PSF Records - Catalog PSFD161-

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PSFD-161
Munehiro Narita / Narita

Munehiro Narita - guitar
Takashi Ueno - guest guitar (#2 & #4)
First solo album by High Rise and Kyoaku no Intention six-string speed meister Munehiro Narita. Featuring a guest appearance by Takashi Ueno of Mahel Shalal Hash Baz, Tenniscoats, and a couple of dozen Majikick-related units fame.
With High Rise currently on extended vacation, Narita has been burning up stages across Tokyo in his aggressive, free-jazz inflected improv rock unit Kyoaku no Intentions, and more recently in naked solo style. The time is definitely right, after over twenty years in Tokyo's premier lysergic garage psych outfits, for Narita to unleash a solo album.
Serious students of Narita's guitar style will have noticed that for all its surface rock grime and ton-up speed thrills, it has always been a structurally complex thing drawing upon free jazz and free improv methodologies as much as greaser grunt. Even so, for those expecting a conflagration of demon-speed riffs and slash 'n' burn avant-garde dynamics, Narita will come as something of a surprise. He has deconstructed the most thrilling elements of rock guitar's pyrotechnics - wah-wahed smears, slowed down slides, sensual string bends- and retooled them into service of a far more subtle improvised psychedelia. Tonally it sounds like nothing else, rocked out and avanted up, meditative and impassioned cool all at once, Derrida with a Marshall stack.

$15

PSFD-162
Sanhedolin / Manjo icchiwa muko
Sanhedolin are a ludicrously amped-up and heavy new power trio, featuring Keiji Haino, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Mitsuru Nasuno (Ruins). Haino brings aggressive anguish and all-consuming black fire, Yoshida and Nasuno supply a sack-full of convulsive time-shifting and complex kinetic acceleration.
Haino and Yoshida have been working together on and off for the past three or four years in a number of duo and trio contexts, including a tour of China and Taiwan. They have built up the kind of instinctual response and rapport that only comes with extended playing. A previous trio formation including Hisashi Sasaki (ex Ruins) seems to have bitten the dust, and in its place we have the newly named Sanhedolin.
Speed-deranged progressive metal of spectacular and ridiculous heights.

$15

PSFD-163
Shizuo Hasegawa / gene packs
Hirotomo Hasegawa: ichiriki, voice, loops
Shizuo Uchida: bass, ichigen, loops
Debut album by a new improvisation group consisting of Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizuo Uchida. Both have a leather-bound folder full of underground back-story ? Hasegawa was the lead singer of seminal early eighties Japanese punk/hardcore group Aburadako (Greasy Octopus), while Uchida was a long-term member of Hainofs Nijiumu medieval dream-drone unit.
The group's instrumentation is highly unorthodox, placing Uchida's mysterious bass textures against the wet skirl of Hasegawa's hichiriki, an ancient double-reed wind instrument whose haunting upper register tones are an unmistakeable feature of gagaku court music. Hasegawa brings a bucketful of phlegm to his approach to the instrument, out-honking Zorn's duckcall work by a marshy mile. Uchida also contributes some striking ichigen (single-string) koto.
Deliriously psychedelic, fully immersive drone and oriental wind works in the grand tradition of Taj Mahal Travellers, Nijiumu, Marginal Consort and too few others.

$15

PSFD-164
Maher Shalal Hash Baz / Kunitachi Kibun LIVE 1984-1985
Maher Shalal Hash Baz stand at the pinnacle of Tori Kudo's eccentric and beguiling musical weltanschauung, a stew of soaring melodic genius, naive wisdom and the eternal amateur freshness of left-footing your own brain. Emperors of error, indeed. Their very special talent has been recognized by a slew of underground labels across the world and garnered them famous friends and fans aplenty including The Pastels. But until now, the very earliest roots of the band have remained shrouded in misty tendrils of mystery.
Kunitachi Kibun delves deep into the band's beginnings, presenting two previously unreleased gigs, including their first show from December 1984 when they played in a legendary triple header with High Rise and Kosokuya at the Kid Airaku Hall in Tokyo. The second show from six months later includes an appearance by the late alto saxophonist Masami Shinoda. Both soar with idiot-savant genius, Tori's truly distinctive guitar and vocals creating their own idiot-savant networks of logic with the rest of the group. A stupendous glimpse into a simpler world of communal transcendence and music making.

