experimental japanese band

The 10 Best Experimental Japanese Artists, according to Ultrademon

Ultrademon – real name Lilium Kobayashi – is a Kyoto-based artist, who has released music under a variety of aliases over the years. Having emerged with a kind of seapunk aesethetic that ended up inspiring the likes of Azealia Banks, her sound has shape-shifted over the years, finding a home on Rephlex with the now-cult ‘Seapunk’, a scene-defining record.

‘Chamber Music’, her latest record, was written mostly in Tokyo but also in Kyoto, and takes shape as a deeply personal tale from beginning to end. Listening mostly to metal and sub-genres like dungeon synth, black metal, death metal and doom throughout that period, the album expresses the emotions of regret, loss and pain that she was feeling at the time, through sounds that are spacious and clean and feudal track titles.

As a Japan-dwelling artist who likes to uncover exciting leftfield music, we asked Ultrademon to list her favourite experimental Japanese acts. “These songs do have a focus on Kyoto-based artists though some span other parts of Japan,” she says. “I don’t consider this an exhaustive list but rather, ten artists I recommend.”

She also sent this tweet:

It would be nice if just occasionally perhaps music content providers could write about Japanese artists without defining what they do in terms of their nationality. — Chris SSG (@mnmlssgs) October 30, 2019

“To start off, a younger artist getting some shine right now. He recently played the Discipline party (Bushbash, a venue around Tokyo) among other spots. His works touch on the club atmosphere more than the gallery – that of the ambient art school sound. Here is a clip of him from there performing a section of his recent work ‘Palace’. ‘Palace’ could constitute a ‘deep listening’ work by some metrics. I’ve listened to it many times over. My usual diet of music doesn’t include much electronic music these days, though Hegira Moya makes the cut.”

“I wondered if I should include Sugai Ken since, well, he’s getting a lot of coverage – in fact he recently released a mix via Dummy Mag . But I did want to mention a record that I thoroughly enjoy, especially in the colder months. Seemingly one of Sugai Ken’s most straight ahead works in some way. He captures the feeling of summer evenings in Japan. The sounds of the forest and the insect chirping, all via synthesis of sound. That work is called 如の夜庭.

“In Japan, there are a few species of cicada. Some people get really into their song, as this video shows the songs of the different types of cicada and what months they are active. Feel free to try and figure out which ones Sugai Ken likes.”

丈の低い木の丈は低い from Muku Kobayashi on Vimeo .

“I saw Kobayashi at the BnA Alter Museum, a sort of hipster hotel that features local artists and performance on occasion. His performance was so refreshing. The work is named ‘Shojiki’, where he ‘rewound’ different kinds of tape. The concept is supposed to play with the idea of magnetic tape being rewound in comparison though the effect was the most interesting aspect. The stretching sound of sticky packing tape being wound up on a spiralling mechanism. He and a partner would stretch various types, running around spools to create different frequencies. As the tape wears out, it harkens to the temporality of magnetic tape… well at least this is the concept? The ripping tape sound is an aural treat. As he stretches the tape, I feel he stretches the abstract machines of sound art. I wish I could see more works akin to this – rather than the over-abundant sonic naturalism (field recording works) and most despised in my eyes (yes, it is a fault of mine) oral performance art vein of sound art. i.e. – making mouth sounds into a mic. The body of his works almost completely focuses on the use of slow oscillations on a short curve. Simple oscillator modulations. Manifesting visually (moving video cameras), stretching tape, or automated shifts of simple oscillators.”

“I first discovered Komatsu’s work when returning to the USA from my first Japan tour – long before moving here, back in 2013. Among some gifts I received on my trip, one was a CD labeled ‘Mad Egg’ given to me by someone I performed with. For perhaps two years I pronounced his former moniker MADEGG instead of Mad Egg…

“Anyway, upon my recent move to Kyoto back in April, I was scouring the upcoming gigs and discovered a seemingly and interesting one at a local venue I’d been wanting to check out. It featured some Resident Advisor rated ‘up and coming’ producer or someone… I don’t remember the headliner though the opener left an impression. I didn’t even realise it was Mad Egg under his real name now… though I felt a familiarity. His work spans overt noise experimentation – sparse synth enunciations popping and pinging like a language lost – though the bulk of his works would perhaps be placed within the ‘ambient’ territory.”

“They have collaborated with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto (which of course gains major points overseas…) among other things. The three-piece never allows you to hear the fully worked out modulating rhythms and odd time signatures. Eventually, for some brief refrain, it comes together. Though when they are ‘off’ the tension is fucking terrible, though I do like pain… Attempting to produce sound art through vectors outside the pattern system regular band forms.

“They experiment with minute deteritorialisations within the refrains. Essentially it’s all refrain. Three refrains with modulations. Each instrument functions autonomously, though it’s a presupposed feeling. It’s an attempt at battling so to speak – it doesn’t translate to violence, perhaps just confusion at times. Kukangendai runs the venue 外 (Outside, detached, farther beyond) in Kyoto which came from the name of one of their pieces. They moved from Tokyo, and then opened the venue in 2016. They recently premiered their new record ‘Palm’ [above].”

“I first heard P.O.V.’s work on a CD I picked up from the Metal Disk Union shop in Naka Okachimachi. Pilfering through the black metal section I was scouring for something I would find interesting, I come from another time, perhaps, when one would go to the record store as a teen and buy CDs based on finding the cover interesting. Anyway this isn’t 2005, so yes I googled the release on my phone to basically find nothing. I got home and discovered upon opening and listening (there was no text on the outside of the CD) that it was a three-way split EP. Two noise artists and one depressive black metal act. I looked online for this P.O.V. and reached out. The release’s title, I later learned, stands for ‘Penis On Vagina’… so for all the cis het guys who just love guitar pedal distortion and Merzbow this will be your guy… Really though, I do love his work. A bit outside yet straight ahead… and he loves noise. He grew up in Nakano yet currently lives in Oita, near the many hells.”

“Not only breaking the Japanese folk modality at times, Sawai makes profuse use of vibrato on the string. She as such, is an experimental classical Japanese musician. Although I’d like to break this down a bit… in European-rooted music, 12 tone equal temperament is the norm. Since Western music is dominant, for most who are used to this feel anything out side of this tuning feels “out of tune”. Since it is not based on the hegemonic Western 12 tone standard. A koto player using western notation is playing experimentally, in a non-Eurocentric context. Though Western music did permeate and effect Japanese music through the early 20th century. There was even a whole style of imitation western music created by Japanese musicians ( for example ). Or later on in funk music .

“There is a deep history regarding this – that is for another article… We can see in Japanese pop music there are different modes used. The form here is rooted in Japanese folk music there is an obvious influence. Try and listen for it in J-pop or J-rock, even. Oddly similar to some strains of midwestern emo, though I digress… The point is, even if Sawai’s song sounds traditional to Euro-centric musical ears, her playing western notation on a Japanese folk instrument is experimental. So this brings into question: what defines experimental? Is it defined by the dominant culture? In what context? I bring up many questions and challenge you readers to think about these things when digesting new sounds.”

“Akao’s work invokes not only the spirit of the melancholic mythic topological of Japanese folk, but invites a new view, borrowing from the poetics of modern European and American composition. A classically-trained musician within the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ musical worlds, Akao pays homage to eons old tradition while pushing the boundaries of what is deemed possible with the Japanese flute. She rose to popularity in the ’80s participating in collaborations with pop and funk artists, bringing the Japanese flute to a new audience in a new light. She was trained classically in western modalities and integrated these stylings from the outside within. And a more minimal take . In the ’90s and beyond she shifted to going deeper into the folkloric roots of her instrument, at times collaborating with experimental artists. My favourite of her works is the album “Requiem for Maiden and Young Warrior” song “Legend of the Water Flame”. Unfortunately I could not find a clip of this one online though I did find another one of her works as a reference (above).”

“The event I saw LINEKRAFT at was an outdoor performance of the ROHM theatre in Kyoto. It was sort of in conjunction with the international film festival, though not directly. It was really odd in a way to hear harsh noise and industrial blaring in the middle of the day outside a famous theatre in a sort of museum area of Kyoto. At first I was unconvinced, judging and older generations harking back to some age of industrial I was too young to hear. Deeper into his performance I began to hear it. The cutting high end of him smacking scrap metal attached to a surface mic cut through all the sound more than any other during the whole performance. By the end he had removed his shirt to reveal a traditional tattoo, twisting dragons down his back. The event organisers themselves spoke to bringing out a sort of ancient esoteric energy in everyone. You can read about it (in Japanese) and the group that put it on.”

“Unfortunately I have not seen this group live. Though I have heard of them through friends. They planned a live protest in front of the agency for cultural affairs in Tokyo, regarding the Aichi triennial defunding. The triennial was defunded due to the showing of a piece speaking of the dark history of comfort women . A fact the Japanese government typically denies or tries to sweep under the rug. They have organised other events similar… Honestly I can’t really describe them, but if you are still curious here’s more about them .”

