V/A-AIYOKU JINMIN JUJI GEKIJO, LP, 1980, JAPAN

One of the holy grails of the 80's Japanese underground scene, this extremely rare compilation (a sort of companion piece to the Welcome To Dreamland compilation on Celluloid) captures a seminal moment in the history of Japan's underground musical culture, documenting as it does the doings of a select crew of individuals associated with the performance space Minor, a good chunk of whom would go on to become some of the most notable and influential figures in Japanese underground music, among them: Keiji Haino, Chie Mukai (Che-Shizu) and Tori Kudo (Maher Shalal Hash Baz), though this also features numerous other significant movers on this scene including percussionist Takashi Kazamaki (Takehisa Kosugi collaborator), Kenichi Takeda and Akihiro Ishiwatari (both of A-Musik) and legendary improvisors Tamio Shiraishi and Motoharu Yoshizawa. The high points for me here would have to be Vedda Music Workshop's exceedingly Che-Shizu-like wobbling and wheezing and yet somehow utterly delicate assemblage and Machinegun Tango's deranged (if rather lo-fi) avant tango improv deformations. As an amusing (and rather hideous) aside, there evidently exists an "artists edition" of this album in an edition of 10 or so copies that is...well...smeared with shit. You read that right. Perhaps for a GG Allin album this might seem apropos, but it's a pretty startling gesture in this context. Go figure...

Weirdly, (unless I'm missing an insert), there appear to be no titles to these tracks, so I've just used the artists' names in place of track titles. Also, as this album runs for over 26 minutes a side, I've had to divide the downloads into two parts.

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