“I love feedback very much.”
When you hear the noise art of Otomo Yoshihide, you understand what an understatement that is, coming from him. The Japanese radical experimental guitarist, composer and turntable manipulator has a fondness for jazz, rock, and ear piercing noises; even your dog will be saying “WTF?!” to some of his music. He and his New Jazz Quintet has a song “Flutter” that sounds like a perfectly fine acoustic modern jazz piece except for the high-pitched sine wave played on top of it. I am mercifully avoiding presenting that song for this feature. Even NJQ’s raucous rendition of Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni” that we raved on here back in ’06 had a barely audible canine whistle piercing through the thick, furious ruckus.
Really, I could have picked just about any song from Monochrome Otomo, the audio-only version of a CD/DVD sweep of Yoshihide’s noise art project showcasing his turntablist acumen. “Turntable Feedback 1″ is one of the few of the eighteen mind-fornicating tracks that lasts longer than a single idea. As the title strongly suggests, there’s a lot of turntable-generated feedback, and at times it sounds more like a guitar is producing that mess of sounds, not a tricked up record player. It’s ear sodomy accomplished by low buzzes, high-end squeals, thunderous rumbles, and tortuous, industrial washes. The video above isn’t the actual song, but it’s a pretty good approximation of it.
Yoshihide himself, though, is a pretty good approximation of no one else. Sure, he’s weird, and so is John Zorn and fellow Japanese sound art superstar Merzbow. But he is weird in his own, weird way, if you know what I mean.
If you don’t, just ask your dog.
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