Ultrademon’s ‘Chamber Music’ album is out now via Soft Architecture – find it here .

Read next: The 10 Best Examples of Chinese Instrumentation in Hip-Hop/Pop, according to GZ Tian.

Pilgrimage of the Soul

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MONO 東京都, Japan

Official Bandcamp page of Japanese instrumental rock band MONO. Signed to Temporary Residence Ltd. (North America), Pelagic Records (Europe) and New Noise (China).

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Anthology Of Experimental Music From Japan

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Unexplained Sounds Group Italy

Global Network of Aural Disorientation curated by Raffaele Pezzella Subsidiaries: eighthtowerrecords.bandcamp.com reversealignment.bandcamp.com zerok.bandcamp.com therecognitiontest.bandcamp.com sonologyst.bandcamp.com Magazine: www.patreon.com/eighthtower ...   more

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Japanese Experimental

Japanese Experimental music is a genre of music that combines traditional Japanese music with modern experimental techniques. It often incorporates elements of traditional Japanese instruments such as the koto, shamisen, and shakuhachi, as well as modern electronic instruments and sound manipulation. It is characterized by its use of improvisation, experimentation, and exploration of sound. It is often abstract and avant-garde in nature, and can range from ambient and drone-like soundscapes to more energetic and chaotic compositions.

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Full-Length, 2024

"What are we doing here"? The year 2020 turned what was once quintessential late-night stoner existentialism into a daily mantra for nearly everyone on this planet. What are we doing with our limited time in this life? What is our purpose? What should we be doing?

For the past 25 years, MONO have explored themes such as the relationship between darkness and light; hope in the face of disaster; and the duality of birth and death. On their 12th full-length album "OATH", they ponder the time that makes up life, and how to make the most of that time.

Recorded and mixed with longtime friend and collaborator, Steve Albini, "OATH" opens like a sunrise with a slowly ascending orchestra and brass section, the full band taking its time to revel in the atmosphere before joining in the splendour. Throughout the album’s 71-minute runtime, MONO meditates on that theme of time and life in myriad ways. The unhurried evolution of a song that is a hallmark of MONO’s catalogue is infused with an air of elegance that elevates "OATH" to new heights.

MONO challenged themselves with a universally relatable existential examination and answered with "OATH", an album that offers benevolent reflection rather than a fleeting respite.

• Oath Music Video
• Run On Music Video
• Hear the Wind Sing Music Video
• Moonlight Drawing
• Holy Winter
• We All Shine On
• Time Goes By

Heaven Vol. 2 New

Annual christmas ep, 2023, heaven vol. 2.

From Christmas 2022, MONO will release an annual Christmas EP series entitled "Heaven”. The series is available and is released exclusively via Bandcamp, every year, every Christmas.

• Haunting Echo

My Story, The Buraku Story (An Original Soundtrack)

Full-length, 2022.

My Story, The Buraku Story is a new feature-length documentary film that explores the discrimination against a group of people – commonly called “the burakumin” – who were classed into lowly groups and segregated from the rest of Japanese society. This discrimination is not by race or ethnicity, but rather by place of residence and bloodline, and has existed for centuries – albeit very rarely acknowledged or discussed in Japan. When director Yusaku Mitsuwaka imagined the exemplary score for such a culturally sensitive and significant subject, he idealized MONO to help tell this story through their legendarily cinematic music.

Following their recent experiments with electronic textures infused into their trademark dynamic rock compositions, My Story, The Buraku Story finds MONO at their most understated and elegiac. The songs that make up My Story, The Buraku Story are largely built around piano, strings, synths, and choral vocal loops. As one might expect from MONO, the arrangements are masterworks of understated execution with oversized emotional resonance. By far MONO’s most delicate album, it is a fitting document of the band’s first-ever full-length film soundtrack.

• Gohon no yubi

Pilgrimage of the Soul

Full-length, 2021.

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed – cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically – during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their third decade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that’s saying a lot). But where MONO’s foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and – perhaps most notably – faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date – replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done.

• Riptide Music Film
• Imperfect Things
• Heaven in a Wild Flower
• To See a World
• Innocence Music Film
• The Auguries
• Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand
• And Eternity in an Hour

Beyond the Past • Live in London with the Platinum Anniversary Orchestra

20th anniversary live album, 2021.

For two decades, MONO have defined and refined a kind of orchestral rock that is as emotional as it is experimental. Their 10 studio albums over those 20 years have established MONO as what Pitchfork described as “one of the most distinctive bands of the 21st Century.” Meanwhile, their live concerts are typically more subdued in instrumentation – and more supercharged in volume and voltage. Rarely is there the opportunity to combine those two experiences. In their 20-year history as a band, MONO have presented no more than a half-dozen live concerts featuring the support of an orchestra. Such events are not only unusual – they are also unforgettable.

Beyond the Past • Live in London with the Platinum Anniversary Orchestra documents MONO’s extraordinary performance from the Beyond the Past event that celebrated the band’s 20th anniversary, which took place at the historic Barbican Centre in London, England on December 14, 2019. For that once-in-a-lifetime event, MONO selected a memorable lineup of old and new friends, including fellow Japanese underground icons, Boris and Envy, as well as French post-metal legends, Alcest, and UK collaborators A.A. Williams and Jo Quail. The event culminated with MONO performing with The Platinum Anniversary Orchestra, featuring National Youth String Orchestra to a rapt, sold-out audience of 2,000.

Playing through a two-hour set that touches on the band’s entire history, the sheer euphoria and dynamic resonance that engulfed the massive crowd was captured in brilliant detail by MONO’s live sound engineer, Matt Cook. Meticulously mastered by Bob Weston and presented here in its entire two-hour glory, Beyond the Past is one of the most essential MONO recordings. Packaged in a triple gatefold with accompanying 40-page photo book, this is the rare document of an event that is an event in and of itself.

• After You Comes the Flood
• Nowhere, Now Here Music Video
• Death in Rebirth
• Dream Odyssey
• Meet Us Where the Night Ends
• Halcyon (Beautiful Days)
• Ashes in the Snow

Exit in Darkness

Nowhere Now Here

Full-length, 2019.

The conflict and correlation between dark and light is a universal theme with a historically rich history. Musically, perhaps no band in the 21st Century has mined that relationship more consistently or effectively than Japan’s MONO.

Across 10 albums in 20 years, MONO have convincingly reflected the quietest and most chaotic parts of life through their music. Their ever-expanding instrumental palette – which began in earnest in 1999 with the traditional guitar-bass-drums rock band setup – has evolved to include as many as 30 orchestral instruments. Now, on Nowhere Now Here, the band add electronics to their repertoire – perhaps inspired by guitarist/composer Takaakira ‘Taka’ Goto’s recent collaboration with John McEntire, the beguiling Behind the Shadow Drops. Nowhere Now Here also sees MONO’s first-ever lineup change, adding new drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla (The Phantom Family Halo) to the core trio of Goto, Tamaki, and Yoda. Tamaki also makes her vocal debut here, singing into the shadows of vintage Nico on the poetically hazy “Breathe”.

The unlikely career of MONO has taken them to virtually every corner of the planet, several times over. Those corners have all left indelible marks on their music, as it drills deeper towards the sound of feeling not quite human and all too human – often at the same time.

• After You Comes the Flood Music Film
• Breathe Music Video
• Nowhere, Now Here
• Far and Further
• Funeral Song
• Vanishing, Vanishing Maybe

Full-Length, 2016

MONO are a band driven by intangible conflicts. Their albums have found inspiration in the inescapable coexistence of love and loss, faith and hopelessness, light and darkness. Fittingly, their new album, Requiem For Hell, incorporates all of those conflicts into the one universal inevitability in life: Birth, and death.

Requiem For Hell finds MONO returning to longtime friend and collaborator, Steve Albini. After MONO and Albini's band, Shellac, toured Japan together last year, they realized how much they missed the (often wordless) creative dialogue they shared during the making of many of their most memorable albums – beginning with Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky... (2004) and culminating with Hymn To Immortal Wind (2009). The rebirth of the Albini collaboration for Requiem For Hell also coincided with the birth of a close friend's first child, whose actual in utero heartbeat serves as the foundation for the aptly named "Ely's Heartbeat". For MONO, it all felt so right, so inevitable.

Requiem For Hell is undeniably heavier and scarier than most of MONO's output to this point – hear the dizzying 18-minute title track for example – but it also carries some of their most sublime moments. This dichotomy is how one band’s obsession with conflict has manifested itself into one of underground music's simultaneously quietest and loudest catalogs.

