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Through the dense blend of Japanese New-Wave, between moldy kimonos and punctured paper screens, along the rails of a sonic bullet train, this mini-LP reaches us, overflowing with purebred Punk-Funk, splinters of Soul and shredded Jazz. A gold nugget in a sea of sadness. Scattered energy trapped in a handful of vinyl grooves.
From the depths of the most independent and revolutionary underground, a handful of tracks from the repertoires (often limited even to a single flexi disc) of some of the heroes who rode the wave, extracting from it—more for themselves and expressive necessity than for us—its most mystical and expressionist essence. New and No Wave, minimal and minimalist electronics, Avant Wave from the land where the sun still rises for now.
From the depths of the most independent and revolutionary underground, a handful of tracks from the repertoires (often limited even to a single flexi disc) of some of the heroes who rode the wave, extracting from it—more for themselves and expressive necessity than for us—its most mystical and expressionist essence. New and No Wave, minimal and minimalist electronics, Avant Wave from the land where the sun still rises for now.
Hazy Eyes Maybe is the debut album by Grimm Grimm, the musical project of singer‑songwriter and composer Koichi Yamanoha, who works between Tokyo and London and has been active since around 2014. He has performed at alternative music festivals around the world, including Le Guess Who? and All Tomorrow’s Parties, and has also expanded his activities into film and video‑game fields through collaborations with game creator Hideo Kojima, contributing music and making a cameo appearance in Death Stranding 2.
Parisian label Latency presents "Without References / Cindy van Acker (Variations)", a new release by goat (JP) and legendary producer Ricardo Villalobos. For this project, Villalobos reinterprets two tracks – "Orin" and "Factory" – originally composed by goat (JP) for choreographer and performance artist Cindy van Acker’s dance piece "Without References". The release follows Latency’s recent publication of Villalobos’ variation on percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s "Swamp" (Latency, 2025), continuing the label’s exploration of reinterpretation and rhythmic dialogue. goat (JP), led by Osaka-based composer Koshiro Hino (YPY, Kakuhan, Boredoms, Mark Fell), is widely regarded as a leading force in contemporary minimalist composition. In “Without References/Cindy Van Acker”, goat (JP) transforms non-tonal rhythmic patterns into intricate, hypnotic structures with remarkable depth. In this new version, the group’s simultaneously tribal and futuristic sound is reshaped by Villalobos’ distinctive production style, which draws from both minimalist techno and Latin American rhythmic traditions. Ricardo Villalobos is a pioneering figure in minimal techno, known for his hypnotic and deeply rhythmic approach to electronic music. Born in Chile and raised in Germany after his family fled Pinochet’s regime, Villalobos developed an early fascination with percussion, beginning to play congas and bongos at the age of eleven. This tactile engagement with rhythm continues to inform his production work today. Influenced by both Latin American folk traditions and the emerging house and techno scenes of late-1980s Europe, he began DJing and producing in the early 1990s and quickly gained cult status within global club culture. Cindy van Acker’s dance piece "Without References" features scenography by visionary choreographer Romeo Castellucci. The stage environment evokes a space that shifts between a waiting room, a train station hall, and a mid-century installation. Eleven dancers interpret Van Acker’s precise yet fluid movements, interacting with goat (JP)’s percussive, stripped-down compositions to create a visceral and immersive performance. The artwork features photographs by Magali Dougados from a staging of "Without References" at the Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis.
When it was first released in 1997, White Heaven founder You Ishihara’s solo debut Passivité seemed to vanish into the ether, going largely unnoticed; the scant coverage it did receive in the Japanese music press was confused or even dismissive and it hardly reached an overseas audience in that moment just before the online music era. It was released by the short-lived Japanese Creativeman Disc label, which also produced albums by other luminaries of the Japanese underground, including Phew, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, C.C.C.C. and Ground-Zero. Yet, even in that eclectic company, Ishihara’s album stood apart in a world all its own, out of time in that, or any other, era.
