Noise / Japan

Pioneer, innovator and visionary are words easily associated with Toshiji Mikawa. One of the prime movers of Japanese noise, he started his musical activities in the late 1970s and joined the legendary and notorious Hijokaidan. In 1981 he formed Incapacitants to pursue his interest in pure noise, in contrast to the more performance art oriented Hijokaidan of that time. Initially a solo project, later he was joined by Fumio Kosakai to make Incapacitants a duo that has been widely acknowledged for…

Way-above-average improv from Japan. Electric strings (guitars?), saxophones, electronics, and samples move with unexpected ease frommeditative passages to intense blow-outs to free scatter. Sax player Yoshinori Yanagawa plays with the same sort of depth and passion as Albert Ayler-no fakin, no academic rendering. But hes only part of a much larger whole. The wash of precision rumble and sound-tweaking that surrounds everything creates chaos from an intensely ordered technology. Strange (not wei…