• Requiem for Hell Music Video
• Ely's Heartbeat
• The Last Scene

• The Last Dawn

Full-Length, 2014

The Last Dawn is the first of these two companion albums, and is the 'lighter' of the two, thematically and melodically. It contains undoubtedly some of MONO's strongest songs ever, drawing on an array of influences from minimalist film score to vintage shoegaze. It is MONO at their absolute purest, executing an uncanny, unspoken dialogue with each other without the dozens of stringed instruments that have been so prominent throughout their catalog. The songs are also noticeably more efficient – there hasn't been a MONO full-length record to fit on a single slab of vinyl since 2003's One Step More And You Die – and the album benefits immeasurably from this streamlined approach. MONO have always been masters of telling compelling stories without words. But now they've proven they can do it without frills, too.

• The Land Between Tides / Glory
• Elysian Castle
• Where We Begin Music Video

Rays of Darkness

Rays of Darkness is the first MONO album in 15 years to feature no orchestral instruments whatsoever. That fact alone is remarkable given the band’s reputation for sweeping, dramatic instrumentals that recall Oscar-worthy film scores. Instead, Rays of Darkness more closely resembles a jet engine taking off inside a small, crowded auditorium. It is MONO’s blackest album ever, a collection of scorched riffs, doom rhythms, and an unexpected contribution from post-hardcore pioneer Tetsu Fukagawa of Envy. The album ends with the smoldering wreckage of distorted guitars and ominous drones playing out a eulogy to the days when MONO shot blinding rays of light through seemingly endless darkness.

• Recoil, Ignite Commercial
• The Hand that Holds the Truth
• The Last Rays

For My Parents

Full-length, 2012.

After years of exploring, searching ourselves, and composing pieces here and there, we found ourselves with more questions than answers. When we could not find these answers in the outside world, we were bound to turn inward. And so we went back to our roots. This is something we wanted to do while we still have the chance. What cannot be explained in words to parents, we hope can be captured by these songs. We hope that this album serves as a gift from child to parent. While everything else continues to change, this love remains a constant throughout time.

• Legend Music Video
• Dream Odyssey Music Video
• Unseen Harbor
• A Quiet Place (Together We Go)

Holy Ground: NYC Live with the Wordless Music Orchestra

10th anniversary live album & dvd, 2010.

To celebrate their 10th anniversary as a band - and the release of their acclaimed new album Hymn To The Immortal Wind - MONO and Temporary Residence Limted organized a once-in-a-lifetime concert in New York City. In association with the esteemed Wordless Music Series, MONO super-sized their already legendary live show with a 24-piece orchestra. Painstakingly recorded and mixed by famed producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, ISIS, Minus The Bear), Holy Ground brilliantly captures every moment of whispered calm and breathless beauty with patient clarity. Included with the album is a stunning live DVD documenting the entire 90-minute performance, featuring live orchestral versions of many of MONO's most beloved songs. For a decade fans have clamored for a MONO album that matches the catharsis of their infamous live shows, and Holy Ground overwhelmingly delivers.

• Burial at Sea
• Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn
• Are You There?
• 2 Candles, 1 Wish
• Pure as Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm)
• Follow the Map
• Everlasting Light

Hymn to the Immortal Wind

Full-length, 2009.

(Original Issue)

(10th Anniversary Remastered Edition)

Just in time for their 10-year anniversary, MONO return with their fifth studio album, the absolutely massive Hymn to the Immortal Wind. The music is naturally majestic, with MONO's trademark wall of noise crashing beautifully against the largest chamber orchestra the band has ever enlisted. The instrumentation is vast, incorporating strings, flutes, organ, piano, glockenspiel and tympani into their standard face-melting set-up. While Hymn continues to mine the cinematic drama inherent in all of MONO's music, the dynamic shifts now come more from dark-to-light instead of quiet-to-loud. The maturity to balance these elements so masterfully has become MONO's strongest virtue - save for perhaps their uncanny ability to sound every bit like a plane crashing into a Beethoven concert.

• Follow the Map Music Video
• The Battle to Heaven

Gone: A Collection of EPs 2000-2007

Compilation, 2007.

Collecting all of MONO's rare and out-of-print non-album tracks, Gone perfectly (and chronologically) displays their astounding growth, from the modest opening notes of "Finlandia" to the scorched finale of "Little Boy (1945-Future)." These tracks are culled from a series of highly sought-after releases, including the Japanese-only debut Hey, You. EP, their split LP with Pelican, the Cameron Crowe-commissioned Memorie dal Futuro vinyl 10", and The Phoenix Tree, their out-of-print EP for the storied Travels In Constants series. All tracks have been beautifully remastered from their original master tapes.

• Black Woods
• Memorie dal Futuro
• Due Foglie, Una Candela: Il Soffio Del Vento
• Since I've Been Waiting For You
• Little Boy (1945 - Future)

• The Sky Remains the Same as Ever

The Sky Remains the Same as Ever is a nearly two-hour document of the recording sessions for You Are There, and the several worldwide tours that followed its release. In addition to the dozen live songs that are documented in all their sweaty fury, the film captures the decidedly less glamorous aspects of being an underground rock band from a foreign country, expressing sentiments through body language out of necessity, and driving...lots and lots of driving. Most effectively, the film displays the friendships that have made MONO's journeys enjoyable, and the fanatical dedication that has made it all possible.

You Are There

Full-length, 2006.

Captured to tape by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, IL, You Are There extends the cinematic drama of 2003's Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined (also recorded by Albini), while surpassing the sinister heaviness of 2002's lauded One Step More and You Die. MONO disproves the myth that an increased focus on intricate song structures and string arrangements comes at the expense of youthful energy and inspired aggression. With You Are There, MONO's representation of tragedy comes with an inherent joy, delivered with the hope that in all dark there is equal parts light. They're not heavy like Black Sabbath - they're heavy like Beethoven.

• The Flames Beyond the Cold Mountain
• A Heart Has Asked for the Pleasure
• The Remains of the Day

Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined

Full-length, 2004.

Tokyo, Japan's Mono are a peculiar group. While most bands offer up their sincerest and most genuine recordings in their infancy and spend the rest of their careers trying desperately to rediscover their youthful energy, Mono's trajectory has been quite the opposite. Their early recordings are a visceral homage to their past and present heroes - the documents of a band boasting an impressive symphony of sound in spite of their relatively small line-up. These days, they have become one of the most passionately aggressive rock bands of the last decade, executing their soaring crescendos, titanic sheets of distortion and dark melodies with the delicacy and precision of a folded paper crane. This flourish of hopeful creativity was captured by Steve Albini in the form of the eight pieces that make up their third album, Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined. More lush and orchestral than previous recordings, the album couples an overall slow-melting ambience with a thunderous drive that reaches far greater heights than the band's earlier work.

• Mere Your Pathetique Light
• A Thousand Paper Cranes

One Step More and You Die

Full-length, 2002.

Since its original release in 2002, One Step More and You Die has become the monolithic cornerstone of MONO's discography. Every subsequent release has been inevitably (and perhaps unfairly) compared to this album, as if it were the band's high watermark, never to be dethroned. MONO brilliantly answered even the most stubborn of naysayers with 2006's transcendent You Are There. To celebrate that release, we dug into their back catalog and pulled out this masterpiece of dark dirge, repackaged with additional artwork. One Step More stared the "sophomore slump" threat square in the face and pummeled it from note one. Four years later we can confidently say that it sounds just as brutal and beautiful as it did the day it was laid to tape.

• Mopish Morning, Halation Wiper
• A Speeding Car
• Loco Tracks
• Giant Me on the Other Side

Under the Pipal Tree

Full-length, 2001.

(Remastered Edition)

Under The Pipal Tree is the debut album by now-legendary Japanese experimental rock band, MONO. Released in 2001 on avant-garde icon John Zorn's Tzadik label, Under The Pipal Tree showcased a young Japanese quartet whose wide range of influences – most notably Sonic Youth, Mogwai, The Velvet Underground, and Neil Young's Crazy Horse – were on ferocious and ambitious display. Though MONO would eventually become known for their expert marriage of metal and classical genres, Under The Pipal Tree highlights the band's psychedelic roots. Long stretches of hypnotic, melodic washes give way to scorching guitar freakouts that evaporate into haunting silence. It's remarkable not just for its earnest exploration, but for its startling execution. Fifteen years and eight albums later, Under The Pipal Tree stands as one of the great debut albums by a seminal underground band.

• Karelia (Opus 2)
• The Kidnapper Bell
• Jackie Says
• Human Highway

Heaven Vol. 1

Annual christmas ep, 2022.

• Silent Embrace

Scarlet Holliday

EP, 2022/2020

Special Winter EP, 2022/2020

(2022 EP Edition)

(2020 Single Edition)

After COVID-19 first swept the world in 2020, MONO felt compelled to make a special little gift for the Christmas holiday. The accompanying message was simple: “Wishing everyone good health, happiness, and good cheer in the new year.” Originally made at home in isolation, this digital-only release consisted of two new MONO songs: “Scarlet Holliday” and “First Winter.” Now, to commemorate the 2021 holiday season, MONO has reworked and expanded Scarlet Holliday into a very special 3-song EP (now including the brand new song, “Epilogue”). Recorded at home and at Electrical Audio by longtime collaborator, Steve Albini, newly mixed by John McEntire and mastered by Bob Weston, Scarlet Holliday is finally being released into the world on limited-edition 10” vinyl, as well as all digital formats. In their unflappable determination to shine light into the darkness, MONO explains: “These songs were written with the idea of new hope for the new year since this time has become unforeseeably dark for many in the world.

