Asahito Nanjo (南條麻人) is a Japanese underground musician, best known for his

psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock is a rock music Music genre, genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelia, psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound ...

groups

High Rise A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdictio ...

, Mainliner and Musica Transonic, and the ethnic improvisation unit Toho Sara. He has been active on the Tokyo underground scene since the late seventies. Part of his sonic aesthetic is to record, mix, and master using extreme levels of

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...

dynamic range compression Dynamic range compression (DRC) or simply compression is an audio signal processing operation that reduces the volume of loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds, thus reducing or ''compressing'' an audio signal's dynamic range. Compression is ...

, and

clipping Clipping may refer to: Words * Clipping (morphology), the formation of a new word by shortening it, e.g. "ad" from "advertisement" * Clipping (phonetics), shortening the articulation of a speech sound, usually a vowel * Clipping (publications) ...

making the sound of the instruments unrecognizable. The results can be said to contain elements of

noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical ...

Musical activity

Below are the main groups with which he has been involved from 1979 to the present: * Red Alert (psychedelic punk group, 79–81) * Red (experimental performance, 79–89) * Conformist (dark psychedelic group, 81–82) * Deaf and Dumb House (esthetic improvisation unit, 81–82) * Virus Freak (avant-garde free rock group, 81–82) * Tako (avant-garde performance group, 81–82) * I'm useless (strange free rock unit centring on Tamio Shiraishi, 81–82) * Telepatys going bad of Rotness (psychedelic punk group, 81–82) * Kousokuya (psychedelic avant-garde group, 82–83) * Sweet Inspirations (progenitor of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, 83–84) * Psychedelic Speed Freaks (the ur-High Rise, 83–84) *

(heavy psychedelic group, 84 - present) * Shokubaiya (improvised music unit, 88–89) * Nijiumu (improv unit formed with Keiji Haino, 88–90) * Ohkami no Jikan (dark psychedelic group, 90 - present) * Ten no Okami (avant-garde unit, with Keiji Haino, 90–91) * Johari (ethnic meets experimental, 90–92) * Toho Sara (avant-garde shamanism, 92- present) * Group Musica (avant-garde symphonic group, 94 - present) * Bibliotheca Hermetica (avant-garde, 94 - present) * Mysterious Adni (avant-garde, 94 - present) * Ancient Wisdom (avant-garde, 94 - present) * Splendour Solis (avant-garde, 94 - present) * Up Tight (free jazz unit, 94 - present) * Musica Transonic (psychedelic improvised music, 94 - present) * Mainliner (heavy psychedelic noise rock group, 95 - present) * Psychedelic Background (trip psychedelic group, 96 - present) * Minus Three Years Old (new psychedelic blues band, with Keiji Haino, 96 - present)

Discography

Nanjo is credited on over 300 releases."Asahito Nanjo's Discogs page"
/ref> Selected discography:

High Rise

''see

High Rise (band) ''High Rise'' was a noise rock band from Tokyo, Japan formed in 1982. The core of the band has consisted of bassist Asahito Nanjo and guitarist Munehiro Narita. The group named themselves after the 1975 novel ''High Rise'' by J. G. Ballard. Their ...

for full discography''
on P.S.F label if not specified * ''II'' (1986) * ''Dispersion'' (1992) * ''Disallow'' (1996) *''Psychedelic Speed Freaks '84-'85'' (1997, Time Bomb) * ''Desperado'' (1998)

Mainliner

''see

Mainliner (band) Mainliner are a noise rock band from Tokyo, Japan. The band was formed in 1995 by guitarist Kawabata Makoto and bassist Asahito Nanjo with the intention of creating a new form of psychedelic music. They released four studio albums before the membe ...

for full discography'' * ''Mellow Out'' (1996) * ''Imaginative Plain'' (2001)

References

Interview. ''Opprobrium'', issue 3, 1998. (English) Stofer, F. (2000). ''Japanese Independent Music'', France: Sonore.

External links

High Rise official website
High Rise (band) members Japanese male musicians Japanese musicians Living people Mainliner (band) members Year of birth missing (living people) {{japan-musician-stub