Noise - Tenno

Now this is something special. Noise were the fabled Japanese duo of Reiko Omura and Tori Kudo, the former who most are likely to have come across via Maher Shalal Hash Baz, though their work together on Tenno, originally released in 1980, is located within a very different tradition. Utilising a very minimal palette of organ, guitar, drums and barely detectable trumpet, they lean into their avant garde instincts with a DIY attitude, using drone and Omrua's ghostly vocals to create a kind of tracing-paper thin inverted no wave, both distorted and crystalline. Kinda like a dreamstate Mars, removed of all aggression but similarly tense. The whirring organ and atonal guitars have an almost meditative effect, and it's easy to get lost in a set of songs that seem to merge seamlessly into one another. Dreams within dreams. Instinctive transcendence. Fans of early Phew and Pale Cocoon would do well to investigate immediately. Must have business this.