Keiji Haino + Musqis
'This is a powerful live recording without any arrangement by Japanese independent music icon Keiji Haino, who has been active in avant-garde activities straddling rock and free music in the underground realm since the 1970s, and Musqis, a performance group with an indefinite number of members led by multi-instrumentalist Hidenori Noguchi. Keiji Haino has been active since the 1970s, playing voice, guitar, hurdy-gurdy, polygonora, and various other instruments in solo performances and in bands su…
Tapes 1992-1994
Tip! Aube is a noise project by Akifumi Nakajima, born in Kyoto in 1959. Since the 1980s, he has been using synthesizers and other devices to create small-scale sounds as a hobby. In 1990, he was in charge of the music for the installation "Water 1990" by the artists Soichi Arichi and Takashi Sasaoka, and in 1991, he began his external musical activities as Aube. The same year, he released his debut cassette "Hydrophobia" on Vanilla Records. In 1992, he established G.R.O.S.S., an independent lab…
2000-2003
Tip! This is a boxed set of six consecutive CD releases from November 2017, re-edited in chronological order from the "G.R.O.S.S." CD-Rs that recorded live performances in the 2000s, the mature period of Aube's activities. Aube is a noise project by Akifumi Nakajima, born in Kyoto in 1959.Since the 1980s, he has been using synthesizers and other devices to create small-scale sounds as a hobby. In 1990, he was in charge of the music for the installation "Water 1990" by the artists Soichi Arichi a…
Kofu
* 2022 repress! Limited edition LP including 16-page inserts with words in Japanese and English from Meitei and design by Kitchen. Label founder Ricks Ang * It began with ‘Kwaidan’, a simmering study on the lost art of Japanese ghost story-telling. Then there was ‘Komachi’, baptized in the earthly winds and static that define its comforting sonics. On ‘Kofū’, Meitei masterfully closes his trilogy of lost Japanese moods with an engaging interrogation of artforms and aesthetics as a provocation —…
Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot'd
'If you are a Fushitsusha or Keiji Haino fan, you already know to just forget what the title of this CD means -- you are never going to know unless you have a lot of familiarity with the early decades of the English language. If you aren't a fan, then who cares anyway? This Fushitsusha date was recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec in 1997. Guitarist Haino and longtime bassist Yasushi Ozawa broke in then-new drummer Ikuro Takahashi. The set is just over an hour long and is broken…
2008-2021
*385 copies limited edition* Mura were a previously little-known group from Japan, formed by friends Kota Inukai (vocals, guitar), Masaki Endo (bass) and Sho Shibata (drums) in the late noughties. Performing mostly in small events in Sapporo, they were outsiders, and felt a kinship with few other groups, though Inukai mentions rock group Green Apple Quick Step, and hardcore band Ababazure as fellow travellers. This isolation surely feeds into the uniqueness of Mura’s music – they sound little li…
My Lord Music, I Most Humbly Beg Your Indulgence In The Hope That You Will Do Me The Honour Of Permitting This Seed Called Keiji Haino To Be Planted Within You
Tip! For over 25 years, Keiji Haino has used the Hurdy Gurdy to channel dark dimensions- creating music that bridges the centuries between distant medieval eras and a future awash in densely layered sounds that grind and float in an otherworldly atmosphere. “My Lord Music…” is a suite of nine pieces that reveal the startlingly distinctive and wide range of Haino’s approach to the instrument. The music is at once dissonant and hypnotic, rich with unfurling drones that dynamically ebb and flow - H…
Station '70: Call in Question / Live Independence
In August 1969, Masayuki Takayanagi formed his first New Direction group and embarked on an unparalleled musical journey that over the final 22 years of his life would define him as an uncompromising artist who would forge a visionary new musical language. Comprised of himself on acoustic and electric guitar and joined by Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Yoshisaburo "Sabu" Toyozumi on drums, Takayanagi's group created a new unconstrained form of music; It expanded on the most radical, fiery elemen…
Eclipse
Masayuki Takayanagi was one of the truly iconoclastic musicians to emerge from Japan, or anywhere else, in the 20th Century. Though he won acclaim in the 1950s and '60s as a master of the electric guitar and jazz improvisation, Takayanagi was a restless spirit, deeply engaged with the era's new movements in contemporary art, music, literature, and philosophy. His work, beginning in the late 1960s placed him on the leading edge of these developments; he began expanding on the most radical element…
Merzbeat
*20th anniversary reissue!* Merzbow's Merzbeat is one the most unique and legendary titles in the artist's vast archive. This 20th anniversary reissue is being issued at the same time as CD reissue of his 1983 album Material Action 2 and a brand new collaboration with Arcane Device, all on Important Records. Originally released in 2002, Merzbeat contains over 50 minutes of aggressive, psychedelic, organic, analog beat oriented Merzbow compositions. Drummed rhythms, massive looping samples, a pun…
Sunrise From West Sea
** 500 copies ** Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first-ever release of 'Sunrise From West Sea', a mesmerising performance by Stomu Yamash'ta accompanied by Jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh (well known for his involvement in the New Herd Orchestra and his 'Belladonna of Sadness' soundtrack) and Taj Mahal Travellers founder Takehisa Kosugi on Electric Violin. The line up, also comprising Hideakira Sakurai on Electric Shamisen, is a spaced-out improvisational soundscape over the two LP sides. …
Merzbeat
* 20th anniversary edition gatefold reissue on pink vinyl. Limited to 300 copies * Merzbeat, a beautiful and distorted dream of drum samples, jazz, swing, noise and bliss, by Harsh Noise giant, Masami Akita (Merzbow), last press issued by Aurora Central.
