A deep dive into techno history – an interview with Ken Ishii
Ken Ishii, one of Japan's techno pioneers returned to Budapest in February to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his career with a special DJ set and I took this opportunity…
Meat Beat Manifesto & Merzbow: Extict
There are new Merzbow releases all the new albums, reissues, collaborations and so on. Any many of these are actually pretty great, but due to the high volume, obviously only…
Prana: Sense Of Unity
This album, released 27 (!) years after the project's previous full length is easily one of the nicest surprises of this year (and yeah, I know it is only March).…
Ryo Murakami: Tiers / #2021reviews
Ryo Murakami came from a tech house / minimal techno background, but sometime around 2013, after he built up quite a name for himself in those circles with a series…
Goth-Trad: Survival Research / #2021reviews
After his 2016 album, Psionics, Goth-Trad, the godfather of Japanese dubstep have not released any new dubstep material for a long while. He kept doing live acts, organized his monthly…
Co-Fusion: Co-Fu3.0 / #2021reviews
Co-Fusion was one of the key groups in the early days of Japanese techno, back in the late '90s, when the producers, mostly under the legendary Sublime Records, were experimenting…
Susumu Hirasawa: Beacon / #2021reviews
Ever since the '70s when he formed P-Model, his influential new wave / art rock / post-punk / whatever-you-wanna-call-their-strange-music band, Susumu Hirasawa has been both a legend and an outsider…
Toshimaru Nakamura: Culvert – No-Input Mixing Board 10 / #2021reviews
No-Input Mixing Board is Toshimaru Nakamura's long-running series, which started in 2000 and, as the title suggest, it includes music created with a no-input mixing board, which basically means that…
Capsule: the club pop duo’s first new song and music video in more than six years!
Capsule is back with a new more than six years after their latest release, 2015's excellent Wave Runner album! The duo of Yasutaka Nakata (lyrics, music) and Toshiko Koshijima (vocals)…
A Japanese noise & experimental Who’s Who by Ochiai Soup
While the music industry and live music in particular was hit especially hard by the pandemic, there are also some great things coming out of all this and one of…