Junko & Mattin

w.m.o/r 13 cd

PINKNOISE

Junko- voice Mattin-computer feedback

mastered by Taku Unami

recorded by Masae Ito at Tanker Studios (Tokyo) on the 5th of April 2004

reviews:

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Patricksmash Nov 18 2010

Coming from someone who has given "Metal Machine Music" and Peter Brötzmann's "Machine Gun" a four-star rating, I had to switch off about three minutes into this raging slab of "Pinknoise", such was the level of tinnitus-inducing maelstrom (even at low volume) involving a feedback-drenched banshee screamer who makes Diamanda Galas at her most outré sound like Carla Bruni on downers, which threatened to engulf me and spit me out in little morsels of throbbing flesh. If you are willing to forfeit your sanity for half an hour, you will be subjected to the best-ever record to get rid of your guests when you're feeling a little knackered, even if they happen to be Merzbow fans. So I'll give it two stars for social usefulness, only about a half of which is actually related to any musical enjoyment to be derived from its consumption.

Ashtray Navigations blog - Friday, June 08, 2007

JUNKO & MATTIN - PINKNOISE (can't recall label name or be arsed to dig out disc) is beautiful. Thats right. I read some reviews of this baby which referenced the usual kinda "screaming torture victim" stuff and maybe a bit of the old "gender angle" but it didn't sound like any of that to me. J is up in the mix and really clear - maybe not even amped up and her vox don't mesh in with the general onslaught as with Hijokaidan or Dust Breeders. J and M are doing the same thing - they move together (like Sea Ensemble?) j with pure voice, M with some wonderfully scrunched up electronics- BUT- because of their different instruments there is this palpable and quite expressive and tasty s-p-a-c-e between them which is what made this disc sound so beautiful to a sonic aesthete named myself.

Junky's blog (from Torturing Nurse, Shanghai 22 June 2006)

睡觉的时候把Mattin给我的他和Junko(Hijokaidan女vocal)的合作cd当安眠曲,我实在太喜欢了,30分钟的录音里 Junko从头叫到底,有破碎的声音在里面;Mattin只用笔记本的回授做声音,气度不凡,我越来越喜欢Mattin这家伙了,朴素,邋蹋,看起来像工 厂的车间主任!他给的另一张唱片还没听,但肯定是我喜欢的,昨天聊天的时候发现彼此喜欢的竟然十分相似,本来这次是要一起合作录音的,但我实在抽不出空, 约好回去后通过internet进行录音合作:)!!他和他的厂牌的网址是:www.mattin.org

Junko&Mattin - <Pink Noise>评 论和下 载(ogg 格式)

刚刚发现Mattin的出版列表里居然也在Audiobot发 过片,我们的一张3"和一盘c10也即将在这个伟大的比利时噪音厂牌发行:P

abinarydatum (Tokyo)

 5)  Title:  Pinknoise ; Artist:  Junko and Mattin ; Label: wmo/r
Format: CD >> Got this in a trade with the amiable Mattin who was
playing a few shows in Tokyo the first week I got here. Two mononominal
artists with a bent for unbearable noise. This worked really well live
actually. In particular Junkosan's vocals are the most sublimely
irritating sound I have heard in a LONG time. An irate mouse in a
blender was the comparison I used after the concert. She's great. The CD
is Junko's vocal needles accompanied by computer feedback and
interminable yelling by Mattin... oh god make it stop. Mark Sadgrove

Noise Gate (UK, n.13 March 2006)

The title and the pink shell case signifies a lady at work, she is Junko, her characteristically Japanese hi pitch screamy shouty vocal is accompanied by the less obviously male computer feed back of Mattin

Diskunion (Japan)

スタジオのスピーカーをぶっ飛ばした凶悪音源が遂に入荷!!　バスクの狂気マッティン(コンピューター･フィードバック)　と非常階段の ジュンコの共演 は､30分ピュア･ノイズと絶叫という恐ろしい内容に…｡ノイズ･ファンは買い逃し御法度!!

The Sound Projector . n.13 (UK)

Difficult, challenging noise. Who wants to hear the sound of a woman
screaming? If you read this in purely misogynistic terms, it's completely
revolting. Junko, the Japanese torture victim, suffering under the
instruments of Mattin, the Spaniard, acting as a Grand Inquisitor. As she
screams, Junko appears to be writhing in agony under the relentless
electronic device of the cruel Mattin. Yuk. A more positive slant might be
to somehow empower the woman in this fiction. Perhaps she's not in pain at
all, but instead a frustrated feminist railing against the constrictions of
patriarchal society, only to be met with the monotonous indifference of the
powers that be, as represented by Mattin's drones of futility.
On the other hand, if you hear this as plain non-associative abstract
noise.well, that's no better. It remains startling and incredibly severe.
There's nothing frantic about it; not for this duo the empty flailings of
most table-top noiseicians. Instead, Pinknoise locks its energy into a tight
little ball of compressed anger, and lets it fester in the corporate bloated
body of the modern world. You can practically feel this noise inculcating a
cancer inside your own body, as you listen! If Pinknoise signifies anything
as a title, surely it points to the age-old dilemma of human beings becoming
dehumanised by machinery and technology, in a potent symbol for the
never-ending struggle that constitutes our lives today.
Recorded in a Tokyo studio in 2004, and arrives issued in a pink clamshell
case. This noise has a ghastly, teeth-clenching beauty; compared with Junko'
s performance with Dustbreeders (see above), this one is brutal; at least
with Dustbreeders, you can lose yourself somewhere in the sprawling chaos of
it all. Here, in this starkness, there's nowhere to hide. Even I can't bring
myself to play the whole thing, and it's only 30 minutes long.
ED PINSENT 06/11/2004

