Japanoise: The Extreme Edge of Sound

May 8, 1960. Six musicians gathered in Tokyo with a vacuum cleaner, an oil drum, a radio, a doll, and a set of dishes. Takehisa Kosugi and Yasunao Tone's Group Ongaku recorded Automatism and Object that day, treating traditional instruments like found objects, overloading tape, manipulating speeds. No one called it 'noise music' yet. But in a country still processing war's psychic aftermath and rebuilding through rapid industrialization, these artists were already using sound as raw material. Melody's obligations didn't apply.

The real racket started in the late 1970s in Tokyo. Masami Akita started Merzbow in 1979, taking Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, art made from rubbish, as both namesake and manifesto. Akita had spent his university years studying dada and surrealism at Tamagawa, painting, theorizing, dancing Butoh. But the roots went back further: around 1972 he was playing drums in a blues rock band inspired by Cream and Jimi Hendrix, and by 1973 he and bassist Kiyoshi Mizutani had pushed into improvisation, absorbing King Crimson's Earthbound, Albert Ayler's Bells, and Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat. Free music from ICP, FMP, and INCUS pulled him further from rock's shape. Eventually he quit playing instruments altogether, tapping studio floors, rattling chairs, chasing something rock couldn't hold. “I felt I reached a dead end just playing instruments,” he said, “so I quit playing and tried other things.”