$15

PSFD-165
Toshiaki Ishizuka / Drum Drama
New solo work from the Japanese underground’s drummer of choice.
Six years on from 1999`s masterful Red Night (PSFD-107), Toshiaki “Toshi” Ishizuka is back with a new set of deep, shimmering nightscapes for percussion. Toshi has been a pivotal figure in the Japanese underground since the late sixties, when he founded Japan’s first radical, politically-engaged punk group Zuno Keisatsu. Since then he has been the sticksman of choice for howling folk-poets Kazuki Tomokawa, Yasuki Fukushima and Kan Mikami, as well as making up one corner of the Vajra trio with Mikami and Keiji Haino, and leading his own group Cinorama. More recently he has been active in the Sanjah trio with Mikami and altoist Masayoshi Urabe.
Drum Drama is Toshi’s third album of solo percussion. The first, Kaze no Yami, was released in a miniscule edition in 1991. Since a full reissue is for various reasons impossible, Toshi has included two mesmerizing pieces from Kaze no Yami here, alongside three new pieces. Toshi has a unique approach that blends overtly textural work (rubbing cymbals, rolling metallic balls, bowed gongs) with mountain-deep kick-drum bombs and flashes of staccato martial snares. The results are deeply evocative nocturnal landscapes of immense percussive variety, subtle, lyrical, cinematic and even soulful.
Another major statement from an unsung thinker.

$15

PSFD-166
Kousokuya/ "1979 First Live"
Jutok Kaneko – guitar
Mick – vocals
Hiroshi Yokoyama – synth
Toshiko Watanabe - drums
Miraculously unearthed live tape from one of the earliest incarnations of Tokyo heavy psychedelic legends Kousokuya.
For a group with a 25-year history on the Tokyo underground scene, Kousokuya have left very little imprint of their activities. Once heard, though, their sound is unmistakeable – a grinding, soaring sonic-blackhole that charts the empty gulfs of tension-space like no one else this side of Fushitsusha.
This tape, recorded at legendary seventies Tokyo underground venue Minor, captures Kousokuya at a formative stage in their existence – Mick’s blank, disembodied howl is present and correct, as is the choppy brilliance of Kaneko’s guitar playing. But the real surprise is synth player Hiroshi Yokoyama, who lasted just a few gigs with the group. He contributes great clots of synth-blurt to the mix, wailing and derailing, the soul of this group’s genetic instability.
Another piece of the jigsaw…

$15

PSFD-167
Ghost Temple / D!O!D!O!D!
Li Jianhong guitar
Huang Jin drums
Fantastic album of pure guitar and drums brutality (and the first non-Japanese release for PSF in several years) from the greatest noise musician in China, Li Jianhong.
Long resident in Hangzhou, Li has released several records on his own 2pi label, including solo noise work for TV monitors and an album by his avant-rock unit Second Skin. He also curates the annual 2pi noise festival in Hangzhou. He played in at the Nuit Blanche festival in Paris in 2004, and this will be his second non-Chinese release.
It is kind of amazing to think that China has already managed to produce a musician as au fait as Li Jianhong obviously is with the whole free noise aesthetic. D!O!D!O!D! is a full-on duo with drummer Huang Jin that mines the rich seams previously explored by Munehiro Narita¹s Kyoaku no Intention and Rudolph Grey¹s Blue Humans. Endlessly thrilling free psych-noise guitar blurt that bundles up enough flailing electric energy to illuminate half of Shanghai.

