This is where it all began. One of the first releases on the then fledgling PSF label was a DLP by Fushitsusha, Keiji Haino's ultimate rock unit.

Shuichi Chino / piano Kazuo Imai / guitar Pianist Shuichi Chino's lengthy career is more convoluted, with early stints in groups like Wha-ha-ha and the Downtown Boogie Woogie Band, followed by theatre and soundtrack work, and a towering heap of sessions with improvisers like Butch Morris, and Kazuhisa Uchihashi. 001111 is a reissue of a minimally distributed private cdr, documenting Chino and Imai's acoustic duo meeting at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, on 11 November 2001.

Dark atmosphere by female vocal and psychedelic guitar(from Fushitsusha). This is their 1st album.

Kazuki Tomokawa’s gigs are now a lot less frequent than they used to be, and his August 2005 Osaka date was his first in Kansai for quite some time. But accompanied by his long-time trio of Toshi Ishizuka on percussion and Masato Nagahata on piano, this was, in Tomokawa’s own estimation, the best gig that this trio has ever played. It was far too good a performance to be left to fading memories, and Tomokawa himself talked PSF into releasing it. Sixteen tracks of his patented soul-folk, emotionally charged and devastating as all hell.

"His 3rd solo album. Noisy, but more tender than previous approach! Full of dark and lyrical atmosphere. Another side of Haino!" PSF

Japanese underground acid folk group led by Chie Mukai and featuring Ikuro Takahashi (Fushitsusha/Kousokuya et al).

Artists included: 1. Keiji Haino (hurdy-gurdy,etc.) 2. Kazuo Imai (guitar) 3. Junichiro Okuchi (piano) 4. Michihiro Sato (tsugaru-syamisen) 5. Yoshihide Otomo (turntable) 6. Masayoshi Urabe (alto sax) Compilation containing six lengthy solo tracks by some of the most fascinating improvising musicians currently active in Japan. The CD documents a series of lecture-concerts, exploring the meanings, methods and implications of free music, which took place between September 2003 and February 2004 at Mesar Haus in Tokyo.

"Kokyu is Chinese ancient instrument. Floating atmosphere like legendary Taj Mahal Travellers!" PSF

Hoi (Addendum) is another long-rumoured record that at last sees the light of day. It was originally scheduled to have been released by Mikami’s fanclub as a follow-up to the 19 years 2 months 16th Night DLP (PSF reissue, MK-1/2), but the project was shelved at the last minute. Now, ten years down the line, the world finally gets to hear this wonderful trawl through Mikami’s deepest archives. Eighteen tracks, all previously unreleased, comprising live versions, outtakes and much more. Special card jacket, limited edition of 1000.

Part of PSF's new Kazuki Tomokawa art edition series bundling classic Tomokawa back catalogue in beautiful gatefold card jackets with all new art from Tomokawa himself. All releases limited to 500 copies.

Part of PSF's new Kazuki Tomokawa art edition series bundling classic Tomokawa back catalogue in beautiful gatefold card jackets with all new art from Tomokawa himself. All releases limited to 500 copies.

Part of PSF's new Kazuki Tomokawa art edition series bundling classic Tomokawa back catalogue in beautiful gatefold card jackets with all new art from Tomokawa himself. All releases limited to 500 copies.

Part of PSF's new Kazuki Tomokawa art edition series bundling classic Tomokawa back catalogue in beautiful gatefold card jackets with all new art from Tomokawa himself. All releases limited to 500 copies.

"Hallelujahs were a band led by Shinji Shibayama, during the mid-eighties. It floats on layers of melody rather than rhythm, and in places it has an incomparable start of autumn melancholic atmosphere." PSF

