Important Records have four releases involving Kouhei Matsunaga: an NHK record (apparently coming soon), a solo CD, a split LP with Mika Vainio and this here disc which has him collaborating with both Vainio and Autechre's Sean Booth. This is certainly a strange listen... The first track is Mika and Kouhei and needs the volume cranked right up. It builds from tiny scraping and string-like sounds into briefly menacing drones and back down again into crackle, hiss, dog frequencies and some really pleasing liquidy sounds which quickly disappear. Fortunately these sounds reappear on the track that features all three artists. This really just feels like a continuation of the first piece and so I'm really struggling to recognize what Booth actually contributes to the mix. However this problem is solved on the final piece which excludes Vaino. This has some nice layers of fluid sounding electronic chimes, and noise interference.

Overall I must admit I'm a little underwhelmed by it all. It's one of those meetings of artists that looks astonishing on paper (and believe me I really do love a huge amount of what these artists create) but I really feel like they're just going through the motions a little and nor bringing anything particularly arresting to the table. It's a nice enough listen though and may well appeal to fans of the the kind of stuff that Fenn O'Berg get up to.