$15

PSFD-168
Kondo Hideaki / Structures
Hideaki Kondo - 10 string gut guitar, gut guitar
Michio Karimata - flute
Jun Kondo - contrabass
Osamu Nomura - percussion
First solo album by Hideaki Kondo, leader of Japan leading improvisation collective, EXIAS-J.
Kondo is known for the theoretical rigour that lies behind his technical mastery of the guitar, and for the multiplicity of his methodologies, encompassing free jazz, avant-garde, rock and folk forms. As in the playing of the late Masayuki Takayanagi, there is an originality and clarity of thought, a combination of historical understanding and contemporary intentionality, in Kondo¹s approach to guitar improvisation that is simply stunning.
This first solo album presents Kondo largely on ten-string gut guitar, moving with an uncanny grace and concentration from stone melodic beauty to densely structured improv violence. Fabulous support work from Exias-J regular Kondo, and sometime Keiji Haino collaborator Michio Karimata.

$15

PSFD-169
Tokyo Flashback 6
The long awaited return of PSF's legendary, scene-defining compilation. For two years since the release of Tokyo Flashback 5 in 1995, we have been scouring the deepest dives in the darkest alleyways of the Tokyo underground in search of the newest mutated manifestations of the lysergic paradigm. The quest has not been an easy one, but now after dozens of gigs and hundreds of hours listening to demo cdrs, we have finally reached its conclusion.
Tokyo Flashback 6 presents the fruits of that search, a treasure trove of the unheard. Twelve new groups poised on the cusp of greatness, driven by a fervent belief in the transformational potential of sound and the dimension-altering power of cranked amps, delay pedals and a third-eye opened to the cosmos. The groups included span a wide-definition of the psychedelic, from the No-wave intensity of Onna (led by underground manga artist Keizo Miyanishi), to the acid-punk splatter of Ainotamenishis, the art-school insanity of Kinky Pigeon, and the loner canyon-magic of Genshi.
Featured groups: Ahobune, Hananoyoni, Onna, Yamashirube, Sarod, Retort Mandala, Ainotamenishis, Kinky Pigeon, Yakochu, Ogikubo Connection, Masami Kawaguchi, Genshi.

$15

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PSFD1-20 | PSFD21-40 | PSFD41-60 | PSFD61-80 | PSFD81-100

PSFD101-120 | PSFD121-140 | PSFD141-160 | PSFD161-

PSFD8001-8020 | PSFD8021- | PSFD1001-/MKCD/TOMOKAWA | LP/CD single/Video/DVD/Book/T-Shirt


	PSFD-161 Munehiro Narita / Narita Munehiro Narita - guitar Takashi Ueno - guest guitar (#2 & #4) First solo album by High Rise and Kyoaku no Intention six-string speed meister Munehiro Narita. Featuring a guest appearance by Takashi Ueno of Mahel Shalal Hash Baz, Tenniscoats, and a couple of dozen Majikick-related units fame. With High Rise currently on extended vacation, Narita has been burning up stages across Tokyo in his aggressive, free-jazz inflected improv rock unit Kyoaku no Intentions, and more recently in naked solo style. The time is definitely right, after over twenty years in Tokyo's premier lysergic garage psych outfits, for Narita to unleash a solo album. Serious students of Narita's guitar style will have noticed that for all its surface rock grime and ton-up speed thrills, it has always been a structurally complex thing drawing upon free jazz and free improv methodologies as much as greaser grunt. Even so, for those expecting a conflagration of demon-speed riffs and slash 'n' burn avant-garde dynamics, Narita will come as something of a surprise. He has deconstructed the most thrilling elements of rock guitar's pyrotechnics - wah-wahed smears, slowed down slides, sensual string bends- and retooled them into service of a far more subtle improvised psychedelia. Tonally it sounds like nothing else, rocked out and avanted up, meditative and impassioned cool all at once, Derrida with a Marshall stack.	$15

	PSFD-162 Sanhedolin / Manjo icchiwa muko Sanhedolin are a ludicrously amped-up and heavy new power trio, featuring Keiji Haino, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Mitsuru Nasuno (Ruins). Haino brings aggressive anguish and all-consuming black fire, Yoshida and Nasuno supply a sack-full of convulsive time-shifting and complex kinetic acceleration. Haino and Yoshida have been working together on and off for the past three or four years in a number of duo and trio contexts, including a tour of China and Taiwan. They have built up the kind of instinctual response and rapport that only comes with extended playing. A previous trio formation including Hisashi Sasaki (ex Ruins) seems to have bitten the dust, and in its place we have the newly named Sanhedolin. Speed-deranged progressive metal of spectacular and ridiculous heights.	$15

