SCHISTOSOMA
JAPONICA
"Kankei UFO from Zanryu-shinen"
PSFD-183 (CD) Release date: January 5th, 2009 -- OUT NOW!
Performer Ichiro Kawamoto
Performer Wataru Kasahara
Performer Toshiya Ishida
Volume 3 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating and exiting material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this material from historical oblivion.
Schitosoma Japonica (AKA Nihon Juketsu Kyuchu) were a cracked avant-garde, recording-only offshoot of the freeform rock band Amanita. Formed around 1990, the group lived a communal existence in Saitama, on the northern borders of Tokyo, experimenting with music, magic and psychological experiments. “Our basic performance style was completely freeform, utilizing prepared instruments and rejecting regular rhythms and melodic development. Our abiding themes were communication with the afterlife/cosmos and the manifestation of paranormal accidents. We would jam endlessly until our performance space was filled with the ‘signs of blood and feverish becomings’. For us, performance was a kind of ritual.”
The group released a clutch of barely distributed cassettes in tiny editions. This CD compiles the best of them, sifting through the detritus of a technological society to float between noise, drone and ritualized avant-garde gestures.
Eight tracks, fifty-four minutes. Liner notes in English and Japanese.
http://www.psfmm.com/zoom/13341 Forthcoming releases:January 15, 2009 Tokasei Bunshi / self-titled CD (PSFD-182)
early February 2009 High Rise / DVD (PSFDV-1002)
February 2009 Satoshi Sonoda / Early Works of Satoshi Sonoda / 1977-1978
mid March 2009 Li Jianhong CD
