Music from Japan

Keith Rowe's concluding set, with longtime partner Toshimaru Nakamura, at the AMPLIFY 2008: Light festival, recorded on September 21, 2008 by Taku Unami. AMPLIFY 2008: Light was an intense and deeply immersive experience for all who were lucky enough to be present, and quite a bit of that was attributable to Rowe's four sets, which are now available for all to hear.

Friendly Pants is the first American release by legendary Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata in more than 20 years. It pairs the 65-year-old traveler alongside Chikamorachi, the bombast rhythm section of drummer Chris Corsano (Paul Flaherty Duo, Bjork, Jandek) and acoustic bassist Darin Gray (On Fillmore, Grand Ulena, Brise-Glace).Since 2005 Sakata has been aligned with Corsano and Gray -- a duo equally informed by underground American rock, noise & free jazz -- and already issued two other smoke…

Five tracks by these masters of Noise! Shit-your-pants loud, or just another day at the office for Incapacitants. Tracklist: 1. Take it! 2. Go! 3. Say! 4. After Drunken Interview (In Memory of Koji Tano) 5. Club 24 Forever (Live at Club 24 20070128)

Masayuki Takayanagi: electric guitar, gut guitar. Nobuyoshi Ino: double bass. Filmed by Yasunori Saito at Jazz Club Lovely, Nagoya, March 20 (1) and 21 (2-6), 1990. Edited by Yoshihiro Imaizumi. Mastered by Yukio Kojima at Kojima Recordings. Cover design by Studio Zap. + 1 free blank CDR.

El pulso (1991) is a live collaboration with other guitarists. Masayuki Takayanagi (g), Toshio Sato (g), Shojiro Ikeda (7st.g), Akira Matsuoka (g), Hidetoshi Tanba (g), Taisuke Sakamoto (g), Shinichi Miyazaki (g), Nobuyoshi Ino (bass). Quite possible one of the strangest releases in the Takayanagi (New Direction Unit) discography: an acoustic guitar nontet playing covers of South American tango, milonga, vals, rumba, &c.

Masayuki Takayanagi: guitars, motors, tape recorders, ring modulators, analog effects, megaphone speakers, etc. Filmed by Yasunori Saito and Kyoko Saito at the New Direction for the Arts Regular Concert Vol. 69 (1, 2) and Vol. 70 (3, 4), at Jean Jean, Tokyo, August 4 and December 17, 1990. Recorded by Masaki Shimada (1, 2) and Yasunori Saito (3, 4). Film edited by Yoshihiro Imaizumi. Cover design by Hidetoshi Shinohara.' + 1 free blank CDR.

Kato Hideki (electric bass with prime number tuning, bass synthesizer). Tetuzi Akiyama (prepared electric guitar, electronics). Toshimaru Nakamura (mixer, headphones, electric guitar). Recorded live by Kato Hideki at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo on November 25, 2008. Concert organized by Noda Shigenori Callithump). Live sound engineering by Noribumi Uchida (SuperDeluxe). Mixed and mastered by Kato Hideki at Shadow World Studio in Brooklyn, NY in 2009. 'Time is an essential subject in music. Conventional…

Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010. Cover art by Jenny Akita.

A dinner is a dinner: Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant) & Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock) bite, chew, smack, gulp and slurp in order to tickle your ears and your digestive system. Instead of decay and corruption, Lanz and Eb.er deliver a true and undiluted composition of this existential act of annihilation. We believe that, what we are doing, is right, because we are endeavouring to remain true. We want to create no false illusions, no sickly aesthetic or anything beautiful. We want to find th…

Edition of 500 copies 4xCD box from Lasse Marhaug’s Pica Disk label that works as a career retrospective for Mr Yasutoshi Yoshida’s Government Alpha project. Spanning the years 1992-1999, the box gathers previously unreleased early material alongside limited edition cassettes, lathes and CD-Rs. In the booklet that accompanies the set (which also includes full-colour reproductions of Yoshida’s amazing collages) Yoshida cites Nurse With Wound and Accept (!?) as his formative influences and the ear…

*Limited edition of 300 copies.* Celer is a husband (Will) and wife (Danielle) duo from California that use a variety of strings as the basis for their sound. Cello, viola, violin and the sounds are mixed in with field recordings, choir, live theremin and then tape spliced and re-assembled in varying lengths to create a loop base. Those sounds are then sampled, layered and processed. The result is a shimmering orchestra. Periods of silence between the notes only enhance the sound. Though at time…

Another excellent installment in the Noiseville series, this time featuring the master of Japanoise!  Limited to 1000.

Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010. Each volume will be a one time pressing of 1000 copies. Available from Important Records is a deluxe hand made numbered bamboo box to hold the 13 cd collection.Cover art by Jenny Akita.

Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010. Each volume will be a one time pressing of 1000 copies. Available from Important Records is a deluxe hand made numbered bamboo box to hold the 13 cd collection.Cover art by Jenny Akita. Author, activist, painter and sound artist Masami Akita …

Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010. Each volume will be a one time pressing of 1000 copies. Available from Important Records is a deluxe hand made numbered bamboo box to hold the 13 cd collection.Cover art by Jenny Akita.

the first title in yasunori saito’s exhaustive survey of the music of masayuki takayanagi via his jinya disc imprint... the arrival of these discs in the mms catalogue has been a long time in the making; extremely glad to have these seminal documents of free-scrape/noise-guitar crossover in stock !!!this disc features takayanagi on solo “tabletop guitar” as recorded “aug 4, 1990 at ‘new direction for the arts, regular concert vol.69’ jean jean tokyo” - nothing at all like fred frith, keith rowe,…

Two of the most relentless and uncompromising artists from the 70s free jazz scene in Japan in a full-on assault. Totally essential

AMAZING RELEASE!! Between 1977-1978 Japanese improvising guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi performed with his "New Direction Unit" in a series of concerts of different formats (trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, &c). This "Archive" box set included the recordings of 5 concerts in Japan: the "another situtation" concert at Purcinera and "Regular Concerts" from Jean Jean in Shibuya. Comprised of live improvisations, this beautifully packaged box also has a booklet with details on the concerts, though mos…

Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010.

Free improvisation has rarely seen significant new movements as influential as the small group of Tokyo musicians once labeled as "onkyo", who have now been a primary driving force in contemporary improvisation for a full decade. Over that decade, these musicians have been responsible for some of the strongest and most radical work on Erstwhile, and Soba To Bara sits firmly in that lineage.Ami Yoshida strives to create a pure sound, abstracting her voice until it becomes almost completely unreco…