Akio Suzuki - Odds And Ends (Horen, 2002)
Toru Takemitsu - Complete Piano Works 1952-1990 (Woodward) (Etcetera, 1991)
Nobuo Yamada ‎– Daydream Of Wok (ABH, 2009)
Toshio Hosokawa - Deep Silence / Gagaku (WERGO, 2004)
Joji Yuasa ‎– Music For Experimental Films (Edition Omega Point, 2008)

Here is an odd grouping of Japanese music of various genres. I’ll include some of the original reviews (by Matt and Danny, respectively), and then wrap it up.

(Matt, re: Toshio, 3/31/10) Well, originally slotted for this post was a collection of Mr. Hosokawa’s string quartets to compliment that wonderful Nancarrow False Bread so kindly posted the other day. However, as the days have become longer and my shirt sleeves shorter, I have found it harder to tolerate this vitamin D deficient music — thus, Deep Silence.

One word frequently comes up in descriptions of these compositions — shimmering. And I agree, though the adjective need apply in two cases. First, as the sun peeks through the window pane while you are enjoying your first cup of coffee (or whatever caffeinated beverage you enjoy in the morning), its glare temporarily blinds you, obfuscating the screen of that laptop you were hiding behind. Ah yes, shimmering! On the other hand, when you become affixed to the dancing of the flames at the first bonfire of the season, whereupon the radiant colors against the dark of night haunts you for what seems like ages. Yup, that kind of shimmering as well!

Let me explain what this has to do with Mr. Hosokawa. Contained in this release from Wergo are seven compositions, three written by Toshio and four Gagaku (Japanese classical music). All seven are performed by Stefan Hussong on accordion and Mayumi Miyata on Shō (a bamboo mouth organ), with Hosokawa and Gagaku pieces alternating. Therein lies the shimmering bifurcation: as one might expect, the Gagaku pieces are dissonant yet still tonal (remember, tonality only just died a century ago), whereas Hosokawa’s compositions are fiercely atonal. Even still, the theme remains constant throughout each piece; extended drones link the room-filling “shimmers” with deep silence. Because without orchestration, without performance, a composition is merely just annotated silence. And here, on Deep Silence, one can almost see the notes being carried from parchment to the aural plane.

(Danny, re: Joji, 7/8/08) It came fast and hit hard. If you’re not familiar with Japan’s experimentators, hearing this and knowing it comes from a classical composer would be quite startling. If you’re a devotee, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Joji Yuasa’s compositions are intensively asseverated pieces; vocal manipulation & sampling, echoes and feedback and, finally, the last & longest piece, “Document of the Thin White Line”, which has entire minutes which resemble those 60s sound library albums we’ve all heard (not that there’s anything wrong with that) intermixed with some kind of mutant electroacoustic big-band-small-chin-chamber-orchestra. Does that sound dated and cartoonish? YES! And it is! And if you don’t like those attributes I assume you cannot enjoy music. Do you know John Zorn’s soundtrack series? Well, this puts it to shame.

Read more about the music and the very films it scores right here.

This album is not compatible with a fondness for the Czech New Wave.

I think the two records above are the best of this bunch, but the remaining records here have a lot to offer. I find Akio Suzuki and Nobuo Yamada to be on the same spectrum, albeit distance ends from one another. Where the former is calm and slowly developing, somewhat like a manually created Radigue record, Yamada is exceptional, to my tastes, but more standard drone. Perhaps there are connections here to Yuasa, but only of the most general type. Clearly the Takemitsu will probably be of interest if you enjoy the Hosokawa, although my affinity for his pieces come from a chance recital by a friend of mine a few years back. It might be “safe” avant classical compared to much of what we cover nowadays, but nonetheless it is a nice collection and worth your time. Indeed, I’ve found that if you stagger the composition records with the other material here, the music stands out more, as if the ear latches onto structure after long drones and silences.

Axolotl - Telesma (Spooky Action, 2005)
New Humans ‎- AKA - New Humans / Vito Acconci / C. Spencer Yeh (Semishigure, 2008)
Zbigniew Karkowski & Daniel Menche ‎– Unleash (Alien8 Recordings, 2008)
Mitsuhiro Yoshimura & Masahiko Okura ‎– Trio (Presqu’île Records, 2008)
Government Alpha ‎– Prospective Massacre (Rape Art Productions, 2005)

Last set for a little bit. This group is also from the Blogger site, with everything cleaned up and newly uploaded. A couple of these, I think, can be purchased, so look at the links on the label names.

Earlier in the site, many of the contributors were quite interested in the intersection of noise and drone, if not outright noise at times. Four of these clearly fit this suit. The Menche/Karkowski duo and Government Alpha, while producing their noise in different ways, probably scratch much the same itch. Axolotl, probably my favorite of this bunch, is a little more blissed out; it’s noise/drone, but not so noisey and not quite of the drone genre proper.

New Humans, a side project that includes C Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), is more noise rock/noise improv. As with the other multiple posts, the idea is to connect outright noise to related genres that produce similar results, but with drastically different methods. Spencer has always been versatile, and this is a good example.

Trio is the outlier here. However, its sine wave tones and eai usually finds a receptive audience that is comfortable with the overtones in a lot of the noise I’ve mentioned. This record simply strips out a lot of the oomph, leaving only the peaks. In other words, Trio is its own thing in its own genre, but if you can get comfortable with the high pitched portions of the maelstrom on Unleash, then you can imagine stripping everything out and piercing your ears.

Wooden Veil - Wooden Veil (Dekorder, 2009)
Starving Weirdos - Starving Weirdos (Atheists Are Gods, 2005)
Yellow Swans - Dreamed Yellow Swans (PACrec, 2005)
TwinSisterMoon - The Hollow Mountain (Ultra Hard Gel, 2009)
Scatter - Surprising Sing Stupendous Love (Pickled Egg, 2004)

Here is a quick post. Each of these multiple album posts turns into a “history of KiC” and I don’t want to humor that impulse too much. This is a collection of posts from the Blogger site that fit well together, and since that service deleted a lot of images (and the writing, in some cases, was embarrassing), I’m bringing back the album art, uploading one last time (click the album name), and summing these up a touch.

Each of these were finds from a period of exploring a broad range of styles that fit loosely under the folk/free folk/drone folk/avant folk headers. Where Scatter had many connections to older acts working with psych, 80’s avantgarde, free form music, it still connected enough in feel to fit with this group, two of which were more or less drone (Yellow Swans and Starving Weirdos). Indeed, pulling Yellow Swans into this mix might seem to be the biggest reach, which I would acknowledge. However, if you listen to the Starving Weirdos disc, you’ll see how someone who didn’t come to Yellow Swans via noise could nonetheless get into their work.

TwinSisterMoon is an even bigger straddler of the drone/folk divide, as those two styles are the two guises employed by TSM (and Natural Snow Buildings). My approach to the old site was to try to get people into one style by means of other related styles. I feel that TwinSisterMoon can acclimate the listener to drone, allowing Starving Weirdos to enchant with the noisier elements in their sound. Naturally, this culminates in the noise of Yellow Swans. The stylistic connections between Scatter and Wooden Veil’s “lost in the woods” folk might seem thinner, but they’re there. At the very least, if you like one, you’ll probably like the other.

Enjoy!