"Zouroku No Kibyo" was the first album by Hijokaidan, released in April 1982. It's a compilation of live recordings from 1981, when the extreme performances of Hijokaidan first attracted attention. It was first released on Osaka's Unbalance Records and came to be regarded as a historical masterpiece of independent recordings in Japan, later being reissued onto CD by Alchemy Records.

"Zouroku No Kibyo" sits at a fascinating juncture between space-harsh progressive, improv and noise, years ahead of its time when it first appeared, now one of the great holy grails of Japan noise. Creatively thrilling - filled with emotive highs and lows - it's a crucial piece in the puzzle of Japan's wild and wonderful history of noise music. A truly stunning, visionary expanse of texture and tonality - pushing noise practice and the very notions of language into uncharted realms, improvising with ferocity and erupting chaos.

Superbly pressed with full remastering for this 40th anniversary vinyl edition by Nobuki Nishiyama, that brings as close as possible on analogue format the stunning original audio master.

The release also features the original iconic cover art with drawing by Hideshi Hino, plus all the inserts that were on the original 1982 LP: a live photo book (two A3 double-sided, folded), one Japanese sheet and a lucky triangle card exclusive to this edition, plus extensive liner notes by JOJO in Japanese and English, and a 40th anniversary sticker. It's hard to call anything to mind quite that sounds quite like this.

Truly brilliant and an inevitable revelation for anyone yet to encounter this body of work, "Zouroku no Kibyo" is a mind-blowing archival release. Ltd x 299 copies.

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