Kazumoto Endo - While You Were Out

On this album, Kazumoto Endo demonstrates that he's another choice cut above the Japanese harsh noise scene. While he's no laptop noisemaker, Endo is digital, his junk seems to consist of boiled and broken bits of digital equipment, lots of DSP and mashed-up samples, all sectioned off and squiggled around with effects. There's enough DSP here to remind me of glitched out breakcore, but don't expect any effete wanky technotardedness here (in fact there's some ridicule of that here, this album has some funny moments!). This ain't boring dry MAX/MSP digital "power electronics" ala Hecker either, but this stuff is loud and abrasive enough to get your adrenaline pumping like the best. He's got a great sense of "ma" the Japanese term for space in both art and music (spec. taiko drumming). He lets sounds reverberate so they feel like they're sectioned off in their own hallucinatory space, reminding me of Merzbow's finest moments (especially "1930"). His work is about the only that really expresses to me the information overload that is the Japanese urban experience.