V/A-RIDDLE OF LUMEN, CD, 1994, JAPAN

This scene defining sonic snapshot of a compilation captures the fascinating upsurge of the mid 90's Japanese avant-prog boom in full fruition, specifically at the point where it's boundaries blur into the concurrent noise ferment of the era. Though not covering the God Mountain-associated crowd that, for me, constituted the peak of this scene (Koenjihyakkei, Bondage Fruit, Tipographica, Demi-Semi Quaver), those present and accounted for here belong to a fertile subset of raucous prog/punk/improv/noise bluster that saw little or no distribution in the west. Pride of place here instantly goes to P.O.N., a Ground Zero-related project (infinitely superior, if I may say so) whose insane spin-on-the-head-of-a-pin prog brainwarp can also be found on their eponymous CD I posted a while back. Also winning are Otomo Yoshide's synthetically tweaked dada decollage, which adopts the wonderfully bent template of his early works like "We Insist?" and "The Night Before The Death Of The Sampling Virus", O.A.D.'s dense fug of buldozing Omoide Haotoba-esque prog/funk rammalammma and Peregrini's desultory cyberpunk spasms, which sounds like a tonka toy version of Dissecting Table.

ARTISTS FEATURED:

Drillman
P.O.N.
U
Peregrini
Otomo Yoshide
Soap-Joh Henshi
O.A.D.
Solmania
Bidziliba
Romp
EQ
Live Under The Sky

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