Noise /
Avian Hydraulics
On Avian Hydraulics, Merzbow compresses four decades of noise praxis into a rarefied 10". A liquid-filled, rainbow-variant disc mirrors the music’s churning pressure: Masami Akita’s latest Munemihouse recording converts imagined bird-machines and fluid mechanics into a gleaming, corrosive miniature of his vast oeuvre.
Nine Studies of Ephemeral Resonance Volume 1 - 9
Urashima gathers Merzbow's complete nine-volume cycle in a single box, in an edition of 199: 26 tracks filtering noise through the Japan of haiku and ukiyo-e. Nine vinyl-replica CDs and two Leporello inserts on fine Japanese paper. Noise as contemplation, from one of the great figures of noise
Vapor Hoof
Etherworld is proud to announce a new Merzbow album, "Vapor Hoof" on CD. Our previous Merzbow album, "Electric Salad" came out on the Etherworld label in 1996. This pulse-warping, mind-smashing new release by Masami Akita is coming to stores on Friday, July 17, 2026.
Synthesis Post-Contact
Exclusive Merzbow tape release for his live-gig at XXI Congresso Post Industriale.
Starring LeChat
An FM dial tuned to Japan, 1985 - then fed through the loudest band the country has ever produced. Kyonetsu No Hatsune Kaidan, issued by Alchemy Records in 2018, was the first new studio album in three and a half years from Hatsune Kaidan - the union of noise legends Hijokaidan and the Vocaloid singing synthesizer Hatsune Miku - and it aims its feedback at a very specific target: the golden age of Japanese pop, from anime themes to the classic kayokyoku songbook.
By 2018 the project had settled …
ベスト : Best
Japan's most famous pop star does not exist, and here she fronts its most ferocious band. Hatsune Kaidan is the improbable union of Hijokaidan - the Kyoto-born group that has defined Japanese noise since 1979 - and Hatsune Miku, the turquoise-haired Vocaloid singing synthesizer developed by Crypton Future Media, a virtual idol who has filled arenas without ever drawing breath. Best, issued on CD by Alchemy Records in 2018, gathers fourteen tracks from the project's strange and glorious run - stu…
Alternate Flash Heads
Ninety-nine tracks in thirty minutes - the physical limit of what a compact disc can hold. Alternate Flash Heads, the second solo album by the saxophonist Ryoko Ono, issued in 2015 by Alchemy Records and produced by Jojo Hiroshige himself, is one of the great conceptual gambits of recent Japanese music: a single composition shattered into 99 palindrome-titled fragments, designed to be shuffled - so that no listener ever hears the same album twice.
Ono, born in Sapporo in 1975 and long based in N…
Giga Noise
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…
Triple Echo Live
Recorded in the same year that saw the release of the Triple Echo trilogy, Triple Echo Live is the document that completes the picture - the drone project of Jojo Hiroshige brought to the stage, unfolding in real time before an audience. Issued by Alchemy Records on CD in an edition of only 100 copies, it has remained one of the most elusive entries in the noise legend's vast catalog.
Hiroshige needs little introduction. Born in Kyoto in 1959, he founded Hijokaidan in 1979 - the band that, more …
Kill
Solmania's first album in 18 years: a single 64-minute slab of avant-garde guitar torture from Masahiko Ohno and Katsumi Sugahara, wrung from self-built multi-neck guitars bristling with extra pickups. Not a static wall but a continually evolving storm of feedback and tone. On Alchemy, 2016.
Five Elements
A 2015 collaboration between Jojo Hiroshige on guitar and Haruo Ueda on electronics, structured around the natural elements. The Hijokaidan founder steps away from pure noise into a more textural dialogue, his guitar set against Ueda's shifting electronic fields. On Alchemy.
Little Something
An instrumental solo guitar album from Jojo Hiroshige, founder of Hijokaidan and self-styled King of Noise. Improvisation for solo electric guitar pushed to a dense, heavy extreme that is hard to believe comes from a single instrument. On Alchemy.
Hijokaidan featuring Nasca Car
A 2015 meeting between Hijokaidan and Nasca Car, the Osaka electronic project of Nakaya Koichi. Two studio tracks and two live sets across more than forty minutes, the King of Noise's wall of sound crossed with Nasca Car's pulsing acid-house and new-wave electronics. On Alchemy.
生きている価値なし～The Very Best Of Jojo Hiroshige
Jojo Hiroshige - known and feared throughout the world not only as a member of the legendary ‘‘Hijokaidan,’’ often referred as ‘‘King of Noise,’’ but also as the owner of the prestigious label “Alchemy Records,” which has released countless “Japanoise” masterpieces.
"Words are different to sounds in that the images they create are limited. They’re like a two-edged sword – sometimes they can be used effectively, but sometimes they restrict the range of the images employed. When I was young I read…
Abe Kaii
A 1982 cassette by Abe Kaii, the duo of Jojo Hiroshige and Toshiji Mikawa, named in sly homage to free jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe. A monolith of free jazz and psychedelic space rock from two future architects of Japanese noise, near impossible to hear for decades, reissued on Alchemy in 2017.
Live! Destroy Noise Symphony
A 2018 live document from Hijokaidan in their definitive musical form: Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Junko's voice, Toshiji Mikawa on electronics and Futoshi Okano on drums, fusing into a single dense wall of sound. The King of Noise captured live and unrepentant. On Alchemy.
Zouvneree
Harsh noise at full saturation from Incapacitants, the duo of Toshiji Mikawa (Hijokaidan) and Fumio Kosakai. No melody, no rhythm, no let-up, only a dense and strangely psychedelic block of electronics pushed toward ecstatic overload. One of the defining names in Japanese noise, on Alchemy.
Love & Noise
Reemerging three decades on, C.C.C.C.’s Love & Noise hits vinyl for the first time, a still‑devastating artefact where Mayuko Hino’s charged electronics and Hiroshi Hasegawa’s Moog storms turn harsh sonics into something crushing, psychedelic and strangely exultant.
Kinky Tape Collection 1981-1983
K2 is the project of Kimihide Kusafuka, born in Shizuoka, who began his musical activity in 1981 devoting himself entirely to recording noise and experimental music — before the term "noise music" as a genre had even been established. Over the following four years he released around 20 tapes on his own Kinky Tape Collection label (later renamed Kinky Musik Institute), working across several radically different noise styles simultaneously. Alongside Masami Akita (Merzbow), Hijokaidan, and Toshiji…
Zouroku No Kibyou
The first album by the most extreme noise project to ever come out of Osaka, now in a second deluxe edition that borders on insanity: natural birch wooden box, hand-numbered to 99 copies, color print lid reproducing the iconic cover art by manga master Hideshi Hino. Inside: the LP, a 40-page book of raw concert photos, a cassette of six rare studio tracks from April and June 1980 - Hijokaidan's primal first breaths - four postcards, a massive poster, a live photo book, liner notes by Jojo Hirosh…