Music from Japan

These works are a collaboration between the Japanese figure of experimental electronic music, KK Null, and Mexican artists and brothers Israel and Diego Martinez. Diego is best known as Lumen lab, and both are mentors of the label Abolipop - Suplex. The process started at the end of 2012 when Kazuyuki Kishino, based in Tokyo and Israel Martinez in Berlin, started to share electronic sounds and field recordings. They tried making new pieces exploring various approaches to composition such as the …

This strictly limited premiere release comprises a vibrantly coloured LP on green/blue/yellow splatter vinyl, plus an additional seven inch, the fuchsia coloured seven inch is a noisy split with a  with a xeroxed cover, with a numbered insert included.

Osaka Fortune is the meeting of two Norwegians and to Japanese artists Ð two drummers and two noise musicians. The album was recorded in Osaka, Japan February 2011. The quartet had previously performed live together, but this time they set up a studio recording on their tour of Japan.Jojo Hiroshige is the guitarist and leader of infamous Japanese noise band Hijokaidan, which has been going since 1979, known for their violent and energetic performances. Hiroshige has also run Alchemy Records sin…

KK Null (computer, kaospad, voice, member of Zeni Geva). The Noiser (machines, kaospad, voice, member of Formanex). For few years now KK Null and The Noiser had been playing together through Europe giving their best version of a new noise and contemporary music mixing critical beats, electroacoustic composition combined with improvised sound poetry and extreme post-punk. This first album of their collaboration, released by Monotype Records, is a glimpse of their relation to live acts and studio …

Baskaru is proud to present this gorgeous collaboration among three masters of sound experimentation, all three great artists whose soundworlds turn out to be incredibly complementary. Tomoyoshi Date's toy piano and field recordings bring a lightness that has very seldom been witnessed in the projects of Toshimaru Nakamura, whose specialty is the no-input mixing board. As for Ken Ikeda, he uses antiquated equipment (like the DX7 synthesizer) to create unheard-of sonics that bridge the gap betwee…

Toshimaru Nakamura returns with another outstanding full-length of no-input mixer improvisations. Hello, Dear…ah, anyone who takes this up in front of your eyes and ears. Here’s my new (in 2013) solo album. I hope you find it worthy enough to take your time and have a listen. It was recorded in one day. Compared to my previous releases, “Maruto” on Erstwhile Records (2 years to produce), “Egrets” on Samadhisound (5 years), it came to life quite quickly. Almost like it popped out. But it took thr…

Sewing together dissonant notes, distorted vocal blasts, intent chaotic torrents of howling noise and highly active percussive waves.  Sounding caustic on a surface level, the collaboration revealed a sense of calm determination, life-affirming energy, and creative joy - a veil of sonic warmth shrouding all participants before their return to the cold embrace of Tokyo in early spring.

The third and final part of the Partikel trilogy is finally here! Another beautifully constructed collaboration from the two noise giants - Japanoise King Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) and Swedish Overlord Henrik Nordvargr Björkk (MZ.412, Folkstorm, Toroidh). The styles on ÔPartikel III' range from total noise barrages, to intelligent electronics, to subtle dark ambient pieces. Essential! Presented in a luxurious matt laminate digipak.

CD was produced in 1997. LP is from 2013. The extreme collage sound and insane vocals of Maso Yamazaki, one of the worlds leading noise musicians. Brutal frequencies and rabid screaming vocals mix to create the finest album Masonna has ever produced. Divided into 25 tracks, this is being considered the last word in noise recordings! Ltd x 300 copies on brown vinyl in a full colour sleeve. Comes with CD version in a card sleeve. Mastered by Denis Blackham.