Hideaki Kondo - guitar Takuo Tanikawa - guitar, computer Shin-ichiro Kanda - piano, analogue synthesizer Tetsuya Miyazaki - live electronics, computer Jun Kawasaki - contrabass Masami Irumagawa - cello Naoto Nishizawa - drums, percussion "Free improvisation may have provided the original touch-paper for Exias-J's inception as a group, but by the time of the performances documented on this DVD we had gradually begun to move beyond it as a category. For instance, we began to incorporate deliberate internal structures in the form of compositional techniques such as minimalism, twelve-tone or atonalism, and we started to interrogate musical forms such as the sonata or ostinato. Or else in performance, we adopted approaches such as reliance upon a restricted number of modes, variations on a particular theme, extended instrumental technique, and a forms of expression based on (non-harmonically structured) sound images themselves. In order to construct these phenomenological relationships multiple techniques have been employed here, however they appear to be completely subordinated to receptive function of the viewer and the creative function of the musicians. I believe that this is something of which we can be justifiably proud. Since music relies upon these phenomenological relationships as its medium, I never like to make light of the methods by which modes and phenomena can be generalized, however, I have no desire to turn a method into a goal." Kondo Hideaki Third release on PSF by Exias-J (Experimental Improvisor's Assocation of Japan), Japan's most conceptually determined improvising collective and their first DVD. Containing three performances from Tokyo and New York, this is a challenging clash of methodologies and sonorities, hugely exciting in its electric power and formal heft. 142 minutes, region free, NTSC format.

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.

Guitarist/vocalist Keiji Haino, bassist Barre Phillips and drummer Sabu Toyozumi

Live set of violin, piano, bass

Kazuo Imai / acoustic guitar "far and wee", only Imai's second solo release (following "How will we change?", PSFD-70), sees him setting aside the electric strurm und drang in favour of the limitations of a nylon-strung acoustic guitar. In Imai's hands though, the instrument is opened up in an utterly thrilling fashion, as he agilely traverses clumped string thickets, high tension slide motion and yawning acoustic caverns with a jaw-dropping array of extended techniques. There's a density of conception and creativity on display here that is simply jaw-dropping.

Masahiro Deguchi - flute, guitar, effects, kalimba Masaaki Motoyama - viola Hirokuni Ueno - piano Hiroyuki Usui - drums, percussion Takanari Sato - drums Another piece of ineffable mystery from the deepest bowels of the Tokyo underground. Led by flautist and guitarist Masahiro Deguchi, Gendai Sokkyo (the name means Contemporary Improvisation) are a group with no discernable history, who seem to have sprung from nothing to fully formed life. As the name suggests, the group showcase an improvisatory fusion of methodology and sound palette, drawing upon free jazz/free improvisation, avant rock moves and the textures of contemporary classical. An explosion of weird dynamics, suggestive in its inclusiveness and entirely psychedelic in its approach.

Vocals, Guitar – Shizuka Guitar – Miura Maki Bass – Seven Drums – Kosugi Jun Shizuka were THE great lost-in-action group of the Tokyo underground psych scene during the early to mid nineties. Led by doll-maker Shizuka, and with ex-Fushitsusha alumni Maki Miura and Jun Kosugi on hand, they created some of the most fragile and intense acid-rock of their time, but remained largely undocumented and under appreciated. This gig documented on this CD, recorded at Bears in Osaka in 1995, was long whispered of amongst the cognoscenti. It catches them at a near-divinely inspired peak of fucked-up narcotic bliss. Shizuka’s uncanny vocals and tremulous sense of timing washing like brown sugar over fluid nebulae of guitar and drum nirvana, peaking and churning in perfect, weightless filigrees of light, cosmic cold and invisible motion. Miura’s guitar playing is just jaw-dropping. Booklet includes lyrics in Japanese and English.

Alto saxophone – Tamio Shiraishi Alto saxophone, piano molanica, etc – MICO A rare live album from one of the major names in the Japanese free noise underground – Tamio Shiraishi. Shiraishi was one of the major movers in the free noise/underground rock/DIY improv Minor scene of the late 70s and early 80s that gave birth to so many of the major names in the Japanese underground. He was a pivotal member of a large number of groups associated with the scene, including Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha. But Shiraishi has rarely recorded and thus enjoys far less name recognition outside of Japan. He has lived in New York City for the past decade or so, collaborating with the likes of Sean Meehan and the No-Neck Blues Band. This compilation of live recordings captures Shiraishi live in Europe, the US and Japan between 2001 and 2007, together with NNCK member MICO. Forceful, intense, chaotic improvisations for saxophone, vocals, percussion, piano etc. Shiraishi’s trademark ultra high-pitched dog-whistle sax and guttural vocals are showcased to full and outstanding effect.

