Hijokaidan

The first album by the most extreme noise project to ever come out of Osaka, now in a second deluxe edition that borders on insanity: natural birch wooden box, hand-numbered to 99 copies, color print lid reproducing the iconic cover art by manga master Hideshi Hino. Inside: the LP, a 40-page book of raw concert photos, a cassette of six rare studio tracks from April and June 1980 - Hijokaidan's primal first breaths - four postcards, a massive poster, a live photo book, liner notes by Jojo Hiroshige in Japanese and English, the original "2nd DAMASCUS" adhesive sticker, and an exclusive 30 × 30 cm print by Miguel Ángel Martín, hand-numbered and signed. Edition of 99. Ninety-nine!

Originally released in April 1982 on the Osaka independent label Unbalance Records, compiled from live recordings captured throughout 1981, Zouroku No Kibyo documents the origin storm. This isn't later Hijokaidan maximalism - "it's ferocity with fangs," improvising beyond hard rock's aggression or punk's snarl, resting at a unique junction between progressive space-noise, free improvisation and harsh abstraction. The grooves capture 1981 Osaka at fever pitch: amplifiers pushed to self-destruction, objects weaponized into sound, young voices clawing through feedback hurricanes. A primal document of noise's violent youth, when sound was a weapon, a confrontation, a total sensory rupture. Years ahead of its time, and it still sounds like the future caving in.