I swear on my donkey's grave I never intended anything approaching this many words, apologies.T.Mikawa – I, Noise (2014)Double disc collection of previously unreleased Mikawa, divided into "the relics of the past" (old shit) and "recent killing time" (new shit). Dating back to the late 1970s, "relics" is the most intriguing. Here we are introduced to Mikawa before The Mikawa, back when he was recording under the name Contradictory Bridge- recordings of which have never, to my knowledge, been available for public consumption. We also get Incapacitants looong before Kosakai weighed in- Incapacitants as you've never heard them before! But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the Contradictory Bridge. Contradictory Bridge kick things off on a startlingly arse-hoofing note. Mikawa calls it "My Fave" and its clear why. Gutterous, gravelly, guitar noise, holding fast to inelaborate, roughspun, dirge-curdle, sounding as though a contact mic'd guitar were being dragged along the curbside, gritty distortions barely allowing the source sounds to peak through. If the rest of Disc 1 were like this I'd be grovelling at the feet of greatness, but fortunately (for my sense of self-worth), things go down a fair few notches. Mikawa has previously described his earliest forays as "influenced by Derek Bailey", but until actually hearing "Name Gone" I'd no idea how literal the influence. (This is the guy, after all, who credits Hawkwind as a key influence on
"Go Bankrupt".) I certainly wouldn't have expected a faithful rendering of Bailey's Solo Guitar, albeit run through a bit of distortion and warped through bit of tape manipulation. "No Mad" farts along a parallel plinkety plonk path, silent sections of tape hiss as readily filled as not, eking a few frazzled edges toward the end. The fourth and final, "tribble", serves scratchy stringed chalkboard scrape, leaving a rather abrasive, metallic, taste on the palate. In sum: primitive, improvised, um, dicking around, evidencing more than passing interest in noising things up, but hardly hinting at the extremities to come, namely, INCAPACITANTS! Incapacitants deliver track five and the promising title "terrible hallucinations". (Whoo baby, this is gonna kill!) ... Erm. ... Yeah. ... Well. They, uh, sure they got the, uh, track listing right? Could this really be Incaps or am I having a horrible hallucination? Brittle, evenly spaced, spaced-out guitar plunkings, occasionally shrieking with rare indignation, the soundtrack to a bad dream of noise god pissing about in an echo-chamber. If the intent here is to demonstrate that Mikawa can futz about with the best of them, then I'd call it fap-roaring success. "Eerie" might be the effect intended, or, possibly, "psychedelic". If I could make it to the end of the nine minutes and twenty-five seconds without suffering an unendurable bout of skip-finger, I could probably tell you with greater certainty. As it is, by the time the wrinkled horse-cloppings of "It's a blue day, bloody girl" hit the halfway mark, ceramic pebbles flushed through a piece of plexiglass tubing, I'm about ready run and hide. But hold those horses! What's this? It says "untitled". It sounds... awesome! Scattered acoustic clatter of massively amped metallic thwwaaack!, slapping away at an unidentifiable stringed appendage. The Mikawa, at long last, makes his first appearance: hoarse, distorted, semi-whispered, vocalizations, suffocated gasps retched at uneven intervals along a dark and crumbling passageway... or perhaps emanating from beyond the grave. A dread atmos emerges, out the maw of shredded clank and crinkle, unsettled collapsing clamor delivering a satisfyingly pointed harshness. No Mikawa collection would be complete, of course, without a live Incaps number to close things out. "Eggplant 19850208" is another pleasant surprise, mostly because it manages to sound surprisingly up-to-date. Up-to-date, as in, much comparable to the most recent Incapacitants live recordings, sharing little in common with older material currently on tap. Admittedly, I haven't much older material to go by. Bar a brief collabo with Ai Yamatsuka on the Hijokaidan Tapes lp, also from 1985, the earliest live recordings in ready circulation date from the 90s. The shock, to me, is that we are talking here of Mikawa solo, several years before The Kosakai. Very... heavy. Full-bodied. Fleshed out. And with much greater emphasis placed on the lower frequency range than anything else from the period. One may, perhaps, perceive a slightly less-leavened mass of all-out shrieking, but still. Title could be "Eggplant 20150208" and no one would blink. Talk about No Progress.