Alto saxophone, harmonica, chains, metal, accordion, bells, toy flute – Masayoshi Urabe Metal junk, cello, etc - Kiyoharu Kuwayama (track 2 only) A new solo album by Masayoshi Urabe is always a cause for rejoicing. This is his first since the frankly frightening Ware Wai Seidei No Kyojyo Zo on PSF in 2003. Urabe rarely plays live now, but this live album catches him in action last summer in a converted saké brewery on the shores of Lake Biwa, near Kyoto. The damp heat of midsummer in this part of Japan seems to have worked its magic on Urabe, and this is an altogether gentler performance than normal. Over one long solo track, he bends his breath and body to the air in his saxophone, his tones blending with the sound of the insects outside the venue. A shorter second track captures him in a rare outing on accordion, toy flute and harmonica together with Kiyoharu Kuwayama. Another radical, effortlessly convincing album from the master of contemporary rock n roll breathing.

"The reincarnation of the in-the-red psych aesthetics of early High Rise. One of the biggest underground psych/noise rock discoveries was Tokyo-based Aural Fit. A heavy, bludgeoning cudgel of a band, all distorted grime and redlined aggression, their 2004 self-released first album burst over the scene like a big bag of heavy spanners. They followed up with a track on Tokyo Flashback 5, but then line-up changes seemed to sideline their juddering, thundering rock juggernaut. Leader Mondo Bohachi has gone about reassembling the group from the ground up, and these are the first recorded results. If anything, it's even scarier, noisier and more rock than last time. 'Loud' and 'psychedelic' are still the watchwords, needles in the red all the way, and all the Stooges, Blue Cheer, TG, etc., references you might require are present and correct. Loud, vicious and dumb -- it doesn't really get much murkier or animal-mind-melding than this. Turn it up. Four tracks, 38 minutes. Mini-LP style card sleeve with obi and insert." -- Alan Cummings.

Guitar, vocals, organ, drums, trumpet-Tori Kudo Alto sax, flute-Masami Shinoda Euphonium, ocarina-Hiro Nakazaki Bass-Hirofumi Mitani Drums-Kanji Nakao Guitar, bass-Takuya Nishimura Enticing archival document of an early (1987) show by wide-eyed mystics Maher Shalal Hash Baz at Kid Ailack Art Hall, Tokyo. The visuals provide a rare and valuable opportunity to pick apart the working methods of one of the Japanese undergroundfs most truly original and agile thinkers, Tori Kudo. In Maher Shalal Hash Baz he took the heterophonic voicings, the deliberately fluctuating rhythmic mis-steps and the non-unison unison so characteristic of Japanese traditional music and re-applied them to idiot savant mini-hymns arranged for electric guitar, euphonium, ocarina and organ. Itfs a music that exists in a unique world of its own, alternately donning and shedding the armour of rock and jazz. Another major draw is the presence of the late Masami Shinoda on alto sax. Shinoda was an important, though largely unsung, figure in the history of the Tokyo underground during the eighties and nineties, showing up in all manner of groups from punk iconoclasts Jagatara and Pungo, to his own experiments with chindon marching advertising bands. He spent a few years in Maher in the eighties and this DVD captures the innocent joy and rapturous invention he brought to their music. 24 tracks, 75 minutes.

New solo hurdy-gurdy disk -- the first solo Haino release in over two years! Third album of devastating solo electric hurdy-gurdy for Haino, following on from The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man (PSFD-68, 1996) on PSF, and Even Now, Still I Think (Tokuma, 1998). The hand-cranked medieval instrument provides the perfect tool for Haino to display his genre-collapsing originality, allowing multiple dimensions of rhythm, noise, drone, harmony and melody to co-exist, majicked from the invisible interstices of the ancient past and modernity, the individual and the volk mind… Fully immersive, properly psychedelic, truly original. Five tracks, 66 minutes. Includes English liner notes by Biba Kopf.

Guitar, Vocals Jutok Kaneko Bass, Vocals Mick Drums, Ikuro Takahashi The sudden death of Jutok Kaneko in January 2007 robbed the Tokyo underground scene one of its most startlingly original and emotionally devastating psychedelic free-thinkers. Kousokuya were the cold-space rock group that he led, one and off, since the late 1970s. This DVD documents two of the group’s final concerts, in May and October 2006 at Shinjuku JAM in Tokyo. The group’s unique sound was founded on the dark, staggered spaces set up by the jarring rhythms set up by bassist Mick and drummer Ikuro Takahashi (ex Fushitsusha) over which Kaneko drapes some jaw-dropping guitar – bleak, brutal power-riffing one minute, shading into deep-space feedback filigrees and baroque fuzz forms the next. Unbearably psychedelic, deeply affecting and a fitting memorial to one of the great rock groups of the last thirty years. Eleven tracks, 120 minutes. Includes booklet of lyrics in Japanese & English. NSTC, region-free.