	PSFD-163 Shizuo Hasegawa / gene packs Hirotomo Hasegawa: ichiriki, voice, loops Shizuo Uchida: bass, ichigen, loops Debut album by a new improvisation group consisting of Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizuo Uchida. Both have a leather-bound folder full of underground back-story ? Hasegawa was the lead singer of seminal early eighties Japanese punk/hardcore group Aburadako (Greasy Octopus), while Uchida was a long-term member of Hainofs Nijiumu medieval dream-drone unit. The group's instrumentation is highly unorthodox, placing Uchida's mysterious bass textures against the wet skirl of Hasegawa's hichiriki, an ancient double-reed wind instrument whose haunting upper register tones are an unmistakeable feature of gagaku court music. Hasegawa brings a bucketful of phlegm to his approach to the instrument, out-honking Zorn's duckcall work by a marshy mile. Uchida also contributes some striking ichigen (single-string) koto. Deliriously psychedelic, fully immersive drone and oriental wind works in the grand tradition of Taj Mahal Travellers, Nijiumu, Marginal Consort and too few others.	$15

	PSFD-164 Maher Shalal Hash Baz / Kunitachi Kibun LIVE 1984-1985 Maher Shalal Hash Baz stand at the pinnacle of Tori Kudo's eccentric and beguiling musical weltanschauung, a stew of soaring melodic genius, naive wisdom and the eternal amateur freshness of left-footing your own brain. Emperors of error, indeed. Their very special talent has been recognized by a slew of underground labels across the world and garnered them famous friends and fans aplenty including The Pastels. But until now, the very earliest roots of the band have remained shrouded in misty tendrils of mystery. Kunitachi Kibun delves deep into the band's beginnings, presenting two previously unreleased gigs, including their first show from December 1984 when they played in a legendary triple header with High Rise and Kosokuya at the Kid Airaku Hall in Tokyo. The second show from six months later includes an appearance by the late alto saxophonist Masami Shinoda. Both soar with idiot-savant genius, Tori's truly distinctive guitar and vocals creating their own idiot-savant networks of logic with the rest of the group. A stupendous glimpse into a simpler world of communal transcendence and music making.	$15

	PSFD-165 Toshiaki Ishizuka / Drum Drama New solo work from the Japanese underground’s drummer of choice. Six years on from 1999`s masterful Red Night (PSFD-107), Toshiaki “Toshi” Ishizuka is back with a new set of deep, shimmering nightscapes for percussion. Toshi has been a pivotal figure in the Japanese underground since the late sixties, when he founded Japan’s first radical, politically-engaged punk group Zuno Keisatsu. Since then he has been the sticksman of choice for howling folk-poets Kazuki Tomokawa, Yasuki Fukushima and Kan Mikami, as well as making up one corner of the Vajra trio with Mikami and Keiji Haino, and leading his own group Cinorama. More recently he has been active in the Sanjah trio with Mikami and altoist Masayoshi Urabe. Drum Drama is Toshi’s third album of solo percussion. The first, Kaze no Yami, was released in a miniscule edition in 1991. Since a full reissue is for various reasons impossible, Toshi has included two mesmerizing pieces from Kaze no Yami here, alongside three new pieces. Toshi has a unique approach that blends overtly textural work (rubbing cymbals, rolling metallic balls, bowed gongs) with mountain-deep kick-drum bombs and flashes of staccato martial snares. The results are deeply evocative nocturnal landscapes of immense percussive variety, subtle, lyrical, cinematic and even soulful. Another major statement from an unsung thinker.	$15