And now the main event. We've heard what the man was, now let's hear what he is. In keeping with the general atmosphere established via the set of old shit, above-described, "recent killing time" finds Mikawa indulging, freely, his more experimental urges. And, with one notable exception, at some considerable remove from the dense envelopments of Incaps proper. Shucking the meaty, Kosakai-supplemented, densities, Mikawa strips down and launches, bare-ass-first, into stark, straight-to-the-deck, storms of stuttered, improvised, stammer. Away with Incaps! (bar one notable exception) But away too with the heavier layerings to be found on T.Mikawa's own Bloody, innocent and Strategic (also issued in 2014) and Gyo-Kai Elegy (from 2007). There is, however, one shockingly close cousin: Monde Bruits (RIP). Mikawa always was one of the DOD-man's greatest champions, and what better tribute to the memory that most lovable of Noise Worlds than in frying up a short, scrumptious, series of the harshest, raw-razored, spasmation, brimming with tangy, digitized, zip, zap and sizzle. Two Bruits in particular echo amongst the earholes: Purgatory, memorably described in Bananafish as "the world's biggest zipper getting jammed"; and Selected Noise Works, in whose liner notes Mikawa himself provides the following just-as-memorable description: "The sound is as if creeping worms are distorting their screaming and noises caused by their random movments; each worm has its own distortion unit and they all organized one night orchestra". Of the massive zipper failure I can't say that I hear all too much, at least structurally: there is little in the way of pinched, accelerated, rising and falling. Rather, the principle echoes are too be found in the raw, digitized, seasonings. But I might admit a shade of the distorted-screaming-worm orchestra, one dominated by a particularly enraged conqueror wyrm which vents its monstrous spleen plunging in and out of a singular, torn, toothy, aperture, to reveal the words "I, Noise" tattooed to the bloody, engorged, shaft. This is an orchestra of gleaming razor blades, a symphony of screeching sawblades, refreshingly abrasive, wide-open; the methodology as clear and scorching as day. Off the heels of a brief, exceedingly stripped-down, live set performed in April of 2014, the first of a trio of studio tracks hits most forcefully. "Dummy Reversal Part 1" sets an electrified dronebed afire via processed shrieking that could at one point be voice and could at another be the internal wailing of donkey-punched piglet getting sawn in half. Heavier, meatier depths begin to roll beneath the bed before the whole cuts out abruptly leaving bitter taste in the mouth of ill-timed noizus interruptus. The two remaining "Dummy Reversal"s are more open-ended, savage little bursts ripping through spasmic clenchings and unclenchings, allowing clean sweeps to slide across the sweat-slickened surface before scrunching, again and again, into tightly-constricted balls of burnt-out burble. "pearls before rice-bran" is a grey and choppy sea, strangled by sheer, unforgiving, rock-face, refusing to be swallowed up in the momentum that threatens to surge in between intervals of intermittent collapse. "Three Arrows of Intonarumorimotonari" is the promised notable exception. Even the title has a certain Incapsesque air. Stretching out over a nice, twenty-minute course, massed layers of smooth and shimmering squeal arch high above a hollowed-out tubular groan, a sound that might almost be piercing were it not then lacquered with such a lustrous, glowing, coat. A less than exceptional exception in other words, but something of a welcome break from the broken-down, burnt and brittle wreckage which precedes. "Live at Bears 20120902" is an exception of more exceptional persuasion. Mikawa displays a maestro-esue patience and control, studiously snaking his way through a miniscule table of gear, tickling out ruptured squawk, fluttered flatulance, toothed shizzle, hiding nothing throughout the twenty-two minute assault. Never once does the man lose himself in the moment, maintaining a tight and well-spaced tension until 19:32, at which point The Mikawa steps in and brings things home with crimson-faced rage of frenzied, shrieking, vocalization. Mikawa-san, You Noise.
