Government Alpha
Sporadic Spectra

Yasutoshi Yoshida’s musical offering fits into the vast landscape of Japanese-style harsh noise. As Government Alpha, he first appeared in the compilation “Extreme Music From Japan,” dated 1995, and later under the label Xerxes, which he set up himself to publish his works without artistic or contractual obligations. Not that there was much need, anyway.

The Japanese noise scene has always been distinguished by the complete originality of its offerings and the strong personal identity and connotation of the artists, sub-currents, and more. One could even say without risk of contradiction that contemporary noise originates from Japan and that there it has experienced its happiest moments and some of the most significant changes in its evolution. Unfortunately for the reader, reviewing this kind of work is always challenging. One cannot speak of objective content nor rely on "material" or "technical" references as this genre of music is based, even in the composition phase, on essentially emotional and instantaneous psychic matrices. The almost total absence of time, rhythm, melody, or anything even remotely definable as belonging to a song makes this music suitable for the flow of free thought. What better way to enjoy it than in the middle of city traffic or during a bicycle ride? Every sound wave, every structure formed and destroyed in an instant, every objective correlative visualized by the listener during the session will belong solely to them.

I mentioned the difficulty in approaching such a current, especially for those unfamiliar with this type of music, except by discussing the current itself and what it represents (always, however, with strong and essential subjective connotations). I don’t say this to cover my ass, far from it, but simply because I’ve often found myself roaming the internet in search of information on this or that album, or even the genre itself, and never found satisfaction in what I read. Impressions are and will always be the result of the complete subjectivity of the listener, and perhaps it cannot be otherwise. The criterion of objectivity can at best be applied only to the actual value of the works. There are indeed many cases of mere plagiarism (though rather than plagiarism, it should probably be called failed attempts at emulation that ended up in the limbo of bland things, or decidedly denigrable or forgettable offerings). The richness of offerings in a musical scene is almost never synonymous with quality. To use an immediately comprehensible comparison, I can say that there are many similarities between noise and electronic music. Of equal offerings, only a few are truly valid and worthwhile.

Returning to the listening experience, from a musical standpoint, one can’t help but make a comparison with Merzbow. The influences are all there and naturally felt, but compared to Akita Masami, Government Alpha stays on more skewed, more technological tracks, less linked to that rhythm that sometimes emerges from Merzbow's compositions (usually short loops of hyper-distorted drums that serve as a rhythmic base for waterfalls of sound, forming a sort of texture that characterizes the entire piece) and that in the worst moments can induce even the most irreducible listener into a frustrating boredom that quickly spills into the realms of self-punishment. Yoshida, on the other hand, remains freer, and though his sound might at times be slightly less full, the sonic violence will certainly not fail to make you relish the acoustic pains worthy of a worker's workday.

As always, the album is recommended only to that tiny slice of the world population that treasures such delight, or to those who will one day find themselves in the unpleasant situation of having to compete with their fourteen-year-old neighbor who’s just been gifted a stereo and makes the grave mistake of waking you up in the middle of a hangover with the latest overplayed album by Raf or Vasco Rossi.