	PSFD-166 Kousokuya/ "1979 First Live" Jutok Kaneko – guitar Mick – vocals Hiroshi Yokoyama – synth Toshiko Watanabe - drums Miraculously unearthed live tape from one of the earliest incarnations of Tokyo heavy psychedelic legends Kousokuya. For a group with a 25-year history on the Tokyo underground scene, Kousokuya have left very little imprint of their activities. Once heard, though, their sound is unmistakeable – a grinding, soaring sonic-blackhole that charts the empty gulfs of tension-space like no one else this side of Fushitsusha. This tape, recorded at legendary seventies Tokyo underground venue Minor, captures Kousokuya at a formative stage in their existence – Mick’s blank, disembodied howl is present and correct, as is the choppy brilliance of Kaneko’s guitar playing. But the real surprise is synth player Hiroshi Yokoyama, who lasted just a few gigs with the group. He contributes great clots of synth-blurt to the mix, wailing and derailing, the soul of this group’s genetic instability. Another piece of the jigsaw…	$15

	PSFD-167 Ghost Temple / D!O!D!O!D! Li Jianhong guitar Huang Jin drums Fantastic album of pure guitar and drums brutality (and the first non-Japanese release for PSF in several years) from the greatest noise musician in China, Li Jianhong. Long resident in Hangzhou, Li has released several records on his own 2pi label, including solo noise work for TV monitors and an album by his avant-rock unit Second Skin. He also curates the annual 2pi noise festival in Hangzhou. He played in at the Nuit Blanche festival in Paris in 2004, and this will be his second non-Chinese release. It is kind of amazing to think that China has already managed to produce a musician as au fait as Li Jianhong obviously is with the whole free noise aesthetic. D!O!D!O!D! is a full-on duo with drummer Huang Jin that mines the rich seams previously explored by Munehiro Narita¹s Kyoaku no Intention and Rudolph Grey¹s Blue Humans. Endlessly thrilling free psych-noise guitar blurt that bundles up enough flailing electric energy to illuminate half of Shanghai.	$15

	PSFD-168 Kondo Hideaki / Structures Hideaki Kondo - 10 string gut guitar, gut guitar Michio Karimata - flute Jun Kondo - contrabass Osamu Nomura - percussion First solo album by Hideaki Kondo, leader of Japan leading improvisation collective, EXIAS-J. Kondo is known for the theoretical rigour that lies behind his technical mastery of the guitar, and for the multiplicity of his methodologies, encompassing free jazz, avant-garde, rock and folk forms. As in the playing of the late Masayuki Takayanagi, there is an originality and clarity of thought, a combination of historical understanding and contemporary intentionality, in Kondo¹s approach to guitar improvisation that is simply stunning. This first solo album presents Kondo largely on ten-string gut guitar, moving with an uncanny grace and concentration from stone melodic beauty to densely structured improv violence. Fabulous support work from Exias-J regular Kondo, and sometime Keiji Haino collaborator Michio Karimata.	$15

	PSFD-169 Tokyo Flashback 6 The long awaited return of PSF's legendary, scene-defining compilation. For two years since the release of Tokyo Flashback 5 in 1995, we have been scouring the deepest dives in the darkest alleyways of the Tokyo underground in search of the newest mutated manifestations of the lysergic paradigm. The quest has not been an easy one, but now after dozens of gigs and hundreds of hours listening to demo cdrs, we have finally reached its conclusion. Tokyo Flashback 6 presents the fruits of that search, a treasure trove of the unheard. Twelve new groups poised on the cusp of greatness, driven by a fervent belief in the transformational potential of sound and the dimension-altering power of cranked amps, delay pedals and a third-eye opened to the cosmos. The groups included span a wide-definition of the psychedelic, from the No-wave intensity of Onna (led by underground manga artist Keizo Miyanishi), to the acid-punk splatter of Ainotamenishis, the art-school insanity of Kinky Pigeon, and the loner canyon-magic of Genshi. Featured groups: Ahobune, Hananoyoni, Onna, Yamashirube, Sarod, Retort Mandala, Ainotamenishis, Kinky Pigeon, Yakochu, Ogikubo Connection, Masami Kawaguchi, Genshi.	$15