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Kazuki Tomokawa BOX  £199.99	Keiji Haino / Hikari 'Light Darkness, suddenly melted together, this vibration'  £19.99	Kyoaku no Intension / 'Astral Projection' (Live recording) £19.99	Hiroshi Na, Yokai Takahashi, Toshiaki Ishizuka -  'Jokers' £19.99
Limited to six hundred copies, the set comes housed in a heavy-duty, LP sized box, with accompanying booklet and postcard. It contains all ten of the solo Tomokawa studio albums previously released by PSF. Three exclusive bonus disks are also included (these will not be available separately from the box). The first is a compilation of classic, original tracks from Tomokawa's first three little-heard albums, released between '75 and '77 on Tokuma. The second bonus disk is made up of new musical settings for poems by the tragic Japanese symbolist poet Chuya Nakahara (1907-1937). Tomokawa has drawn deeply upon the modernist mania of these poems throughout his career, constantly revisiting them on record and live, and these new readings are the most mellifluous yet. The final disk, "Satoru" is an album of new recordings with his telepathically sensitive long-term group (which features Toshi Ishizuka of Vajra on drums), including a clutch of deeply resonant new classics that Tomokawa outed at his first ever overseas appearance at the Le Weekend Festival in Scotland.	First album of solo guitar by Keiji Haino in quite some time, but very much a departure from the mountain-levelling, continent-sundering, weather-system huge electric guitar releases of years past. Hikari yami… is played just on acoustic, gut-strung guitar, entirely forsaking the effects and extreme amplification characteristic of his electric work. Over three lengthy improvised pieces, recorded in clothes-rustling close-up, Haino explores the full dynamic range of the instrument, working abyss deep into his eternal preoccupations of duration, decay, sustain and resonance. Vast spectrums of reference, from Bailey and Fahey to flamenco, oud music and bluegrass are invoked in single notes and brief phrases, only to be dismissed with confident authority. Another masterful piece of work from Haino, as replete with mystery and the sadness of existence as ever.  The title roughly translates as “Light darkness melting into one this vibration”. Haino advises the listener to play as loud as possible – surely a first on an album of acoustic guitar.	Munehiro Narita: guitar  Shoji Hano: drums  On their second album for PSF, Narita and Hano are caught live in Tokyo a mere three months ago. Hano is always inventive around the kit, but he knows that crazed flail is just as valid in certain contexts as textural subtlety. Narita too was never one for treating the guitar as an ambient paintbrush, and his soloing here is as splattered and nerve-shreddingly exciting as ever.	Hiroshi Na: vocals, guitar, organ, chorus Yohkai Takahashi: bass, chorus Toshi Ishizuka: drums, percussion, chorus  Accelerated senility, inspired lunacy, and grotesque rock-pranks from a trio of Japanese underground veterans who should really know "better".  If meaningful Pete Frame musical histories are what you're after, then this trio has it in spades. Ritalin-huffing vocalist and smeary-fingered guitarist Hiroshi Na was a member of both acid-goth mystery group Les Rallizes Denudes and seminal anarcho-folk-punkers Zuno Keisatsu during their heaviest periods in the seventies. Hairy, speaker-shaking bassist Yokai Takahashi was in a bunch of no-wave carcrash groups like Bunretsu before serving a lengthy stint in Rallizes during the eighties and nineties. More recently he's been a central plank in Gyaatees, which throws mentally-challenged priests together with hoary rock improvisers to chaotic ends. Wildman drummer Toshi Ishizuka was a founder member of Zuno Keisatsu and Vajra, a constant presence behind folk legends Kazuki Tomokawa and Kan Mikami, as well as leading his own group Cinorama.  But instead of a full-frontal assault, the Jokers have decided to tunnel under the gates of perception with an arsenal of rhythmic pratfalls, riffing slapstick and spluttering vocal raspberries. Theirs is an indescribably freaky but endearingly unaffected universe, where village idiot vocalizations happily rub up against stop-start rhythmic morse code and some very wild and fuzzy guitar soloing. Against all the odds, this convinces, entertains and thrills. Adult rock from a group who never grew up.