Agencement

Hideaki Shimada who started making art and improvised violin experiments in the late 1970s in Kanazawa. As a continuation of some of these ideas, he started adding tapes, which led to the creation of the Agencement electronic project in 1985. Two LPs were released under that name, then his first CD 'Viosphere' in 1991. Art into Life is now reissuing this album, plus three previously unissued tracks from the same period, under the title 'Viosphere +'. Of particular interest is the previously unreleased 1988 studio session with Hironari Iwata - from Toukaseibunshi from the same 80s experimental scene. It's a heavily avant-garde performance for guitar, amplifier and autoharp. Comes in a box with a 12 page booklet of performance photographs from the period and several 2012 visual works. Limited edition of 200.

"Major upgraded reissue of this seminal 1991 album with a ton of extras from Agencement, Hideaki Shimada’s stunning Japanese underground project focussed on the brain-scrambling potential of exactingly processed/multi-layered solo violin improvisations in an edition of 200 copies: Viosphere was Shimada’s third album, released on his own label, and it sounds glorious here. Using violin, 16 channel magnetic tapes, 100M synthesizer and assorted electronics, Shimada builds stunning laminal compositions from a string attack that comes out of Derek Bailey’s playing circa Aida with a feel for fields of electronically dosed atmospherics that is assuredly post-Catch Wave. Viosphere blurs distinctions between tactile hands-on playing and processed electronic composition, with Shimada’s interest in painting resolving itself into the pursuit of endless strangulated textures and barbed wire sonorities that just keep on coming on. The extras here are so much gravy, with an early previously unreleased sketch for Viosphere from 2003, a fantastic heavy-meta duo with Hironari Iwata featuring Iwata on electric guitar and Shimada on amplified autoharp that has a bloodied Kazuo Imai-edge, and a heady unreleased work from 1984 for Casiotone keyboard, magnetic tape and violin that positions itself more emphatically Outside The Dream Syndicate than the Faust/Tony Conrad sessions. Presented in a chunky box with a booklet featuring pictures and English language liners translated by Alan Cummings, this set is the bomb. A massively potent package, highly recommended. " Volcanic Tongue