Passivité arrived at a pivotal point in Ishihara’s career, just as White Heaven dissolved and before the formation of his next group, The Stars. To realize the album, he recruited a choice group of players, including Michio Kurihara (White Heaven) on guitar, Chiyo Kemekawa (Yura Yura Teikoku) on bass, and Koji Shimura (Acid Mothers Temple) on drums, arranging them in no less than five configurations. The result revealed an expansive creative and even conceptual vision that could only find expression outside the band context. In the twenty-odd years since, the album has found adherents who, like P.S.F. Records founder Hideo Ikeezumi, praised its tremendous depth and discovered that they experienced something new each time they listened to it. Listening back today, Passivité sounds timeless and, in a sense, encapsulates the concepts, feeling, and brilliance that have marked the near 50-year career of one of the key figures in Japanese underground music.
Passivité is an entrancingly beautiful album that draws from rock and psychedelic music, the sounds of 60’s America as well as elements of jazz, bossa nova, soul, and even electronic music. It’s an enigmatic late-night meditation that unfolds in a cool darkness pierced by scattered flashes of light and heat. The album’s opening tracks “K” and “Nachbild,” as well as the second side’s nearly 15-minute “Nightwalker,” slowly float in the night, quietly seductive, stripped down, and soulful. Even as Ishihara seems to surrender to these nocturnal atmospheres, he cuts to songs that erupt with urgent energy, overdriven fuzz guitars, and even dives into an electronic excursion recorded 18 years before. Through all of this, there is a clarity and cohesion of vision. On Passivité, Ishihara both embraces and departs from his work with White Heaven. The music is deeply personal and intimate even as it operates on a conceptual level with a masterful nuance and subtlety.
Black Editions presents Passivité for the first time on vinyl in a meticulously remastered deluxe edition, including metallic silver tip-on jacket with gloss film laminate finish, matte pigment stamping, two inserts with liner notes in Japanese and English newly written by renowned music critic and editor Masato Matsumura (Studio Voice, Tokion) and the original notes by Shinji Shibayama (Nagisa Ni Te, Hallelujahs, Org Records).
Originally released in 1989 as Violin Solo. Sept. 3-4, '89. Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assemble sounds into music. When listeners connect with his sounds, a direct identification of experience occurs between audience and performer. Personnel: Takehisa Kosugi - electric violin.
the second album by the Jacks—the pioneers of Japanese rock—released after the band’s breakup, is being reissued on vinyl for the first time in 30 years since its 1996 LP reissue!!
Selected tracks from the album are featured in Hideo Kojima’s video game, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.
“Untitled II” is a grainy mixtape/sound collage produced by London-based artist, Koichi Yamanoha. Contains demo recordings on a 4-track cassette, humming by Yamanoha’s mother, sound sketches of sleep-talk. the sea recorded during the road trips, and guitar feedback at a local supermarket’s event, etc. Featuring multiple musicians including Josephine Foster, Bryan Michael Mills, and Naima Nefertari. 30 limited cassette tape edition comes with the Grimm Grimm original pillowcase (Designed by Yamanoha’s 7 years-old niece)
Grimm Grimm’s quiet, folk‑rooted songwriting and his experimental sound treatments come together in their most refined form on the 2020 album Ginormous
Masayuki Takayanagi, having absorbed free jazz, offers a response that brings the tumultuous 1970s to a close. His return to his roots—a tribute to Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz—serves as a rite of passage to reach new heights in the coming era.
Les Rallizes Dénudés Takashi Mizutani's envisioned “Fourth Album” finally materializes after 35 years.
Chicago-based sound artist Kikù Hibino collaborates with Japanese noise pioneer Merzbow (Masami Akita) on Rococo ∞ Echomatter, released by Superpang. Exchanging material between Chicago and Tokyo, the duo cuts spoken voice and instruments into dense noise fields. Hibino’s sharp editing turns these ruptures into structure, where voice and noise collide as physical elements in motion.
One of the most essential early documents of Japanese noise, originally recorded and mixed at home in 1980 and released in 1981 on cassette by Lowest Music & Arts, now given the physical treatment it always deserved: a 2LP set housed in a natural birch wooden box with laser print, hand-numbered edition of just 99 copies. Ninety-nine! With a double-sided 42 x 60 cm poster, heavy card insert reproducing the original master tape cover, and black cardboard strip with album credits. An art object, plain and simple.
