Space Streakings

The Boredoms, Shonen Knife and Pizzicato Five may get all the media attention, but there’s a lot more to contemporary Japanese rock than that. With a cast that reads like a badly translated film festival — Captain Insect (bass, programming), Karate Condor (guitar, guitar synth, vocoder), Screaming Stomach (vocals, guitar, trumpet) and Kame Bazooka (vocals, sax, guitar) — Space Streakings creates hyper-speed meltdown noise, a thick hysterical barrage of galloping electronic percussion, horns, whistles, samples and shouted Japanese vocals, achieving a disjointed level of frenzy that suggests a flooding factory full of workers scrambling for the exits in a blind panic. Far more boisterous and a lot less methodical than American industrialists, the quartet rushes in and around its tracks, layering bits on to a point of distraction in which chaos would come as a welcome relief. Kazuyuki K. Null of Zeni Geva produced Hatsu-Koi (“First Love”); Steve Albini attended to the studio documentation of 7-Toku. Short-attention-span fans never had it so good, but neither album is for the easily agitated.