Newcastle-based music event producers NO-FI and London record shop Second Layer have joined forces to bring to the UK two acts from opposite sides of the globe but both with equally astounding approaches to sound and its manipulation.
Tonight sees the opening gig of the tour, featuring Japanese noise legend Pain Jerk and prodigious Ohio trio Emeralds.Both provoke extreme reactions from witnesses to their work, yet neither of these acts have set foot on UK soil to date.
PAIN JERK
Pain Jerk, a one-man sound project founded by the Tokyo-based Kohei Gomi, one of the most esteemed names in Japanese noise. His music is a skilfully crafted, ecstatically mechanistic electronic storm that irresistibly pulls the listener into its colour-saturated flow. Over the years, Pain Jerk has released dozens of tapes (mostly on his own label AMP) and a sprinkling of more official releases on vinyl and CD. His 1997 Gallon Gravy CD (Creativeman Disc) is widely regarded as one of the milestones of the genre. During recent years, Pain Jerk has released new music at rather long intervals, but has meanwhile kept performing in his home country on a regular basis. Pain Jerk gave his first performance outside Japan in May 2007 at the No Fun Fest in New York. He is now also becoming more active on the recording front: a number of new releases are expected shortly, and enthusiasts of the genre are eagerly awaiting the retrospective CD-box compiled from his vast and increasingly rare tape releases. Pain Jerk produces sounds like no other music on this planet.
EMERALDS
Emeralds is Mark McGuire, John Elliott & Steve Hauschildt. They are currently based in and around Cleveland, Ohio. Direct descendants of the history of adventurous punk, post-punk, whatever music spilling out of Ohio the last 35 years or so from Pere Ubu, Devo, Rocket From The Tombs, The Raspberries, The Cramps, Dead Boys, Great Plains, Fuzzhead, et al. Emeralds is the sound of exploration of space/time conundrums utilizing vintage synthesizer beauty and guitar experimentation. Unfolding sweet-leaf shifts and gorgeous curves of kosmiche abandon are played with devotion and desire. With a palpitating discography of cassettes, cdrs etc both self-released and on righteous labels (Hanson, Gods Of Tundra, American Tapes, Chondritic Sound) Emeralds have already distinguished themselves as new yet timeless, young yet ageless.
MUSCLETUSK
8-armed Edinburgh out-rock heaviosity unit.