Amlux
** Limited edition of 100 tapes, 50 on blue colored version (this one) and 50 on original colored version cover. ** Certainly Amlux is a very cohesive and well-constructed piece; starting more softly than usual, the record slowly builds into the chaotic harsh sound that Merzbow is well known for, but this time adding some actual recognizable music elements (like rhythms), and constructing various surprisingly well-texture soundscapes, that made of this album a more focused and immersive piece th…
Amlux
** Limited edition of 100 tapes, 50 on original colored version (this one) and 50 on blue colored version cover. ** Certainly Amlux is a very cohesive and well-constructed piece; starting more softly than usual, the record slowly builds into the chaotic harsh sound that Merzbow is well known for, but this time adding some actual recognizable music elements (like rhythms), and constructing various surprisingly well-texture soundscapes, that made of this album a more focused and immersive piece th…
Door Open at 8 A.M.
** Limited edition of 100 tapes, 50 Copies with yellow coloured cover artwork (this one) and 50 Copies with pink coloured cover artwork ** Introducing Masami Akita's homage to free-jazz. Door Open at 8am is one of the most adventurous outings made by Merzbow. Recorded during the same era as Aqua Necromancer, this new recording also incorporates the use of sampled sounds. However, this time Akita is paying homage to his love of free jazz, free-jazz drummers to be precise. It includes tracks such …
Kofu II
* Glass-mastered CD housed in a die-cut customised debossed outer case (14.5 x 14.5cm) with rounded obi, 16pp inserts with words in Japanese and English from Meitei. Offset printed, full colour on premium matt paper. * Meitei’s 2020 album Kofū was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s Kwaidan and 2019’s Komachi. All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being w…
Fieldwave, Vol. 2
Fieldwave, Vol. 2 is the second release in our compilation series created by broadcaster, sound collector and Nonclassical A&R consultant, Nick Luscombe, bringing together artists with field recording at the heart of their work. This second volume focuses on the sounds of Japan, with tracks from Japanese musicians and from British artists who have gathered recordings via trips to Japan.“I created the Fieldwave compilation series in 2020 as a window to the world of field recordings and wider acou…
World Speaks
** Edition of 300 ** World Speaks is the new album by Piotr Kurek. It consists of seven vivid paintings. We are greeted by processed voices. A bit later we listen to a fine reed solo, while an organist performs a meditative melody. Hints of a human presence, but World Speaks sounds uninhabited. Instead we enter a glassy reality where the simulation is at play. And where nothing seems what it is: are we witness to the choreography – or the rocky seashore?
“At that time I was playing with various…
Imagery Resonance
Legendary Japanese noise artist Aube on a more ambient aprroack to start with before the maelstrom of blissful droning noise.
Live (LP)
* Ltd. to 285 copies, silkscreened jacket with obi (tan or light blue), inserts and postcard * An’archives are proud to present a reissue of the self-titled first album by the trio of Akiko Hotaka, Takuya Nishimura and Ikuro Takahashi. Originally released in 2020 as a limited CD-R on the Uramado label, those who had the chance to hear this collection of live recordings, documenting a brief window of exploratory activity for Hotaka during the mid-2010s, were knocked out by its elemental force, Ho…