Excellent new Incapacitants live disc on Lasse Marhaug’s new label. Recorded at the All Ears Festival in Norway in 2007, this one features two hysterical tracks. The first is the classic duo of T. Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai, working out of control circuitry and convulsive vocal blurt into some beautifully adrenalised shapes, from huge standing waves of all-devouring technicolour through gurgling, strangulated bombs and doofs. Second track adds collaborator Tommi Keranen of Testicle Hazard for a more pugilistic evisceration of everyday electronics. Another monster from Pica. Recommended.

Brand new tribute set of cover versions and punk extrapolations based around the phenomenal body of work birthed by Mr Jojo Hiroshige aka Alchemy label boss and Hijokaidan mainman. Features a totally disobedient Beefheart-style rave-up from the Oshiri PenPenz, microphone-gobbling action from Masonna (first new recording in years), great psych/pop stylings from Doodles, monstrously deformed guitar/noise from Solmania, GaramonKakinoki +AOL and a whole bunch of other punk Kansai Industrialists. Think of it as a particularly focussed Night Gallery instalment. Highly recommended.

Irresistible new compilation CD from the reactivated Alchemy Records, an all-female psych set curated by Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan. Features fragile, breathless song stylings from a bunch of upcoming femmes including Akiko Hodaka (formerly of Maher Shalal Hash Baz), Mai Mishio of Uzumibi, Hirachin of Oninko! and Totsuzen Danboru, Shiho of Ten-No.5 and Yuka Fujita of the excellent Chozu. “Produced by Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan (The King Of Noise), the godfather of Japanese noise music and the owner of Alchemy Records. He realized the strength, fragileness, delicateness and other elements that only women could have are the keyword for this decade. This album contains 11 tunes from emerging female musicians that Hiroshige picked out from the Japanese underground music scene.” – Alchemy. 

Major limited edition split LP, released to coincide with the LAFMS retrospective in London. One live side from each, with a thunderous performance from Japanese noise gods Hijokaidan featuring legendary free jazz percussionist Sabu Toyozumi (Kaoru Abe/Masayuki Takayanagi et al) on drums, Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Junko on vocals and Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai on electronics. Recorded live at Earthdom 27^th December 2009. Over on the flip we get an expanded Airway line-up – still the most obliterating of the LAFMS projects – featuring Joe Potts, Rick Potts, Tom Recchion, Dennis Duck, John Duncan, Fredrik Nilsen, Vetza, Linda Pitmon and Aaron Moore. Recorded live at Gramercy Theatre New York 22^nd October 2009. Very limited supply. 

Edition of 300 copies w/insert celebrating thirty years of one of the greatest noise duos on the face of the planet, Japan’s Incapacitants. The 7” single feels like the perfect format for Mikawa and Kosakai’s lurid, scattershot noise compositions with flashing rainbow electronics and deformed vocals exploding in immaculately conceived diamond-sharp formations with just enough spinning time to have you repeat flipping the goddamn thing all night. Visceral, psychedelic electronics from two of the greatest exponents of the form – highly recommended!

New edition of 500 copies album from the greatest noise duo of all time, Japan’s Incapacitants. Celebrating 30 years ‘in the business’ Mon, Ma? Mon!!! presents 60 minutes of their uniquely hysterical take on progressive noise with vertical accumulations of vocal/electronics shot to ribbons by pugilistic splats of static, dead machine drones and compulsive chattering vocals. Alongside two new extended studio tracks there’s also a bonus live show taken from Urga on 31^st July 2011 and it’s just laugh-out-loud great, moving from backwards head-banging dirges through the kinda explosive crescendos that reflect on Masami Akita’s vision of noise as nothing but the guitar-smashing part of The Who and Jimi Hendrix. Still peerless after all these years – highly recommended!

Delirious meeting of minds that sees the Hijokaidan orchestra joined by titanic Japanese free saxophonist Akira Sakata and legendary drummer Sabu Toyozumi for a mass free/noise ascension: Sakata has been getting all sorts of documentary action of late, not least in his group with Chris Corsano, Jim O’Rourke and Darin Gray while keen-eared listeners will no doubt recognise Sabu Toyozumi from his feral sides with Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi as well as his great Message To Chicago album and his legendary performances with Peter Brotzmann. This phenomenal set crosses all sorts of wires. Recorded live at Shinjuku Pit Inn in April 2012, it presents one of the most jaw-dropping amalgams of free jazz energies and all-out metal bombast. Jojo Hiroshige’s guitar has never sounded so brain-bombing, dunting heavy bass runs right through the heart of the group while Sakata tears feeling and form from blurs of notes and a wild, vocalised style. Toyozumi plays in it martial; sounding machine gun bursts that build into emphatic caveman ughs and fast, multi-limbed rhythms which force Mikawa and Kosakai to bear down heavy on the electronics. But one of the great things about this non-stop blow-out is the beauty of Junko’s hysterical phrasing, singing her goddamn heart out like she’s mainlining love songs from the ghost of Kaoru Abe. Pretty much a dream date served up in inexplicable Deep Purple tribute sleeves – highly recommended. 

Incredible studio set that sees legendary Japanese free jazz saxophonist Akira Sakata united with ‘Kings Of Noise’ Hijokaidan: it makes instant sense, the Japanese psych/noise underground developed in direct parallel to its free jazz scene, with countless instances of flux and cross-pollination, especially via vanguard figures like Masayuki Takayanagi, Kaoru Abe, the late bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa, Sabu Toyozumi, Keiji Haino’s Lost Aaraff and, of course, saxophonist Akira Sakata. Sakata has been on a roll of late, historically he has been one of the key Japanese free thinkers, playing with most of the heavyweights to come out of that country’s avant garde scene while reaching out to internationalists like Peter Brotzmann. Hijokaidan’s free-form noise music obviously owes a great deal to the ecstasies of late-60s/70s fire music and this stunning studio dates lets you get your head all the way inside the horn. Alongside Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Junko on vocals and T Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai on electronics they’ve added Futoshi Okano on drums to give the group an extra pugilistic/propulsive edge and the results are incredible, imagine a more fleet, speed-of-thought Borbetomagus with Patty waters at her most hysterical going up against molten saxophone runs that melt into smears of hallelujah and you’re part way to the appeal of this dazzling side. Yet it isn’t all walls of noise, the level of detail and precision is pretty boggling, you can hear the players react, riding sudden waves of pure tone, pulling back into chattering high, phantom exchanges, even some all-out gorgeous moments of sensuous drone. Junko’s voice blends beautifully with Sakata’s feral, testifying style while Hiroshige plays Blue Cheer right through the middle. Free jazz = avant rock assaults are always a big deal round these parts but this goes well beyond the blueprint and has gotta rank as one of the premier documents of formal demolition to come out of the ever fertile Japanese underground. Nicely packaged in Deep Purple-tribute sleeves too – highly recommended. 

“Combining CD player demonstration test signals, 24 bit digitally recorded improvised freeform analog pedal/electronic nO!se, direct to HD computer generated and recorded nO!se, flashbacks from the 1980s of 303 and 909 nO!se assaults including free-style repeat and reverse editing, a frog call editing experiment, finishing off the second disc is a unedited long-form radio de-tuning session! VALUE + BONUS is the sixth solo album release by Russell Haswell. It comes in deluxe no fun gatefold jacket and is limited to 1000.” – No Fun.