Four legends of the Japanese avant-garde playing in different combinations. Whilst their paths have crossed numerous times in Japan, this will be the first time they come together in the UK.

REIKO KUDO (vocals)

Reiko is the partner of Tori Kudo of the Japanese underground music group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. In the late seventies and early eighties, while still known under her maiden name of Reiko Omura, she led a unit called Noise. Noise played in Tokyo underground venues like Minor (alongside groups like Fushitsusha and Kousokuya), and released one album, Tenno.

As well as often singing with and writing songs for Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Reiko has been quietly creating several albums of limpid, lucid observation with an exceedingly fragile sense of melody.

TORI KUDO (guitar / piano / vocals)

Tori is best known for his strikingly naive work in the group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. He is also a longstanding if idiosyncratic contributor to Japan's musical underground whether through the songs of MSHB or his improvised piano concerts and collaborations.

OTOMO YOSHIHIDE (Guitar / Turntable / Electronics)

Otomo Yoshihide spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band which played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn't long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz.

In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra.


SACHIKO M (sampler with sine waves)

Sachiko M has been active as a sampler player since 1994. Early in her career she was involved in the cut-up and "plunderphonic" (or "plagiaristic") sampling movements. In '98, in a drastic departure from those approaches, she originated the revolutionary method she uses to this day--manipulating the sampler's internal test tones. With the 2000 release of Sine Wave Solo, her extreme solo recording consisting entirely of sine waves, Sachiko M suddenly became the focus of intense interest on the international scene, including European music festivals and Britain's Wire magazine. Since then she's been active on an irregular basis in a number of projects--including the experimental electronic music duo Filament, the electronics trio I.S.O., a duo with Toshimaru Nakamura, and the duo Cosmos with Ami Yoshida--in addition to collaborating with various musicians from other countries. Two of the solo projects she's currently working on are the live performance series Bar Sachiko and the sound installation I'm Here.

Sachiko M's radical stance consistently draws interest and provokes debate.