SYMPATHY NERVOUS Vinilo y CD

Review: Minimal Wave present a reissue of Yoshifumi Niinuma's 1980 self-titled debut album, having already released his Automaticism and Plastic Love EP's previously. Produced in his Tokyo living room, Niinuma built his own synthesizers and speakers from scratch to create these 'intense proto-techno soundscapes.' A zeitgeist of early pioneering electronics, it runs the gamut from minimal synth ("A Worm"/"Automatic Type"), noisy industrial beats such as on "Temprament" or early electro sounds as heard on "Quick Starttype".

Review: Plastic Love sees Minimal Wave further document the prolific Sympathy Nervous output of Japanese artist Yosihumi Niinuma following last year's Automaticism LP. Though Niinuma's recordings span some three decades from the 1970s onwards, the focus of this collection narrows to the period between 1979 and 1980 and consists entirely of tracks that never made it beyond his studio. Plastic Love essentially demonstrates how hard it is to pin down Sympathy Nervous stylistically, with the nine tracks perfectly capturing Niinuma's stylistic diversity as well as his inherent eccentricity. Opening track "Khaki Cloud" is a balls out explosion of cascading synth textures, percussion and Lee Scratch Perry style vocal nonsense that seems all the more devilish when followed by the more restrained but equally oddball "Antawa Suguni", proto techno experimentalism at its finest. Niinuma's wife contributes vocals to "Butoubyou No Syounen" an exercise in pure synth pop that's one of the highlights here along with the guttural post punk dub brilliance of "Untitled 1".