* Triple LP, edition of 82 numbered copies. * Yamazaki Maso began home recording in 1987, adopting the name Masonna for his solo noise experiments and founding the independent label Coquette, through which he issued several cassette releases. His debut LP and CD appeared on Kyoto's Vanilla Records in 1989-90, soon followed by ultra-limited 7-inch acetates, a split LP with Violent Onsen Geisha, and numerous compilation appearances. Drawing on hard rock, death metal, hardcore punk, grindcore, and power electronics, Yamazaki forged a hyper-compressed sound of pure intensity - erupting live as screams, feedback bursts, and rapid-fire shifts that condensed the chaos of a full band into one body on stage.
Around 1998, Yamazaki began weaving trippy, cosmic electronic textures into Masonna's live performances. This gradual shift led him to launch Space Machine in 2000, which he referred to as his "analog electronic cosmic sound project." A longtime admirer of early electronic music from the 1950s and 60s, Yamazaki immersed himself in analog synthesis to trace how electronic timbres influenced the spiritual undercurrents of 1960s psychedelia and 1970s Krautrock. He began collecting vintage synthesizers and effects units, experimenting constantly in his home studio until uncovering a new creative trajectory - one that moved away from Masonna's blistering energy toward expansive, contemplative sound exploration.
Space Machine is the perfect counterpoint to Masonna. Rather than screaming noise and physical action, here Yamazaki veers toward non-rhythmic, pure electronics that resonate heavily with post-war avant-garde synthesis, channeling a similar territory of sonority that emerged from studios like Princeton, Columbia, EMS, GRM, conjoined with more contemporary temperaments of electronica and onkyo free improvisation via analog echo machines and synthesizers (EMS VCS3, Roland System 100 & 100M, MIRANO Echo Chamber, Doepfer A-100).
Cosmos from Diode Ladder Filter marks Yamazaki's first full-length CD release as Space Machine, originally issued by Alchemy Records in 2001. Conceived at the dawn of the new millennium, the album represents a turning point in his creative evolution - an immersion into purely analog synthesis after years of confrontational noise performance. Built entirely from modular synthesizers and echo units, it channels the warmth, instability, and unpredictability of electricity into vast pulsing drones and glimmering tonal currents. Through this swirling field of harmonics and voltage modulation, Yamazaki constructs an expansive inner cosmos - a meditative drift through raw frequencies and celestial resonances, where sound becomes a living, breathing presence.
Now, this milestone appears again as a triple-vinyl edition, ultra limited to 82 hand-numbered copies, featuring four bonus tracks that push Yamazaki's analog explorations even further. Two of these pieces include rare collaborations - one with Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple, and another with Hiroshi Hasegawa of CCCC - each bringing their own distinctive cosmic energy to the Space Machine universe. The set features hand-decorated white labels, a folder of original photographs by Masahiko Ohno (Solmania) capturing the legendary Space Machine Systems Studio and its labyrinth of instruments circa the early 2000s, as well as a numbered postcard/certificate authenticating each copy.
A true collector's artifact of Japan's analog avant-garde space music. Unlikely to surface again.