• Scarlet Holliday Visualiser
• First Winter

Before the Past • Live From Electrical Audio

20th anniversary mini-album, 2019.

MONO formed in Tokyo, Japan in the closing winter weeks of December, 1999. They played their first live shows at the top of the new millennium, and released their first album, Under The Pipal Tree, in 2001. Recorded live in one day on a razor-thin budget, Pipal Tree was an earnest introduction to the curious magic of a band that would eventually become synonymous with monstrously dynamic, contemporary classical rock music.

To commemorate those austere beginnings – and celebrate their remarkable longevity – MONO revisit three of their earliest songs, and retrofit them with face-melting upgrades. Anchored by the towering 16-minute noise opus, “Com(?)”, Before The Past • Live From Electrical Audio shows the evolution of MONO’s execution, stripping away the strings and layers of guitar overdubs to show just how massive this band can be at their most instrumentally austere.

Newly recorded in one day in 2019 with longtime collaborator, Steve Albini – and mixed by Albini with Temporary Residence founder, Jeremy deVine – Before The Past is as much a declaration of the present as it is a document of the past. These songs, which are now 20 years old, feel more powerful and profound than ever – a testament to MONO’s enduring dedication to their craft, and their dogged exploration of maximum minimalism.

Live in Melbourne

Live album, 2017.

"Live in Melbourne" is a live CD which was recorded during the "The Last Dawn/Rays Of Darkness" Australian Tour in 2015 and later mixed and mastered in 2016. The album portrays the night's live atmosphere vividly and are available strictly from merch booth, limited to 500 copies.

• Recoil, Ignite
• Death in Rebirth Teaser Single
• Where We Begin
• Requiem for Hell

Transcendental

Split album, 2015.

"The theme of this track is life and death and regeneration. Even when our bodies decay and decompose, our souls will prevail unchanged. Our bodies will act as seeds for the next generation, while our souls will journey together into our new eternal life. This is the story we want to explore with our next album, a portrayal of our journey through life towards death; from living out our lives proud and high, to bodies immolating, infused with precious memories... and through the vast, noisy tunnel of space, we become pure souls - a single drop of water in the fountain of life." / Taka

• Death In Reverse
• The Quiet Observer

The Last Dawn/Rays of Darkness Tour 2014-2015

Photo book & live album, 2015.

Limited edition photo book featuring around 100 pages of black and white photography with 2xCD exclusive live album from the European Tour 2014. Limited to 900 hand-numbered copies, wrapped in a linen cover with blind embossing.

Single, 2013

MONO's theme for the WOWOW television mini-series 「かなたの子」 ("Kanata no Ko")

The Phoenix Tree

Memorie Dal Futuro

• Due Foglie, Una Candela: Il Soffio del Vento

Pelican / MONO

Split album, 2005.

• Angel Tears (James Plotkin Remix)

New York Soundtracks

Remix album, 2004.

• Giant Me On The Other Side (Loren Connors Remix)
• Where Am I (Calla Remix)
• Sabbath (Marina Rosenfeld Remix)
• Halo (DJ Olive The Audio Janitor Remix)
• Loco Tracks (Aki Onda Remix)
• Com(?) (Raz Mesinai Remix)
• Late City Final (Jackie-O Motherfucker Remix)

Collaborative EP w/ A.A. Williams, 2019

Firmly placed as both progenitor and progressor within their field, MONO is like no other artist – visceral, engrossing and showing no signs of decay after two decades spent creating waves of beautiful and expansive rock music. Many an artist lays claim to setting the template – or many have this claim placed upon them – but this Japanese artist has long-since simply set their own template. Listening to MONO is like entering another world, where the majesty of the noise embraces you and the delicacy of the space around it breathes warmly in your ear.

A.A. Williams came from nowhere. An EP arrived in January 2019, and a debut show at the prestigious Roadburn Festival three months later confirmed what this first taste of music had suggested: this is a special artist. The woman in black: one arm aloft after the delicate yet decisive strum of a chord, a stillness in the room focused on the graceful soaring of a unique voice. To arrive so fully formed is a feat in itself; to take the audience’s breath away with such immediacy is something else entirely.

As soon as MONO’s Takaakira ‘Taka’ Goto heard the music of A.A. Williams, an unwavering resonance was triggered. For A.A. Williams, the appreciation was emphatically mutual. A musical connection developed into a collaboration; introductions were made, ideas exchanged. At the end of MONO’s 2019 summer tour, these ideas were committed to tape in London and the result is ‘Exit in Darkness’ – a mesmeric coming together of two artists from opposite ends of the globe whose creative approach could not have melded more eloquently.

• Exit in Darkness Music Video
• Winter Light

Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain

Collaborative album w/ world's end girlfriend, 2006.

Just before recording their epic disasterpiece You Are There, MONO began collaborating with fellow Tokyo native and modern electronic composer world’s end girlfriend. The result is a five-part sojourn of neoclassical grace and luminescence that defies lazy categorization. As dark as the bottom of the ocean, and nearly as otherworldly, Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain finds MONO inhabiting an illuminated world previously only hinted at in their most orchestral compositions. Recorded in multiple studios in Japan last year, Palmless Prayer joins MONO’s increasing obsession with classical music with world’s end girlfriend’s mastery of subtle dynamic shifts. Forgoing their tendency to erupt into hellish bursts of speaker-destroying noise, MONO instead exhibits remarkable restraint, stretching song lengths past the 15-minute mark and turning barely-there crescendoes into earth-shaking events. Less an epiphany and more a reminder of the beauty that already exists all around us, Palmless Prayer is a miniature panoramic view of the sea on an eerily still day, the current swaying at an impossibly lazy pace and the sound of a thousand tiny waves crashing all at once.

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• Genre Finder

Genre: japanese experimental

Japanese experimental music is a genre that pushes the boundaries of traditional music by incorporating unconventional sounds and techniques. It often features electronic and avant-garde elements, and is known for its unique and experimental approach to music-making. The genre is characterized by its use of non-traditional instruments, such as found objects and modified electronics, as well as its incorporation of spoken word and performance art.

Most popular japanese experimental artists

Related genres

• japanese idm
• fourth world
• japanese post-punk
• japanese juke
• experimental guitar
• japanese new wave
• japanese black metal
• japanese house
• minimal dnb
• techno kayo
• experimental electronic
• funktronica
• japanese prog
• deconstructed club
• japanese girl punk
• japanese dream pop
• abstract beats
• power noise
• laboratorio
• japanese jazz
• japanese indie pop

Instruments used

Releases by year.

Here you can see the popularity of Japanese Experimental genre over time. This graph shows albums and singles releases count by year and decade.

Popular japanese experimental Songs

Satanicpornocultshop

Yasuaki Shimizu

Yosi Horikawa

Eiko Ishibashi

Daisuke Tanabe

Otomo Yoshihide

Asa-Chang & Junray

Top New japanese experimental Songs of 2024

Most popular japanese experimental albums

japanese experimental music by decade

Explore japanese experimental history by listening to songs from every decade. Click on the decade to view songs.

List of japanese experimental artists

Here is a list of japanese experimental artists on Spotify, ranked based on popularity, who exemplifies the japanese experimental genre. You can find out what japanese experimental genre sounds like where you can preview artists or sort them the way you want, just click the headers to sort.

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#	name	popularity	followers
1		45	112466
2		30	25494
3		38	43274
4		32	56551
5		34	21078
6		27	19951
7		26	21180
8		24	11200
9		16	13699
10		21	17234
11		15	4861
12		13	13907
13		15	5321
14		15	3205
15		11	9802
16		13	3098
17		13	3633
18		12	4430
19		11	5505
20		3	1249
21		12	1671
22		11	1117
23		8	3303
24		3	1618
25		11	3720
26		11	2921
27		3	303
28		8	847
29		2	606
30		6	2686
31		5	1675
32		6	6765
33		6	2608
34		3	1837
35		6	1845
36		6	2388
37		4	145
38		5	1143
39		5	2042
40		3	1380
41		5	1321
42		5	255
43		4	849
44		4	1126
45		1	402
46		1	890
47		2	1507
48		3	263
49		3	1956
50		2	1630
51		2	271
52		2	493
53		2	863
54		2	582
55		2	1237
56		2	389
57		2	1879
58		2	887
59		2	191
60		1	451
61		1	269
62		1	641
63		1	471
64		1	610
65		1	637
66		1	670

japanese experimental playlist created by Chosic

Enjoy this playlist of popular japanese experimental music. We made this playlist using an algorithm created by our team.

Similar Genres to

Discover more related genres to genre. This list is ordered by similarity from left to right.

