Seemingly on a quest to collaborate with every Japanese noisenik/prog stalwart/avant-garde musician available, coming off a bunch of joint ventures with Keiji Haino and Masami Akita, French electro rock pioneer Richard Pinhas has summoned Yoshida Tatsuya to record an album together. Though Haino’s and Akita’s (a.k.a. Merzbow) names might carry a more immediate flare, Tatsuya is anything but a slouch: he’s best known as the driving force behind otherwordly pigfuck titans Ruins, remains a constant member of Kōenji Hyakkei, and has honored his serial-collaborator title by playing with Zeni Geva, Painkiller, Acid Mothers Temple, and YBO2, among others. Quite a catch for Pinhas, right? Would you expect any less from the man who famously convinced Gilles Deleuze, then his Philosophy grad school professor, to recite Nietzsche on a Heldon song?
Welcome in the Void, the product of Pinhas’ meeting with Tatsuya, is the second part of the French legend’s ambitious “Devolution trilogy”; a meditation on Capitalism and the decline of Human Civilization. The LP follows 2013’s Desolation Row, the trilogy’s first volume, and is paired with Tikkun, a collaboration with Oren Ambarchi that does not integrate the official trilogy despite being released simultaneously as Welcome in the Void.
Pinhas has described Welcome in the Void as a journey “not more into the being, but into the Void,” a statement matched by the heavily distorted guitar drones that overtake most of the album. The pulsating synths of Tikkun are nowhere to be found, replaced here by Tatsuya’s busy percussion. While Pinhas rendered Tikkun as the reconstructive counterpart to Welcome in the Void’s pitch-black pessimism, it’s easier to find ominous soundscapes in the former, since Pinhas’ trademark looped guitar provides some dashes of melody here and there.
Aside from being the middle section of the “Devolution” triptych, Welcome in the Void is part of an ongoing collaboration between Pinhas and Tatsuya. Both have recently been touring and recording as part of a free-flowing collective of likeminded visionaries, including Oren Ambarchi, Masami Akita, Keiji Haino, Joe Talia, Eric Borelva, and Duncan Pinhas; absolutely expect to hear more from them. You can find Richard Pinhas’ European tour dates below this snippet from the album, out now on Cuneiform Records:
Welcome in the Void tracklisting:
01. Part One - Intro
02. Part Two - Core Trax
Tour dates:
07.07.14 - Marseille, France - Festival MIMI 2014
07.18.14 - Gorlice, Poland - Ambient Festival
07.30.14 - London, UK - Corsica Studio
08.31.14 - London, UK - The Dome Tufnell Park
• Richard Pinhas: http://www.richard-pinhas.com
• Yoshida Tatsuya: http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~ruins/eng
• Cuneiform: http://www.cuneiformrecords.com