Solmania

Eighteen years of silence, then sixty-four unbroken minutes. Kill marks the return of Solmania, the guitar-noise project of Masahiko Ohno, after his longest recording hiatus and his first album for Alchemy Records since 1998.

Ohno founded Solmania in Osaka in 1984 and has worked since 1992 as a duo with former OUTO member Katsumi Sugahara. What sets them apart is the hardware: both men play heavily modified, multi-neck and harp guitars they build themselves from spare parts, fitted with extra pickups, sympathetic strings and an arsenal of effects, the stage floor so buried in pedals there is barely room to stand. Ohno's part is credited as distortion engine, Sugahara's as velocity booster.

The result is not the fixed slab of a harsh-noise wall but a continually evolving storm, drawn from a 2014 live set at Osaka's Bears and 2015 studio sessions. Tone shifts violently across the hour, from shimmering feedback to vast bass-heavy concussions, all of it generated by guitar alone. Avant-garde guitar pushed to its furthest edge, and proof that the modified six-string still has uncharted ground to give.