Aspirations of Madness, Blank Forms' fifth collection of archival, unpublished, or newly translated texts, takes its title from a series of interviews with Japanese free jazz pioneer Masayuki Takayangi that were published in Japanese in 1975-76 and are published here in English for the first time.

The interviews provide a rare look at Takayanagi's eccentric practice and personality, both long under-recognized by audiences outside (and often, inside) of Japan. The postwar Japanese history that Takayanagi describes also surfaces in this publication's opening piece, a poetic tribute by the writer and artist Louise Landes Levi to one of Takayanagi's contemporaries, the poet Kazuko Shiraishi.

Aspirations of Madness includes a second Levi poem as well, "A Deep River," written while at La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Dream House in 2003. Complementing this tradition of Japanese free improvisation and poetry is the republication of a 1977 interview with Joseph Jarman, the great composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist.