Hi…
Angels Have Passed
Trio improv; Yoshizawa playing 5 string bass, Kosugi on violin, and Miyake on piano. A post-Cecil thirdstream air about it that's real avant-classical. Fluxus member Kosugi was also a member of '70s legends Taj Mahal Travellers.
II
"The reincarnation of the in-the-red psych aesthetics of early High Rise. One of the biggest underground psych/noise rock discoveries was Tokyo-based Aural Fit. A heavy, bludgeoning cudgel of a band, all distorted grime and redlined aggression, their 2004 self-released first album burst over the scene like a big bag of heavy spanners. They followed up with a track on Tokyo Flashback 5, but then line-up changes seemed to sideline their juddering, thundering rock juggernaut. Leader Mondo Bohachi h…
Untitled
Stunning PSF vinyl-only release with Japanese obi-strip. Ben Chasny's prolific Six Organs Of Admittance wields a haunted, amorphous atmosphere of prickly acoustics and occasionally jarring electric guitar on side A's sidelong 'Furnace.' The flipside is a more structured affair, with the five songs by Usui Hiroyuki's Azul consisting of richly orchestrated psych folk, filled with violins, tabla, tambura and subdued vocals. Limited to 800 copies.
Kankei UFO From Zanryu-Shinen
Volume 3 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The '80s and early '90s saw a great deal of fascinating and exciting material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-oriented stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this material from historical oblivion. Schitosoma Japonica (AKA Nihon Jukets…
Meta-Inorganicmatter Meta-Newlon
Volume 2 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this music from historical oblivion. Toukaseibunshi (Permeable Molecule) was an ultra-myst…
Gene packs
Hirotomo Hasegawa : ichiriki, voice, loops. Shizuo Uchida : bass, ichigen, loops. Debut album by a new improvisation group consisting of Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizuo Uchida. Both have a leather-bound folder full of underground back-story. Hasegawa was the lead singer of seminal early eighties Japanese punk hardcore group Aburadako (Greasy Octopus), while Uchida was a long-term member of Haino's Nijiumu medieval dream-drone unit. The group's instrumentation is highly unorthodox, placing Uchida's …
Photography Meets Music
Video version of the Yuji Itsumi book. Itsumi Yuji (photography); Ohkuchi Junichiro (piano); Imai Kazou (Live electroacoustic); Urabe Masayoshi (alto sax). Color; 80 minutes.
Koitsukara usetaitameno hakarigoto
New solo hurdy-gurdy disk - the first solo Haino release in over two years. Third album of devastating solo electric hurdy-gurdy for Haino, following on from The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man (1996) on PSF, and Even Now, Still I Think (1998). The hand-cranked medieval instrument provides the perfect tool for Haino to display his genre-collapsing originality, allowing multiple dimensions of rhythm, noise, drone, harmony and melody to co-exist, majicked from the invisible interstices of the anci…
Collective Improvisation
Gorgeous extended drone-n-clatter collective improvisation recorded live on 10/18/97 at Asahi Square in Tokyo. Excerpted from a four-hour performance. Marginal Consort was the name chose for the reformed version of the East Bionic Symphony, yet another 'legendary' lost Japanese improvisation collective. The original group was a class project formed by students of the minimal violinist and multi-media guru Tkahisa Kosugi (of Taj Mahal Travellers fame). They released one rare record of everything-…
Asian Flashback: Underground Music From Asia
Asian underground compilation with 13 groups. Featuring Li Jianhong, Narita Munehiro, Hano Shoji, Mustangs, Kiyasu Orchestra, Mafeisan, 10, Xiao He, D!O!D!O!D!, Sato Yukie, Yoshiteru Koga Jizo, Kim Young Jin, Li Daiguo, Amature Amplifier, Soonie. "First PSF compilation to focus on the linkages between the established underground scene in Japan and nascent ones in China and Korea. Politics and history had long prevented exchanges between the three countries, but in recent years increasing trade …
UNDECIDED
Compilation containing six lengthy solo tracks by some of the most fascinating improvising musicians currently active in Japan. The CD documents a series of lecture-concerts, exploring the meanings, methods and implications of free music, which took place between September 2003 and February 2004 at Mesar Haus in Tokyo.
PSF & ALCHEMY : 20TH ANNIVERSARY LIVE
[Sep. 8, 2004 at Hatsudai Doors] 1. Kan Mikami & Jo Jo Hiroshige 2. Exias-J 3. Kazuo Imai & Incapacitants 4. Marble Sheep [Sep. 29, 2004 at Nishiazabu Super Delux] 7. Keiji Haino & Munehiro Narita 8. L & Friends 9. Masayoshi Urabe & Junko 10. Go Hirano & Takashi Ueno