Art & Culture Music

A Complete Guide to 50 Years of Music in Tokyo (1970–2020)

As part of Tokyo Weekender's 50th anniversary, TW music writer Ed Cunningham explores 50 years of Japan's most influential music, and musicians

December 26, 2020 Updated On April 25, 2021

Over the course of the lifetime of the Tokyo Weekender so far, Tokyo has transformed beyond feasible comprehension. From the guiding light of Japan’s post-war reconstruction to governing decades of prosperity, there are now few cities worldwide that have quite the same gravity of global cultural impact.

And, appropriately, music in the capital has been totally transformed since 1970 – TW’s first year of existence. Beginning with revolutions that blasted out of the confines of traditional pop genres like enka and kayōkyoku, the decades since have only spewed more musical upheavals and insurgencies.

Fifty years of music in Tokyo is, as with music in most places, fundamentally a story of extreme diversification. From pop charts to esoteric local scenes, the one consistency of Tokyo’s music has been its increasing variety. Indeed, one can exclude the musical innovations of the rest of Japan and still have more musical breadth than most countries (in no small part because, even in 1970, Tokyo had a population of 23 million).

Touring the past half-century and reporting back can be an overbearing task. It was a period of horizonless diversity and faceted legends, bulging arenas and alleyway venues, local heroes and global superstars, as well as of countless landmark cultural moments and fascinating musical stories.

Accordingly, there are immeasurably greater numbers of musicians that deserve inclusion in this piece than I can realistically contain. In their stead, I’ll keep the artists per decade to three, with a bit of context to sum-up each era best.

At the very beginning of the 1970s came one of the most notorious events in the history of Japanese pop music. The 1971 “Japanese-language Rock Controversy,” spurred a public discussion around the appropriability of the Japanese language for styles of music that originated overseas (specifically regarding Happy End’s folk rock work Kazemachi Roman ). From that sprung many of the genres that ‘70s Tokyo is most renowned for – the likes of folk rock, psychedelia and, of course, city pop – as well as, feasibly, most styles of Japanese-language pop music to this day.

Best-selling album : Yōsui Inoue’s Kori no Sekai (1973). The “Emperor of Japanese Folk-Rock”, known for his sunglasses, eccentric lyrics and second-nature ability to sniff out pop trends, Inoue’s been a pop culture icon for half a century.

Haruomi Hosono

Haruomi Hosono is one of few Tokyo-based musicians whose importance spans large swathes of both the musical spectrum and each of the last five decades of Japanese pop music. In the ‘80s he was steering techno-kayo, innovating within Japanese progressive electronica and laying the groundwork for Shibuya-kei. In the ‘90s and 2000s he was working behind the scenes producing a huge variety of albums, from chart pop songs to film scores.

His groundwork in the ‘70s, however, not only produced some excellent music but helped cement Tokyo as a thriving, innovative global music hub. Beginning the decade with psychedelic rock act Apryl Fool , his next band Happy End  were pivotal to the transformation of attitudes towards the use of Japanese lyrics in styles of pop music that originated outside of Japan.

Hosono went on to perform on almost every essential city pop record of the ‘70s, as well as play bass for other iconic Japanese albums like Osamu Kitajima’s psych-folk epic Benzaiten (1976), Akiko Yano’s Japanese Girl (1976) and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto (1978). Hosono’s solo works were bold, political and progressive, he was part of jazz fusion maestros Tin Pan Alley and, to cap it all off, he ended the decade by going global with Yellow Magic Orchestra – one of the most popular and influential Japanese music acts ever.

Taeko Ohnuki

Taeko Ohnuki may not have gotten around quite so much as Hosono in the ‘70s but she’s equally emblematic of that era. Those more fond of her techno-kayo works, which dated from 1980’s Romantique onwards, may have a different stance but, for me at least, it’s her contributions to city pop that land her as one of the most representative of artists of the decade.

https://youtu.be/fH-98i5J6ME

Her band Sugar Babe, with Tatsuro Yamashita, are one of the most identifiable early city pop artists. Taking the reins from Happy End, Sugar Babe diversified pop music on their own terms and paid the price for being ingenious before the masses – and critics – were ready. After years of being booed off stages on Tokyo’s circuit of live houses, Sugar Babe broke up before their singular album could garner proper recognition.

That album, Songs , has nevertheless been canonized in the decades since as a timeless and groovy collision of funk, jazz pop and soft rock. It’s an important Japanese pop record – as are many of Ohnuki’s solo works – and throughout the ‘70s she continued to produce albums of longstanding importance and popularity. Sunshower (1977) and Mignonne (1978), both collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, are mainstays for city pop fans to this day.

Flower Travellin’ Band

While city pop artists may have dominated the latter half of the ‘70s (and, for that matter, much of the ‘80s too), they only really account for one, albeit huge, instance of the diversification of Tokyo’s music scene. Aside from the popularity of folk rock in the first half of the decade were more niche projects that sprang up around the city, from Isao Tomita’s otherworldly progressive electronica to Akiko Yano’s art pop and Masayuki Takayanagi’s freely-improvised jazz.

Japanese psychedelia, despite being largely absent of the hallucinogenic drugs that drove the scene’s creativity and aesthetics elsewhere, was popular and influential.

Flower Travellin’ Band, known partly as the naked motorcycle-riding men on the cover of their album Anywhere   (1970), produced some of the heaviest, most original psychedelic rock in ‘70s Tokyo. Their sound, an onslaught of chants and drone-heavy riffing, was influenced by both blues rock and South Asian mysticism. To this day, albums like Satori (1971) and Made In Japan (1972) sound remarkably weighty; obvious precursors to heavy metal and great examples from just one avenue of Tokyo’s first wave of psychedelia.

The 1980s saw the height of Japan’s economic boom and laid the foundations for the birth of idol culture. The ‘80s also, however, witnessed the so-called band boom , the term given to the influx of new bands and the strengthening of infrastructure to support them.

The establishment of a web of venues and rehearsal spaces throughout the city enabled artists to diversify further within various scenes and niches. From techno-kayo to DIY punk, progressive rock to metal, there emerged significant capacity for popular music that was more creative and eccentric.

https://youtu.be/pRAurbxw_tM

Best-selling album : Akira Terao’s Reflections (1981). Otherwise an actor known for roles in a few Kurosawa films (notably Ran and Dreams ) and as a detective in TV series Seibu Keisatsu , Terao had a somewhat short-lived music career. Reflections , a by-the-numbers city pop work, was his first major label record yet sold 1.8 million copies in less than a year and, impressively, made Japan one of very few countries worldwide in which Michael Jackson’s Thriller  was not the decade’s bestselling record.

Tatsuro Yamashita

Whether Tatsuro Yamashita was principally a ‘70s or ‘80s artist is almost purely a subjective matter. In the former he was another innovator of city pop, one-half of Sugar Babe and influential in both his solo records.

https://youtu.be/AbM3aAE-OmE

In the ‘80s, Yamashita reached peak popularity. His first number-one album Ride on Time came in 1980, followed by further success with 1982’s For You . “ Christmas Eve ” (1983) is, to this day, still a seasonal staple, while the effervescent, Yamashita-written, Takeuchi hit “ Plastic Love ” (1984) remains one of city pop’s most well-known tunes.

https://youtu.be/f3sU6DMzG1I

Yamashita’s end to the ‘80s is, however, what makes his decade stand out most for me. His later attempts at artier, more developed and more contemporary styles of city pop, nevertheless tied to the identity of his previous work, were exceptional. Albums such as Pocket Music (1986) and Boku no Naka no Shounen (1988) showed his stubborn quality, proof that Yamashita’s genius wasn’t just happy with birthing an era-defining style of popular music but continued to nurture all the way through it.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock.com

Few careers capture the breadth of Tokyo’s music scene with such fluidity as that of Ryuichi Sakamoto. An immensely important figure in Japanese popular, experimental and orchestral music, Sakamoto’s beginnings as a classically-trained musician and ethnomusicology student primed him for a career full of staggeringly significant musical milestones.

Those milestones began in the ‘70s, as Sakamoto worked his way between essential city pop records, his own, more abstract solo pieces and pop megastardom with Yellow Magic Orchestra. His ‘80s saw him branch into industrial electronica, film soundtracks, modern classical music and much, much more, without relinquishing his hold on pop.

Though the importance of YMO in terms of its contributions to techno-kayo, synthpop, ambient house and wider electronica is well known, Sakamoto himself produced numerous game-changing works. His 1980 album B-2 Unit   anticipated electro, a key moment in the history of dance music, while other works are credited with foreshadowing genres like IDM, broken beat and industrial techno and influencing hip hop beats of the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and Mantronix .

Sakamoto’s discography is vast, varied and far-reaching, venturing far beyond Japan in his collaborations with the likes of David Sylvian , Nam June Paik and Fennesz .

