Year zero. 蔵六の奇病 (Zouroku no Kibyou), first issued in 1982, is the debut album by Hijokaidan, and one of the primal documents of Japanese noise - the sound of a music being invented in real time, with no precedent to lean on and no notion of where it might lead.

The project of guitarist Jojo Hiroshige, founder of Alchemy Records and the self-appointed King of Noise, Hijokaidan emerged at the very end of the 1970s as a performance-art group whose shows routinely ended in destroyed venues, food and garbage hurled into the crowd, and the deliberate collapse of any line between performer and audience. The album gathers live recordings made across 1981, capturing that chaotic early energy at the precise moment the group began to draw attention - young performers in their early twenties channelling rock, free jazz, contemporary music and avant-garde art into something without melody, harmony or rhythm.

Originally released on the Osaka independent Unbalance Records, it predates the debut LPs of Sonic Youth and Swans, and quickly came to be regarded as a foundational work of the Japanese underground - sound as confrontation rather than composition. This 40th anniversary edition returns it to circulation, a chance to hear noise at the instant of its violent birth.