This is Masami Akita before the impenetrable noise walls that would define his legend - something rawer, more tactile, "a sound world still breathing and searching for its shape." Electric guitar, bass, tapes, electronics, prepared guitar, tabla, junk percussion, radio, egg cutter & noise - everything feeding into a tangle of wires and tape decks in a small Tokyo room. Across four vinyl sides, the sound unfolds as shifting collage: machine-like drones, metallic friction, detuned radio signals, tape manipulations and warped string sonorities. Like Kurt Schwitters building his Merzbau from found objects, Akita assembles sound from the refuse of modern life - "creating something greater than the sum of its broken parts."
Transferred from the original source, this edition reveals microscopic details the cassette could never deliver. Drop the needle anywhere and you're inside that 1980 room. Do NOT sleep on this one.
New esclusive recordings by the one and only master of Japanoise!
All Music by Masami Akita
Recorded at Munemihouse, Tokyo 2024-2025
Mixed at Munemihouse, January 2026
Artwork by AI Generated ©️MA 2026
**200 copies, sold out at the label** New single from the undisputed god of Japanese noise. Masami Akita - the man behind Merzbow - returns with two tracks recorded in February 2024 at Munemihouse, his legendary home studio in Tokyo. Two sides of pure sonic assault that swing just as the title suggests - "Pendulum, Part 1" and "Pendulum, Part 2" - masses of frequencies in constant motion, pendulums of noise crossing the sonic spectrum with the violence and precision that only Akita can orchestrate. From 1979 to the present day, Merzbow has redefined the boundaries of what we can call music. Hundreds of releases - LPs, CDs, cassettes, collaborations, limited editions that drive collectors around the world insane. Yet every new release sounds as if it were the first and the last at the same time. No compromise, no concession to the market, no softening. After more than four decades, Akita continues to push noise into its most extreme and unexplored territories. This 7" arrives at a moment of extraordinary prolificacy for Merzbow - the recent waves of material from Japan, particularly the monumental archival series on Slowdown Records, bear witness to an artist who has never stopped documenting and archiving his sonic research. A continuous flow of noise reaching the rest of the world from Japan. The 7" format is perfect for this kind of frontal attack - direct, concentrated, brutal. No frills, no filler. Two tracks, two sides, a few minutes of total devastation.
The shifting dimensions of Masana Temples, fourth album from psychedelic explorers Kikagaku Moyo,are informed by various experiences the band had with traveling through life together, ranging from the months spent on tour to making a pilgrimage to Lisbon to record the album with jazz musician Bruno Pernadas. The band sought out Pernadas both out of admiration for his music and in an intentional move to work with a producer who came from a wildly different background. With Masana Temples, the band wanted to challenge their own concepts of what psychedelic music could be. Elements of both the attentive folk and wild-eyed rocking sides of the band are still intact throughout, but they’re sharper and more defined.
More than the literal interpretation of being on a journey, the album’s always changing sonic panorama reflects the spiritual connection of the band moving through this all together. Life for a traveling band is a series of constant metamorphoses, with languages, cultures, climates and vibes changing with each new town. The only constant for Kikagaku Moyo throughout their travels were the five band members always together moving through it all, but each of them taking everything in from very different perspectives. Inspecting the harmonies and disparities between these perspectives, the group reflects the emotional impact of their nomadic paths. The music is the product of time spent in motion and all of the bending mindsets that come with it.
A wave of global critical reappraisal is building around Japan's definitive techno label, TRANSONIC RECORDS. To mark the occasion, a two-disc compilation album showcasing the dawn of Japanese 90s techno is set for release.
TMZ stood out as a fiercely unique presence on TRANSONIC COMPACT DISC 01 and 02, the compilation albums that marked the first standalone releases from the newly reborn TRANSONIC RECORDS. An existence that could well be called an out-of-place artifact in techno history, this debut album bridges the gap between a hidden past and the present.
01.Skylark on 303 / Masaaki Kikuchi
02.The Acid Coming / ACIDWHITEHOUSE
03.Sevnwn / Yuri Suzuki
04.Got Drunk / CHERRYBOY FUNCTION
05.Freq Out / Sigh Society
06.Screaming Bassline (distortional addict) / AcidGelge
07.GROTTO / QUEER NATIONS
08.Cut the Midrange Drop the Acieeed Bass / MUTRON
09.BOWWOW / ACID TAMIYA 346
10.Victim Kid / kuknacke
11.Do It / NASCA CAR