“FEEDBACK-SWATHED MANTRAS…”

Japan’s extreme noise terror unleashed

N oise has become such a fundamental part of Japan’s underground music that it has its own name, Japanoise. But it’s very easy to place the rich culture developed in that country under one banner, turning Japan’s bustling noise communities into caricatures. The reality is far more complex – and fascinating to dig into deeply.

There are, perhaps, two main threads to Japanese noise. There’s noise as a subset of rock – something that was begun by mysterious ‘70s outfit Les Rallizes Dénudés, whose feedbackswathed mantras sounded like the VU on heavy tranquilisers. Their story is a wild one, including associations with the hijacking attempts of the Japanese Red Army. Following in their wake was Keiji Haino, whose early shows in free jazz trio Lost Aaraaf alienated festival audiences; his noise-rock outfit, Fushitsusha, however, has created an entirely new form of rock unlike any other, with coruscating guitar noise hitched to stop-start rhythms and Haino’s soaring vocals.

Then, there are the pure noise antics of acts like incapacitants, CCCC or Hijokaidan. Towering above them all is Masami Akita’s Merzbow, whose articulate -volume noise has yielded upwards of 400 LPs, including one 50CD set, Merzbox. start with 1996’s consummate Pulse

Demon, or the junk-noise of

1993’s Batztoutai With Material Gadgets, work outwards from there, and find the radical calm in the eye of Merzbow’s storm. JD