The band boom enabled unconventional musicians to thrive, finding an audience for more individualistic art. It was in this context -but also within her own alienated, dislocated world- that Jun Togawa thrived. One of the most fascinating characters in the Japanese new wave, Togawa kicked-off her ‘80s in advertisements for TOTO washlet bidets . That image, sexualized, infantilized and commercialized, stands at odds with the career that followed.

Renowned for an inimitable vocal delivery compiled of an array of howling, yelping, lullaby, crying and operatic belting, she sought to upend all preconceptions of the modern female pop star.

Togawa’s first notable band of the decade, Guernica (with Koji Ueno), mocked conservative nostalgia for pre-war Japan. Combining elements of German 1930s cabaret with synthesizers and drum machines.

With Yuji Miyake she formed Apogee & Perigee , a conceptual techno-kayo project about two robots; and with Yapoos , she explored futuristic styles of electro-industrial synthpop with absurdist lyrical themes that are, to this day, still futuristic.

Togawa’s solo albums, meanwhile, were even more radical. 1984’s Tamahime-Sama , a visionary work that juxtaposed a princess among a world overrun by insects, revolted against dainty feminine stereotypes through grotesque depictions of adolescent women. In the years since, Togawa has been the subject of academic scrutiny and inter-generational appreciation as a subversive, alienated and revolutionary icon of the Japanese new wave.

Following the ‘80s band boom came the popularisation of yet more diverse styles of popular music and the commercial peak of CD sales in Japan. In the 1990s, Tokyo was gripped by Shibuya-kei and visual kei but also saw the emergence of Japanese hip hop , the growth of dance music and the arrival of the term “J-pop” –  heralding the advent of the pop agency industry that remains so dominant in the charts today.

Best-selling album: Hikaru Utada’s First Love (1999). Utada’s success capitalized on a decade of increasingly mechanised and corporatized music marketing: First Love wasn’t just the ‘90s’ best-selling album but the best-selling Japanese album of all time.

Keigo Oyamada

Due to its location-specific definition, Shibuya-kei may well have been one of the last half-century’s most Tokyo-centric styles of Japanese pop. Characterized by the shared ethos of musicians residing in Shibuya ward, it also happens to be one of the broadest, riddled with idiosyncratic artists.

https://youtu.be/j_F49QSHuDE

So varied was Shibuya-kei that it is, therefore, tough to pick only one artist to sum it all up. Even after one has considered renowned names like Pizzicato Five , and Fantastic Plastic Machine , there are a remarkable number, from Kahimi Karie to Hi-Posi , Towa Tei to Takako Minekawa .

Shibuya-kei’s most recognizable name, Keigo Oyamada, was a member of pivotal early genre pioneers Flipper’s Guitar and, under the alias of Cornelius, a groundbreaking artist in his own right. The former’s Doctor Head’s World Tower was jangly and rhythmic, a colorful mesh of Madchester beats, textured guitars and bright samples. The latter, notably on Fantasma , was more abrupt, peculiar and cut-and-paste but no less pretty.

Both Flipper’s Guitar and Fantasma show the position that so many ‘90s Japanese artists found themselves in following the burst of the economic bubble in the earlier part of the decade. Equipped with worldly record collections built at the height of ‘80s extravagance, Shibuya-kei artists found innovation in taking those records, shattering conventions of genre and fusing those sounds and influences into collages of plunderphonic genius.

Like Shibuya-kei, visual kei wasn’t -and still isn’t- a genre in the usual sense. It’s noted more for its capacity for nonconformist self-expression, identifiable by its ostentatious dress, showy makeup, ornate hair styles and outrageous live performances. X Japan, one of whose early slogans termed the style (“Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock,” from 1989’s Blue Blood ), were arguably the genre’s defining band.

X Japan formed in the late ‘80s but the peak of their relevance (and the apex of visual kei more generally) came in the ‘90s. Led by drummer Yoshiki Hayashi, they were trailblazers of a style that spawned a subculture with its own magazines and record labels, as well as its own ways of acting, dressing and dancing. Such was X Japan’s influence over visual kei, both actual and symbolic, that the suicide of guitarist Hide in 1998 is widely remarked as the beginning of visual kei’s popular demise.

X Japan are frequently cited as one of the greatest Japanese rock bands ever and, though that might be a bit contentious, it’s difficult to deny their influence and cultural impact. Musically, they were pioneering and produced some astounding works of symphonic metal (especially 1993’s Art of Life ). Aesthetically, visual kei saturated the imagery and identity of Japanese popular music in the ‘90s.

Masami Akita

Rooted in some of the 20 th century’s most influential and important artistic movements, noise music is a frequently misunderstood term. It’s ill-fitting, a vague bracket in which to pigeonhole anything that sounds too distorted or unusual rather than a specific genre that most artists actually identify with.

Peaking in the 1980s and ‘90s, Japan has proven a source of some of noise music’s most prominent names. Few have retained the genre’s individualism, intellectualism and politicism so ardently as Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow.

Named after a work by German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters , Akita’s Merzbow project has released over three hundred albums. To those who know little of the scene, many nevertheless know of noise music through features that often constitute Merzbow records: a space for raw artistic expression with extremes of volume and distortion, use of homemade instruments and imagery that is unfiltered in its depictions of the grotesque, erotic and destructive.

Though Akita was by no means a figurehead for Tokyo’s dispersed ‘90s experimental music scene, which included the likes of Keiji Haino , Otomo Yoshihide , Tatsuya Yoshida and Acid Mothers Temple , he is easily one of the better-known and more influential outside of Japan.

In ‘00s Tokyo, more so than in any other of the past five decades, consumers fueled high-quality pop music. Chart music found innovation when its equivalents in Europe and North America had grown somewhat stale.

Best-selling Album : Hikaru Utada’s Distance (2001) – Both Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki dominated the solo side of Japanese pop in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. While Hamasaki came away the most successful Japanese solo artist of all time, Utada’s records were the landmark works, of which Distance was another. To-date, it was the fastest-selling (meaning it had the most first-week sales) Japanese album ever.

Hikaru Utada

Before she was even 20 years old, Hikaru Utada was already a pop institution. She’d established astonishing popularity for her characteristic, bilingual recipe of contemporary R&B and dance-pop.  First Love and Distance , fuelled by hits like “Automatic”, “ First Love ” and “ Addicted To You ”, had sold well over 15 million records and were both the best-selling albums of their respective decades.

First with Deep River (2002) then again with Ultra Blue (2006), Utada produced works that were more than just fashionable, glitzy pieces of mass-consumed pop. Deep River included tracks like “Sakura Drops” and “ Hikari ”, more textured tunes with greater instrumental depth, as well as more emotional numbers like “Final Distance” – a song dedicated to a young fan murdered in the 2001 Osaka school massacre.

Ultra Blue was similarly distinguishing. Though virtually every track was primed as a potential hit, its combination of synthpop, ‘90s dance music and Utada’s dominant vocals produced another intense, atmospheric work. The legacy of Ultra Blue was reinforced by Utada’s decade-long hiatus from Japanese albums following its release but, even so, it’s a paradise of big-beat, hard-hitting J-pop.

Throughout Utada’s career, her success has been achieved on her own terms. Though she may never have been boundary-pushing in a radical sense, Utada has achieved dominance mostly with her own songwriting. Her career has largely been managed by her father: she’s an icon but she’s never been reduced to the same kind of forgettable mass pop act manufactured in Tokyo’s music agency boardrooms.

Sheena Ringo

Sheena Ringo, somewhat like Utada, also used early popularity to amass a platform for more ambitious later projects. Aside from the “pop” tag, however (and some collaborations over the years), there has never been much common ground between Ringo and Utada. Especially in the 2000s, Ringo was far more overtly experimental. The best of her music from that decade often feels like one has been caught in an onslaught of different genres and musical movements, a precisely-crafted, dense and fluid bombardment of unconventionality.

On more than a few occasions Ringo’s music actually topped the Oricon charts, a fact that, while understandable for her debut (1999’s Muzai Moratorium ) grows more perplexing when one reaches records like Shōso Strip (2000) and, particularly, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana .

Shōso Strip infiltrated ‘00s Tokyo as an introduction to Ringo’s eccentric and experimentally-tinged “Shinjuku-kei”. Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana perfected her ambition. A tight, dark, witty amalgam that juxtaposed pop and jazz rhythms against left-field innovation and Ringo’s atypical singing, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana was deliberately poised to put-off fans and subvert her own popularity.

Instead, it was a masterwork that drove Ringo’s importance both within and outside of Japan. Ringo was just one of an increasing number of innovative Tokyo-based artists in the ‘00s that found widespread international recognition. Popularity that was previously limited to retrospection (such as Fishmans and much of city pop), niche experimental genres (like noise rock and free improvisation) or the standalone case of YMO, stretched to include Ringo – as well as others like Utada, Boris and Melt-Banana.

Perfume round-out this triptych of ‘00s Tokyo pop. Originally from Hiroshima, A-Chan, Kashiyuka and Nocchi came to Tokyo in the earlier part of the decade. There they met Yasutaka Nakata, a post-Shibuya-kei electro-house producer whose hypermodern, ridiculously creative electropop productions would transform them into an era-defining Japanese pop act.

