Minamata

One of the most important sound sources in history, a relic of a bygone era. Minamata is an industrial noise avant-garde band formed in France in 1984, with the methyl mercury pollution  incident that occurred in 1953 on the coast of Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu Island, Japan, as its theme.

In 1985, the band became a trio, and their compositional skills and overall quality improved, resulting in the creation of Methylmercure. During this period, the noise scenes in developed countries such as the United States and France were producing a steady stream of high-quality works, but many of them were only released on tape and never made it onto LP, thus remaining completely unknown to the world's record distribution industry. 

While these buried, high-quality, and well-crafted recordings are gradually being released on CD and LP, it is truly unfortunate that Minamata's early masterpieces were forgotten in the mysteries of time until their LP release, La Nomenklatur, three years later. To fill this gap in history, we have created this product to bring Minamata's works to the world and make them available for distribution. It may have been a fateful encounter that our store, NEdS-Records, started operating around the same time as them.

This work brilliantly embodies the most contemporary and pioneering sounds and concepts in France in 1985, a year when many outstanding recordings were being released from around the world. It is also a transcendent work that raises important questions about the ongoing pollution lawsuits.