After frenetic and frenzied noise extremist Juntaro Yamanouchi (The Gerogerigegege) resurrected in 2016 with the realest ? the loneliest ? the greatest ? the most abysmal ? comeback record of all time, 燃えない灰 (Moenai Hai) (which translates to Incombustible Ash), we thought the world truly had turned into dust. Yet, as London-based outsider imprint The Trilogy Tapes can corroborate (what we at TMT dizzily think), “for us to still be SHOCKED by the jovial, funk laden basslines and cozy keyboard sounds of the opening tracks on Uguisudani Apocalypse,” the sleazy, seedy new ? archival ? release from The Gero, “well, we feel a FOOL.”
The raw, explosive, punk demiurge behind Yellow Trash Bazooka, Tokyo Anal Dynamite, Instruments Disorder, and Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman, whose masturbatory and coprophilic, -phagic, -lalic antics compounded with those 10-30 second bursts of volatile noise and death-screams (preceded as always by the unhinged shout of ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR) just fucking revolted against everything in the world (and of course everything was in turn revolted by it, disgusted as everything is with death-rattles, exhilaration, and the borders of pain and of openness to pain, of helplessness even), was nothing if not lonely. That raw, pained, and impassioned desire to be heard (or at least to be substantially enough to have a voice, to exhaust that voice in screams) that when it did not assault our ears, suppressed itself instead in static drones unmoving beyond compassion and in field-recordings impervious to interpretation, was sometimes just too tender, too heartbreakingly transitory to be heard.
In 2001 Juntaro disappeared, presumed to be dead, for what else could he be? Where else is pure excess if outside of life? Where else do defeated struggles lead? And, when he returned 15 years too late, the extremes and extremities were still there, but beneath the noise of “The Gerogerigegege” there was melody! In the tragic drones of “Tokyo~Sea of Losers/Donors for USA” there was something that ached, stirred, and cried out for us to listen! The field-recordings of “Out of Saiga” had some sort of narrative, and even with the brutal power-violence of “Final Tuning” there was laughter, a music box even, as if after confronting his inconsolable loneliness and resigning to its pain, he could possibly communicate its core after shocking us into it for so many years.
After such profound nothingness how could one continue, what would one release? Well, “12 domestically produced rare grooves,” of lounge, boogie, funk, and porn-groove of course (though it is entirely conceivable that these are straight lifted from other artists, as 2017’s disco EP 燃えない腹 was).
Posturing as a fictional soundtrack for the loneliest train-line in the world, whatever Uguisudani Apocalypse is, it makes me swoon! Though the Apocalypse is currently sold out, keep your eyes out and your heart wet.
Or just listen to this instead… ;)
More about: The Gerogerigegege
