Twenty-five artists, eight hours, one room. In May 2016, the Giga Noise mini festival brought together an entire cross-section of Japan's noise underground at Tokyo's Akihabara Goodman - a marathon showcase of mostly lesser-known and emerging acts from across the country, an event with few precedents even within a scene famous for its density. Giga Noise (Future of Noise), a sprawling double CD issued by Alchemy Records, is its official document - twenty-five live performances, and a snapshot of Japanoise passing the torch.

The setting matters. Alchemy Records, founded in Osaka in 1984 by Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan, is the label through which Japanese noise first defined itself - the home of the music's founding documents. Here, more than three decades on, the label turns its attention forward, gathering the scene's next wave under one roof. The subtitle is a statement of intent: Future of Noise. Alongside the newcomers stand a handful of veterans lending weight to the occasion - Hiroshige himself, the cosmic synthesizer overload of Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa, formerly of C.C.C.C.) in tandem with Hair Stylistics, the ever-mutating project of Masaya Nakahara, once of Violent Onsen Geisha, and the drum-triggered audiovisual mayhem of Doravideo. Further down the bill, remarkably, junior high school noise artists - the future of the title taken literally.