Perfume’s two defining ‘00s records, Game (2008) and Triangle (2009) are polished within an inch of their lives: comprised effectively of three robotic vocalists over speedy, popified, bastardised dance music.

Only all of that is precisely why Perfume’s sound was so innovative. While some popstars hark back to bygone eras or look to international pop styles for inspiration, Perfume had its sights firmly to the future. Once one realizes that everything they did was actually the product of a human mind, its genius is undeniable.

While it’s difficult to find perspective on such a recent time, the 2010s seem to have been a strange musical decade. The advent of streaming was largely ignored by most Japanese labels while idol groups like Arashi and AKB48 had an unshakeable hold on the charts.

On the plus side, the process by which Japanese music was projected to the world radically increased in breadth and reach in the ‘10s. Better global connectivity created a new generation of internet-famous Tokyoite artists, many of which found greater fame online than in Japan.

Best-selling Album : Arashi’s Boku no Miteiru Fūkei (2010). Though streaming services and YouTube make it increasingly difficult to gauge the best-selling studio album of the ‘10s, Arashi’s early-decade work Boku no Miteiru Fūkei seems to have very few competitors.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

When considering musical icons of ‘10s Tokyo, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu blares loudest simply because, as a rule, very little about KPP doesn’t blare. In an era where most pop stars are glammed-up in post-visual kei homogeny, her image -the syrupy, dazzling “Harajuku-kei”- radiates as utterly unique.

KPP (birth name Kiriko Takemura) began the decade as a fashion blogger and model. She then met Perfume producer Yasutaka Nakata, who persuaded her to pursue a music career. Nakata would write the music and KPP would provide the fashion, persona and performances.

KPP was looking for a new definition of “Japaneseness” not identified by traditional instruments like shamisen or wadaiko but more contemporary movements like chiptune and kawaii . Her image was saccharine, garish and grotesque, a J-pop fantasy that verged on parody. She was absurd, comedic and self-aware; so unlike anyone else, anywhere, that she became a fashion icon all over the world.

Sparkly, glossy and sickly sweet, Pamyu Pamyu Revolution (2012) and Nanda Collection (2013), their two most reputable records, were so consistently mind-broadening that they couldn’t help but go viral.

Seiko Oomori

Though many reactions to the ‘10s idol hegemony were little more than marketing ploys, counterculture cultivated by music agencies, among them were some worthy alternatives. Amid the more impressive likes of Sora Tob Sakana ,  Tokyo Girls’ Style and Dempagumi.inc , but also stylistically unlike any of them, came Seiko Oomori, who didn’t react against idol culture but patently adored it.

An “underground” idol, Oomori worked her way up from club sets on the local Koenji live circuit – in which she would roam the stage with an acoustic guitar, inspired by idol-pop’s energy and positivity- to major label funding. Nevertheless, Oomori’s music and image was adorned with the hallmarks of an artist rebelling against the norm.

In the earlier half of the decade, Oomori was best known for her provocative, raw, sexually-charged lyrics. From 2013 to 2018, she documented her prolific artistic instincts and, in a period of barely five years, she released around ten albums.

From her early, folky records and demos right through to her major label releases, Oomori’s most potent draw was her reputation for reinvention. Continually concerned with her own artistic evolution, Oomori could channel her individualism into her music like few others – making albums likes Senno (2014) and Kitixxxgaia (2017) volatile but fascinating works.

Among artists from previous decades that continued to perform throughout the ‘10s were throngs of Tokyo-based musicians that were important in their own ways: arena pop stars like Gen Hoshino and Sakanaction , critical darlings Ayano Kaneko and Shinsei Kamattechan , successful independent pop acts such as D.A.N. and Gesu no Kiwame Otome , as well as heavier icons The Novembers and Gezan .

One particularly notable feature of ‘10s Tokyo was the growth of hip hop. Hip hop’s decade began with a setback. The death of famed beatmaker Nujabes in 2010, the first Japanese hip hop musician to enjoy significant popularity and influence overseas, left the scene without its most influential figure.

Nevertheless, the following decade saw hip hop expand enormously in his stead, becoming both more mainstream and more experimental. Some, like Daoko and Suiyoubi no Campanella , found popular success in crossing the genre with electropop and electronic music, while the likes of U-zhaan , Moe and Ghosts and, at the very end of the decade, Dos Monos and Haru Nemuri pushed the boundaries of the genre far further than even the innovations of their American contemporaries.

Others, like STUTS , Punpee and Kid Fresino , offered a Japanese-language take on more classic styles of hip hop. 5lack (pronounced “Slack”) largely belongs in this final camp, though his importance spills over into an extraordinary number of different facets of Japanese hip hop. He straddles the popular and underground, experimental sides of the genre, a poetic, abstract lyricist and a consistent, versatile performer.

5lack’s 5 Sense (2013), Wake Up From Your Dream (2015) and KESHIKI (2018) are all classics and he’s had guest features on countless tunes across the Tokyo scene. He also, however, demonstrates the confidence of Japanese-language hip hop in the ‘10s. Whatever the track, 5lack possesses a smooth, jazzy, effortless cool.

Judging by the genre’s increasing ascendancy in 2020, Japanese hip hop looks set to dominate the near future of Tokyo’s music scene. As that hype builds, few deserve to be recognised as so crucial to the foundation of that scene as 5lack, a fulcrum of contemporary Tokyoite hip hop.

Ed Cunningham is editor of The Glow , a site that promotes Japanese music to English-speaking audiences

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The 10 best bands from Japan, as chosen by Man With A Mission

Man With A Mission guitarist and vocalist Jean-Ken Johnny picks the 10 bands from Japan you should be listening to

As back stories go, Man With A Mission’s tops them all. Here it goes: Half human, half wolf, the J-Rock band were created by “doctor of the guitar and master wolf biologist” Jimi Hendrix to become the “Ultimate Life Form”, before finding themselves frozen in the Antarctic for a number of years. When their icy coffins thawed in 2010, after years of listening to rock music from around the world, they embarked on tearing their way through the Japanese music scene, much like a rock’n’roll Godzilla.

And there you have it. Since their, ahem, “creation”, Man With A Mission have delivered four albums packed with their own blend of J-Rock, punk, pop and dance, and gained recognition across the globe for their far-out, high-intensity live shows.

To mark the band making their way back to London, and to celebrate their place in raising J-Rock’s global profile, we caught up with vocalist and guitarist Jean-Ken Johnny to get his top 10 bands from Japan.

BOOM BOOM SATELLITES

“Experimental, aggressive, dramatic and so beautiful. A truly praised Japanese band who broke out worldwide, especially in Europe. I was shocked and so proud at the same time when I found out they were from Japan, when I first heard their music. Also one of my favourite bands, and the band I respect the most in Japanese [music’s] history.”

Hi-STANDARD

“The pioneer of melodic punk in Japan. I believe almost every punk kid admires and recognises them as an [example] of how an indie band can become an influencer, and be in the very middle of the music scene. They are one of the reasons we ever formed MWAM. The festival they organised, Air Jam is truly legendary.”

“New metal, electronic metalcore. The mixture of electronic music, heavy metal and hardcore music is so dramatic and aggressive, it could make you mosh, dance, and blow your mind at the same time. They performed at the main stage of Download Festival, and were the very first Asian Band who took part in the Soundwave Festival.”

THE MAD CAPSULE MARKETS

”[They’re the] greatest influencer as a mixture of digital hardcore and punk rock band in Japan, who literally showed the potential and the future of rock music. They have followers not only in Japan but around the world, and have successfully headlined in England in front of more than 2000 people in each venue. Not only their music, but I damn love the name of the band.”

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THE BLUE HEARTS

“A Japanese punk rock band that definitely is the most important of all time for a lot of people in Japan. The Japanese lyrics they write are simple but philosophical, poetic and so powerful at the same time. They were one of the biggest influences, not only in the punk rock scene, but even in the entire music charts of Japan. You can easily find many Japanese people singing their song in Karaoke, even nowadays.”

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“The pioneers and legends of the so-called V-Rock genre, nowadays well-known as a J-Rock genre. I heard that the number one best-selling DVD in England is The Beatles, but but number two is X-Japan. Based on heavy metal and hard rock, but has a genuine and beautiful Japanese blend which I think made them one of the most well-known bands throughout the world, not only because of their make-up or outfits as a V-Rock band.”

MAXIMUM THE HORMONE

“Japanese hardcore, mixture, metalcore funk band. The music is so aggressive, powerful, humorous, funny but cool, and sometimes even sarcastic, in a good way. The music is hardcore, but pop in a way, so it immediately hits your mind. I am a big fan of System Of A Down, and to me they are the only band in Japan I can imagine performing [with SOAD], because they’re such a perfect match.”

