Music from Japan

Japanese pianist Momo Kodama plays Ravel's Miroirs, Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch (1982) and Messiaen's La fauvette des jardins (1970), recorded in September 2012 at the Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt.

Debut album of the Italian sisters Natascia (violin) and Raffaella Gazzana (piano), playing Takemitsu's Distance de fée, Hindemith's Sonata in E, Janáček's Sonata and Silvestrov's Five Pieces, recorded in March 2011 at the RSI Auditorio in Lugano.

BusRatch comes recommended by Yoshihide Otomo and Christian Marclay as highly talented experimental unit. Hijokaidan a powerful force in contemporary japanese noise. Recorded 03, 8th, February at Taku Taku, Kyoto, the intensity of this live performance is immediate.

Otomo Yoshihide (guitar, turntables), Hirose Junji (sax), Kato Hideki (bass, voice), Uemura Masahiro (drums) and Yamataka Eye (voice). This CD includes unissued live performances and studio recordings (12, 13) right after Otomo formed Ground Zero. This happened before the release of their first album, called 'Ground-Zero' (God Mountain). Their playing is in the rough and sound quality is not quite best, but this materials should be kept a record of their intence performances of earlier Ground Ze…

"Yep, this is Series III all right. It’s the work of Yasutoshi Yoshida (his address is on the CD if you feel like sending him the address of a good Ear Nose and Throat specialist), and apart from a few seconds of light relief at the beginning of Cryptic Cave, it’s a non-stop 57 minute barrage of EXTREMELY LOUD noise. Even at normal listening volume (though exactly how you’d define that is up to you, I guess), Pale Eyed Lemming sounds like a jackhammer trying in vain to punch its way through a te…

Solo piano recital by Masabumi Kikuchi: nine improvisations, Bonfá's Manhã de Carnaval and his own Little Abi. Recorded live on 26 October 2012 at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall, his last solo concert; mixed in Oslo and produced by Manfred Eicher.

This is a duo album by trumpeter Axel Dörner, who is one of the leading artists on the new Berlin improvised music scene, and no-input mixing board player Toshimaru Nakamura, who garners critical acclaim in the West as well as in Japan. Dörner's playing is far removed from conventional trumpet styles: he constructs his sound mainly from hissing noises, clicks and sputters. Nakamura spins out a delicate electronic sound using only the mixing board's internal feedback. At times they produce sounds…

At 7pm on a cold Tokyo evening in January 2002, Taku Sugimoto met Mark Wastell at the exit to Yoyogi underground station. Taku had with him his acoustic guitar and a cello that Mark was to use for that evenings concert. They walked the short distance to Offsite, more or less just around the corner. Once inside, Mark began to change the cello strings and Taku started to arrange the recording equipment. Tetuzi Akiyama and Toshimaru Nakumara arrived shortly after and busily set about installing the…

A catalog around the exhibition 'résonances: akio suzuki - Ossip Zadkine' in Paris at Musée Zadkine in 2004. Texts in French and English + CD with recordings of performances of akio suzuki and a sound walk recorded by Eric La Casa.

RESTOCKED, reduced price “I think of Akio Suzuki as a kind of magician, perhaps the most charming, engaging artist I’ve seen, Japanese musician and inventor, instrument builder and shaman Akio Suzuki is probably unknown to most of you. But we think his work is utterly captivating and crucial; it deserves a much bigger audience. Akio has been performing, teaching and building instruments for nearly 40 years. His music is simple and pure, and beautifully unworried by the rules of modern music. He …

A CD of minimalist environmental sounds by this Japanese sound-artist Akio Suzuki. This music was recorded in Takano, Tango-cho, the northern-most coast of Kyoto, where I live. The bay surrounded by volcanic rock caves is the place where the mighty sounds of waves of the open sea have their muffled echo. Seawater flows into the hollows in the rock again and again like breathing in and breathing out. Spring water constantly drips in the cave, and now and then the wind from the meadow above the ch…

Since an appearance at Derek Bailey’s Company Week in the late 1970s, Suzuki’s visits to the UK have been few. The day after his British Museum show he played an improvised duo with David Toop at the Sound 323 record shop in Highgate. This was a delicate, probing set, in which Suzuki got much mileage from a polished brass plate, spun, scraped and hit. Toop meanwhile moved from crackling dried flower stalks to dog whistles, and embarked on adventures in feedback oozing from a microphone beneath a…