Bass, Vocals: Asahito Nanjo Guitar: Munehiro Narita Drums: Yuro Ujiie First DVD by the kings of speed garage psychedelia, High Rise! Recorded live in Osaka in 1986, around the time of their second album by the all-time classic line-up of Nanjo (bass, vocals), Narita (guitar) and Ujiie (drums). Suitably grainy and colour-saturated visuals capture the group laying down their staggering brand of intense garage-psych with Narita’s guitar ripping weird, devastating solo holes in the songs, and Ujiie and Nanjo laying down that exhilarating sense of reckless acceleration. Still some of the most effective rock qua rock ever recorded. Just unbelievable. Six tracks, 25 minutes.

Vocals: Reiko Kudo Piano: Tori Kudo Document of a recent (November 2008), intimate live show by Reiko Kudo and her husband Tori (of Maher Shalal Hash Baz fame). Long two of the most original figures in the Japanese underground, Reiko sings of the subtlest of everyday epiphanies, of those instants of momentary joy, pain and delight that flash by like ghosts glimpsed from the corner of the eye. Their simplicity and mystery is entirely disarming and deeply personal. She sings from a position of unforced naturalness, where both melody and vocalization are reduced to the thinnest of transparent, gossamer layers of art draped over reality. Simply astonishing. Tori and Reiko have been pivotal figures in the Tokyo underground since the late 1970s, when they were in a organ-drone and trumpet-blat group called Noise. Over the last dozen years Reiko has released a series of five solo albums under her own name. Seven tracks, forty-seven minutes. Booklet includes lyrics in English and Japanese.

Second album from striking new Japanese free improv trio, who first shot to prominence on Tokyo Flashback 7 (PSFD-189).

The young group consists of Masahiko Ota (guitar), Shintaro Takasugi (contrabass) and Naoto Yamagishi (drums, percussion) – all still in their 20s. They first formed in 2007 and self-released their now sold-out debut album the following year.

The group displays a sure sense of structural dynamics and excel at the construction of brooding ambient atmospheres that seem to be informed by traditional Japanese aesthetics. Ota’s acoustic guitar is occasionally reminiscent of the sour, tangled lines of Masayuki Takayanagi, but the group have a confident sense of their own identity that belies their age. A group to watch!

Five tracks, 39 minutes. Papersleeve.

"Ass-blasting Blue Humans/Borbetomagus/Demo Moe-styled free jazz garage rock from a quartet that lit up PSF’s Tokyo Flashback 7. Some of the material best resembles Adam Nodelman-era Borbeto, with a ferocious electric bass backbone, but there’s a little more breathing space than on the early Agaric jams. The electric guitar comes out of the pugilistic post-Sharrock school while the saxophone flits from eerie Pharaoh Sanders’ style mysticism-of-tone to balls-to-the-wall Gayle-isms. Comes packaged in a hard card gatefold sleeve with obi strip." Volcanic Tongue

Long awaited second release on PSF by dream-weaving Korean folk singer, Kim Doo Soo. The album features beautifully restrained new recordings of Kim Doo Soo’s most classic songs - a highly personal selection, made by Kim himself.

The discovery of Kim Doo Soo outside Korea, through the Damon & Naomi compiled International Sad Hits and then on his first new album in five years, Ten Days Butterfly (PSFD-175), was one of the more gratifying moments of the last decade. Here was an entirely unknown voice and a poetic sensibility that is tender, richly melodic, agonizingly soulful, and undeniably human.

These re-recordings of some of Kim’s most striking songs from his previous five albums focus on the hypnotic patterns of his acoustic guitar and voice, with some subtle tonal shading from percussion, brass, synth, accordion and cello. The result is a lulling, deeply flowing whole, ripe with the subtle and seductive currents of the evening river of the title.

Includes a bonus three track CD. Fourteen tracks in total. Gatefold papersleeve. Booklet includes lyrics in Korean, Japanese and English.