Massive split LP with two sides of primo-Japanese underground meat: Masami Akita aka Merzbow’s side is one of his most tactile and crudely-conceived outings in a while, looking back to Batztoutai With Memorial Gadgets-era in its combination of analog and digital soundsources, utilising sandpaper tones, sirens, feedback, disorientating jump-cuts and gunshot percussion for maximum mindfuck. A classic Merzbow side. The flip is even more spectacular, with Cris X aka Christiano Luciani joined by Japanese underground performers Keiko Higuchi on piano and vocals and Sachiko Fukuoka of Kousokuya/Vava Kitora et al on electronics, effects and vocals. Cris X plays a dark devotional form of holy drone using electronics, guitar, field recordings, cymbals, samples and effects and both Keiko and Sachiko inhabit the music like wraiths. Keiko comes across like Patty Waters circa “Moon Don’t Come Up Tonight” or Diamanda Galas circa “My World Is Empty Without You Babe” countering spare chords with an incantatory vocal that is truly chilling. The final piece is a duo between Schiko and Luciani recorded and mixed at home by Rinji Fukuoka of Overhang Party where the spectral atmospherics of Sachiko’s dazzling solo work meet the devotional drones of Cris X in a way that’s as remarkable as planet-devouring classic by Tangerine Dream, Nijiumu and Toho Sara. Edition of only 300 copies on white vinyl. Highly recommended!

Major limited edition white vinyl reissue (hand-numbered edition of only 199 copies) of what was originally an ultra-limited 1983 ADN cassette that came packaged in a bloodied hanky: anyone who came up on the later Merzbow sides may be a little surprised at the improvisatory electro-acoustic nature of some of the amazing early jams, mostly cut in the company of Kazuyuki K Null or Akita’s high school buddy Kiyoshi Mizutani. Kibbutz is one of the hands-down highlights of Merzbow’s early crude psychedelic Industrial style, with the duo of Akita and Mizutani playing guitar, drums, effects and keyboards. At points the levels of string violence exceed your fantasy of a free-metal Cale/Conrad/MacLise summit with cluster-fucked bulldozing keyboard work and constantly fluxing drone, at others it feels like an iron-clad Sun Ra Arkestra travelling the spaceways. The drums/guitar work is truly punk primitive, with the atom-smashing style of The Dead C, Harry Pussy or The Blue Humans complete with cro-magnon rhythms, sudden dive-bombings solos and a liberated post-free jazz mindset.  If you’ve never checked in on the early Merzbow acid/industrial rock sound then Kibbutz presents it at an absolute peak, still one of the wildest and most formally fucked rock/noise of any era. So great to see this massive set on vinyl, highly recommended!