NUMBER GIRL

“Japanese alternative rock band. I was, and still am, a big fan of the alternative rock scene in the 90s, and Number Girl are like a Japanese Pixies or Sonic Youth in a way to me. Very experimental, noisy guitar, exploding and emotional rock with lyrics that are poetic and literary, full with philosophical message.”

BUMP OF CHICKEN

“Straight and decent, pure pop, alternative guitar rock. I put them on my list because I just simply love the songs and the lyrics of this band a lot. To me they are also the perfect example for how huge and successful a guitar rock band of my taste can become in Japan. I believe they are one of the few rock bands of the new age that are hugely supported by both music lovers and the masses.”

ONE OK ROCK

“Based on hard rock, emo, pop, heavy alternative rock, they are truly one of the most active and [fastest-growing] Japanese bands in the world. The band members have their [own] ambitions, but I believe many people in Japan and also the whole wide world are definitely looking forward to their activities, and more.”

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Japanese Experimental

A genre that pushes the boundaries of traditional music, incorporating avant-garde elements and unconventional instruments. It often features dissonant sounds, unexpected time signatures, and unpredictable structures, creating a unique and challenging listening experience. It has gained a cult following among fans of experimental music around the world.

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Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, Japan was home to a host of experimental psych bands. And while Les Rallizes Dénudés, Flower Travellin’ Band, Far East Family Band, and Taj Mahal Travellers didn’t sound the same, they all shared a love for lengthy improvisation and owed a debt to the avant-garde. They weren’t afraid to get weird, they were sometimes political, and they sometimes rode their motorcycles around naked (at least, that’s the way Flower Travellin’ Band is portrayed on the cover of their 1970 release, Anywhere ).

But the real fun started in the ’80s, when the freaks discovered punk. Bands like High Rise and Fushitsusha played louder and faster than their predecessors. They made more noise and oozed attitude. But unlike traditional punk, they also continued to improvise and jam. Those trends continued into the ‘90s—and continues into the present—with the emergence of bands like Boredoms, Ruins, Acid Mothers Temple, and their assorted side projects, splinter groups, and others.

But whether the country has an actual experimental psychedelic scene is up for debate. “Is there even a scene in Japan?” Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata told Pitchfork in 2002. “Are there actually musicians who see themselves as part of a scene? Of course the members of our group are Japanese, but the idea of a specifically ‘Japanese’ rock is pointless. Rock can only ever be rock, no matter where it exists in the world. So, rather than being the Japanese AMT, we’d like to be seen as the People’s AMT.”

Those sentiments notwithstanding, many of the current musicians are interconnected enough to suggest the existence of a scene, however loose. Some, like drummer Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), bassist Asahito Nanjo (High Rise), and guitarists Mitsuru Tabata—and even Makoto—have performed, at some point, with just about everyone else in this list. The artists making experimental psych in Japan are propelled by one another’s energy. They influence one another and, inevitably, inspire one another as well.

What follows is a deep dive into Bandcamp’s storehouse of Japanese experimental psych. It is adventurous, exploratory, and weird in the best possible way, whether you’re listening in your car fully clothed or on your motorcycle in the nude.

High Rise High Rise II

High Rise, the fuzzed-out dons of Japan’s underground, released their first album, Psychedelic Speed Freaks , as an anti-drug tome in 1984 (Psychedelic Speed Freaks is also the band’s original name). “A lot of people we knew were dying from drug ODs and so on,” bassist and vocalist Asahito Nanjo told the New Zealand publication, Opprobrium , in 1996. “We wanted to make an anti-drug statement, so we chose American and British drugs slang for all the titles. The concept was to save the junkies.”

Although that position is admirable, it doesn’t mean their is music polite. High Rise is gnarly, raunchy, noisy, and loud, and that spirit dominates their 1986 release, High Rise II . The music oozes fuzz, wah-wah, and blistering feedback—like good psychedelic freakout music is supposed to—although the vocals are surprisingly clean and pay an indirect, but noticeable, homage to Joey Ramone.

Acid Mothers Temple Stones, Women & Records

Acid Mothers Temple, the brainchild of Osaka-born guitarist Makoto Kawabata, is a loose musical collective—or what Kawabata calls a “soul collective”—that grinds out improvisatory, jam-centric, experimental psych. The band’s lineup is revolving cast of about 30 musicians and goes by different names. “All that I do is try to reproduce/play back through my body the sounds that I constantly hear from the cosmos (or God, or whatever you want to call it),” Makoto said in that same Pitchfork interview. “In the past, I have tried many different methods to try to pick up these cosmic sounds more clearly, but I have now succeeded in increasing my sensitivity as a receiver. The most important thing for me now is to try to pick up these sounds as precisely and as purely as possible.”

That ethos, believe it or not, goes a long way explaining the freewheeling, meandering, sometimes repetitive/sometimes over-the-top energy of the 2015 release, Stones, Women & Records . The guitars aren’t as drenched in fuzz and the drums aren’t as relentless and driving as they are when the band plays live, but that doesn’t make the music any less spontaneous or unpredictable, which—be it space jams or cosmic channeling—is at the heart of what they’re about.

Ruins Burning Stone

Starting in 1985, drummer Tatsuya Yoshida—together with a revolving cast of bassists—released drum/bass duos under the moniker, Ruins. The music is heavy and structured, except when it isn’t (in which case it’s free, unmetered improv). Yoshida leads other versions of Ruins as well, which include his solo project, Ruins Alone, and Sax Ruins, his duets with alto saxophonist, Ono Ryoko.  Burning Stone was originally released in 1992 by the New York label, Shimmy Disc (Michael Dorf, then-owner of the legendary downtown club, the Knitting Factory, is listed as executive producer). The album is emblematic of Yoshida’s idiosyncratic vision, and features everything from math-like prog stylings, to free jams, to bombastic riffs. Bassist Masuda Ryuichi shows off his blistering chops as well, especially on the track “Praha in Spring.”

SAICOBAB SAB SE PURANI BAB

Although Thrill Jockey Records places SAICOBAB on the same Bandcamp artist page as Boredoms, don’t expect the utter mayhem associated with the band’s earlier work (like their 1994 performance at Lollapalooza). SAICOBAB is a project of Boredoms’ percussionist/vocalist YoshimiO (also from OOIOO), and is a trippy synthesis of Indian rhythms, interwoven melodies, space jams, and funky textures.

Phew Voice Hardcore

In the late ‘70s, Phew (Hiromi Moritani) was the lead singer for the Osaka-based punk band, Aunt Sally. Following their breakup in 1980, she went on to work with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from Can, Bill Laswell, and many others. She recorded and collaborated throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s, although her 2015 album, A New World , was her first solo release in about 20 years. Voice Hardcore , which came out in January, features her voice as the only instrument, distorted and manipulated in myriad ways. The result is an eerie dreamscape of weird dissonances and minimalist textures.

Tabata Mitsuru Lumrapideco

Guitarist Mitsuru Tabata is a journeyman of the Japanese scene. He’s worked with everyone, it seems, including Acid Mothers Temple, Boredoms, progressive metal pioneers Zeni Geva, and many others. “I am not an individualistic person,” he said in an interview for Brown Noise Unit last year. “Maybe my mother would have told you, ‘That boy is an easy target for a cult.’ My musical career came from a lot of coincidences. Accidents.” His discography is indicative of that malleable outlook, which maybe explains the incongruous nature of his solo release, Lumrapideco . As opposed to the riff-centric work he’s done as a sideman, Lumrapideco is awash in ambient soundscapes and repetitive, minimalistic grooves. It’s meditative, contemplative, and a respite from the bombastic—albeit awesome—sounds of his other projects.

Koenji Hyakkei Angherr Shisspa

Operatic vocals, overblown saxophone, through-composed compositions, wild-yet-controlled improvisation, stark dynamic contrasts, hardcore energy, unadulterated mania—if that’s what you’re looking for, then Koenji Hyakkei is the band for you. Tatsuya Yoshida’s post-Ruins, large ensemble project takes his well-honed musical vision and reimagines it with a five-piece band. The music is complex, structured, and tight—and obviously well-rehearsed—but also leaves room for the musicians to stretch out and shine. Yoshida’s status is legendary—his list of collaborators includes people like John Zorn, Derek Baily, Bill Laswell, and many others—and he’s attracted top talent for Koenji Hyakkei as well. The band boast superior chops and make Yoshida’s intricate arrangements seem effortless.

Haco SUIQOO

Singer/composer Haco’s trippy, ambient textures permeate her April release, SUIQOO , a collection of remixes from her last album, Qoosui . “I wanted to take a super ethereal approach with the voice, which is pretty much layered,” she told  ATTN:Magazine  in an interview last year. “As if a singer is there, yet see-through within the large landscape, like mist.” In reviews, her music is referred to as dreamy, hypnotic, lilting, and subtle, which basically sums it up. Unlike the hard edges, dissonance, and abrasiveness of the other music listed here, Haco lets you peek into her world and seduces you with her tenderness and simplicity.

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