The Pornography of Despair

While Akihiro Shimizu (aka Thirdorgan) has made plenty of great noise since releasing his first cassette, The Pornography Of Despair, it stands as his finest ninety minutes of material — it’s no surprise that Dominick Fernow of Hospital Productions recently reissued an expanded version on triple vinyl. Shimizu’s focus on synth noise has The Pornography Of Despair, at times, playing out like a series of mutant tributes to the spiralling blackness of seventies German electronics, but elsewhere, the scratching, furious gusts of feedback situate this one pretty clearly within the Japanese noise lineage. Strangely sensuous, it’s a captivating kind of confusion.