About this product

Product Identifiers

ProducerAki Onda^Haco

Record LabelSRA, Sub Rosa

UPC5411867112020

eBay Product ID (ePID)28046063848

Product Key Features

FormatCD

Release Year2004

GenreAlternative Rock

ArtistVarious

Release TitleJapanese Avantgarde

Dimensions

Item Height0.39 in

Item Weight0.22 lb

Item Length5.55 in

Item Width5.00 in

Additional Product Features

Number of Discs1

Number of Tracks14

Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States

Tracks1.1 Made in U.S.A. - So Takahashi 1.2 Vs Calla - Koji Asano 1.3 Lux Automobile [Krokodil Rock Mix] - Merzbow 1.4 Smooth-Skinned Woman 1.5 Re: Mosquito Illusion - Haco 1.6 2808200 1.7 Electric Music Box - Yoshihiro Hanno, Multiphonic Ensemble 1.8 DT-2.01 - Otomo Yoshihide 1.9 Fish Don't Know It's Raining - Aki Onda 1.10 Afterimage - Yoshio Machida 1.11 Live 1992 [Live] 1.12 Pachinko Mandala 00 1.13 Interview - Gauthier Keyaerts 1.14 Interview - Gauthier Keyaerts

NotesAs an introduction to Japanese Avant-Garde here are some extracts from David Toop's liner notes: 'Most music in Japan has little to recommend it; it is a sonic equivalent of those brutal concrete towers or the transitory chaos of multi-storey teen-fashion emporia in Aoyama. But a sonic underground thrives, creatively if not financially, and perhaps it should be compared with the shabby Golden-gai drinking dens of Shinjuku, faint reminders of a lost time when desire and transgression shared endless cups of sake with political and artistic radicalism. How is it possible to live within and react against an extremely regulated society, politically moribund, engulfed by consumerism, technological innovation, mediated images, a confusion of influences and traditions? Agitation and stillness may seem to be opposing strategies, yet they converge at a certain point. Surging deep beneath the noir turbulence of Merzbow and So Takahashi, the car crash ruins of Otomo Yoshihide and Ground Zero, the curated urban fragments of Viewmaster, the technocratic complexity of Bisk and Yoshihiro Hanno's Multiphonic Ensemble, the piercing intensity of Sachiko M, the childlike placidity of Aki Onda, Yoshio Machida and Haco, is a conflicting sense of clarity attained through struggle. Out of turmoil, a stained purity is revealed. Listening to this alchemical transmutation, I think of Fujieda Baian, the central character of Shotaro Ikenami's historical novels. Professional assassin and acupuncturist, Baian kills to live, lives to heal. At the beginning of Yasunari Kawabata's novel, 'The Sound of the Mountain', Ogata Shingo hears an elusive sound, the faint rumble of the mountain at the rear of his house. 'It was as if a demon had passed, making the mountain sound out.' Shingo shakes his head, thinking the disturbance might be a ringing in his ears. Feeling fear, perhaps he hears the collapsing certainties of the future, our present, where everything is in flux.'