Hideaki Shimada who started making art and improvised violin experiments in the late 1970s in Kanazawa. As a continuation of some of these ideas, he started adding tapes, which led to the creation of the Agencement electronic project in 1985. Two LPs were released under that name, then his first CD 'Viosphere' in 1991. Art into Life is now reissuing this album, plus three previously unissued tracks from the same period, under the title 'Viosphere +'. Of particular interest is the previously unre…

For The Death Of Rave, Masami Akita aka Merzbow submits two petrifying pieces of psychedelic, technoid sturm und drang. Harking back to the feral attack and pulsing rhythmic disciplines of his early work (recently collected on V-o-D's excellent 'Lowest Music & Arts 1980- 1983' boxset), the howling 12 minute pummel of A-side 'Grand Owl Habitat' appears on vinyl after release on Handmade Birds' Dark Icons series. An ecstatically abusive, furious maelstrom of coloured noise is rail-eroded by a pist…

Both of these projects hardly need an introduction. Merzbow is since the late 70s the project of Masami Akita working in the field of noise music, having released a few hundred CDs/LPs/cassettes by now.In 1987 Kapotte Muziek was then the solo project of Frans de Waard, after Christian Nijs left the group early '87. De Waard concentrated on working with other musicians, and started trading tapes with a few musicians he was already in contact with, and one of them was Merzbow. The first release w…

Two unreleased long tracks recorded in 1982. These tracks were originally submitted for the Mail Art Music Project compilation LP. Only one minute of each track was published on the now extremely rare compilation album.Remastered from original master tapes. Cover photo taken in 1982 in Milan. Numbered edition with paste-on cover.

Concert film by Pavel Borodin featuring the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet benefit concert at the Music Unlimited festival in Wels. Guests: Toshinori Kondo, Michiyo Yagi, Yoshihide Otomo and Akira Sakata It was a special wish of the curator of the 2011 Music Unlimited Festival (Wels, Austria), Peter Brötzmann, to organize a charity concert in aid of the Fukushima nuclear disaster recovery effort. For that purpose, the Chicago Tentet, one of Brötzmann's main bands since 15 years, invited f…

If jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the “sound of surprise,” Cuts, an intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent collaboration between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson, is the “sound of shock and awe.” A sonic assault of epic proportions, it blends the bombast of Merzbow’s grinding white noise barrages with Pandi’s thunderous pulse on the kit and Gust…

Recordings from Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani. Kiyoshi was a member of Merzbow in the 80's and has made solo works since 1989, though main man Masami Akita has been the backbone of the band since 1979. These recordings are mainly from the '87-'89 era, but some of the earliest recordings were released in 1979. The first Merzbow tour abroad was in 1988 in Russia, featuring Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani. The second was in Europe (Holland, Germany, and France) in 1989 where Kiyoshi als…

"Cat's Squirrel is a live recording of Masami Akita and Oren Ambarchi's performance in Campbelltown, Australia in May 2012. Although Akita and Ambarchi have known one another since 1993 and performed together as part of larger ensembles, this was their first performance as a duo. Together they create a massive wall of sound that moves from the cavernous to the blisteringly psychedelic, laying down shifting low-end structures over which pointillist details ricochet across the stereo field. Akita …

Released October 2012. Chip Shop Music (Erik Carlsson, percussion, Martin Küchen, baritone & alto saxophones, radio, David Lacey, percussion, electronics, Paul Vogel: computer, clarinet) + Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board). Live 2009 in Ireland.

This amazing early Merzbow work (reissued for the first time) comes from the legendary 10 tape set Merzbow - Collection. Originally self released as C46 cassette, Collection 009 contain some previous studio and live sessions & raw-material. This earliest music was made with recorded tapes, audio feedback, percussion, metal and other acoustic instruments as source. All sounds were mixed by Masami Akita at Lowest Music & Arts Studio, Machida, Tokyo in 1981 and Kiyoshi Mizutani played several instr…

'I had the pleasure to meet and record with Akio Suzuki late in 2005. Having discovered his work a good few years before that, I had always been impressed with his clear passion for the expressive nature of sound - not merely as a vibrational art form, but also for its mystic, perhaps even spiritual qualities. His many experiments with sound, space and environment were a great inspiration for me and still to this day fill me with a great sense of wonder (no doubt a result of Suzuki's magician li…