Revue & Corrigée (France)

L’autre face de MATTIN " Pinknoise " duo avec JUNKO (chanteuse du groupe noise japonais Hijokaidan), ou ne s’agit-il pas toujours de la même musique ? Une musique sans genre, ni école, transversale. Basculement dans le trop plein, le métallique, là où les deux autres disques se faisaient dans la soustraction et le vide. On songe aux concerts de White House, enchevêtrements de fréquences bruitistes chaotiques et de cris saturées, moins l’appel à l’émeute rock n’roll des anglais que le plaisir trouble de soumission aux vibrations érotiques du sonore. La voix de JUNKO passe directement dans l’ordinateur de MATTIN, mixée directement dans les scories soniques du feedback, recrachée après ingestion électronique. MATTIN travaille le feedback en orfèvre doué, matière qu’il module et contrôle, la lançant à l’assaut de notre chaîne hi-fi, pour en rompre le confort d’écoute et que s’ouvre notre corps en deux pour laisser sortir le corps dansant. Le cri de JUNKO passe dans l’hyper sonique, cette autre dimension où l’ombre (la voix) se décolle du corps, percutant le corps de l’auditeur là où çà fait mal, la viande. Toute cette matière semble se gonfler, sortir à la façon d’un geyser ou d’une lave, contenu trop longtemps dans l’inconscient de la musique. Corps mutant, alien hybride hantant l’inconscient de la musique électronique, dévastant l’ouïe et la norme. Disque à jouer en enfer avec ceux de Alec Empire / Merzbow, Borbetomagus / Voice Crack, Incapacitants et White House. Michel HENRITZI

Blow Up Magazine (February 2006, Italy)

Nel progetto assieme a Junko, vocalist di Hijokaidan, il 
basco Mattin passa al contrario al rumore assoluto: trenta minuti di 
power electronics con voce isterica sopra, senza apprezzabili 
cambiamenti di sorta. Ai due lavori non manca un certo fascino, ma la 
sensazione è che il tutto – sia sul versante ultraminimale, che su 
quello “massimalista” – suoni ormai un po’ stantio. 

VITAL WEEKLY
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   number   434
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   week      32
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His 'Pinknoise' release with vocalist Junko is the complete opposite
of his 'White Noise' release, which he did with Radu Malfatti (see
Vital Weekly 412). That one was rather quiet compared to the all hell
break loose noise of 'Pinknoise'. This is thirty minute piece of
computer feedback, pitched to the far high end and Junko screaming
her lungs out. Quite an intense album, providing of course you can
sit this all the way through for the full thirty minutes. Not an easy
task. (FdW)

Paristransatlantic ( France Oct. 2004)

Pinknoise is the companion album to last year's Whitenoise outing with Malfatti, and as Mattin's apparently still not hooked up with Whitehouse's William Bennett (not that I have any idea whether he's actually tried to do so) he's settled instead for the inimitable "voice" of Junko Hiroshige of Japanese noisemeisters Hijokaidan. Popping a CD in your machine and seeing it display a total duration of only 30'54" might annoy some folk, but believe me 30'54" of this is quite enough. Suffering from a nasty hangover? Don't fart around with aspirins and OJ, go straight for the last seven minutes of this and turn the wick up as high as you can get away with without getting yourself evicted. Though perhaps not quite as harrowing as Junko's solo LP Sleeping Beauty (Elevage de Poussière EPP09, 2002) - to a certain extent Mattin's wall of screeching computer feedback serves to camouflage the naked terror of Junko's screams - Pinknoise is nonetheless one hell of a cathartic blast of an album. If you're teaching a course in acoustics in the near future and need to find a few good examples of difference tones in action, skip the Tony Conrad stuff and head straight for this. Dan Warburton

Phosphor Magazine ( Berlin Dec. 2004)

Pinknoise is a disturbing noise recording with Junko on voice and Mattin playing feedback. After 10 minutes things are alarmingly similar to the beginning of the recording, and the 30-minute piece maintains a rather disturbing homogenic quality. Changes in the feedback are very gradual and the voice remains more or less the same throughout the recording. Only roughly mid-way through the recording is there an occasional burst of noise.
After about 23 minutes things go up a notch and the noise becomes more erratic. Maybe this is what a Japanese noise torture chamber sounds like, its 15-year old female victim begging for her life, recorded from the outside that is.

GIAG (a.k.a. Gaze Into A Gloom) - electronic music & non-music website. (Latvia)

Oh dear. Yoko Ono screaming into a dentists drill for half an hour. Unfortunately this album failed to hold my attention. This is painful not in the sense that it is challenging or disturbing, but for the fact that it's so undeveloped, it captures none of the anger or pain it tries to express. For all the sonic distortion and screaming the actual content is dull and hardly worth listening to twice. However it does make quite a comedy children's album if you slow it down by an octave. Nothing happens in half an hour, the development is weak, the ideas are not there, it's lazy and sounds horrible. But then if that's what Junko and Mattin wanted to achieve then they have done a good job.
Mark McLaren, 2005

Autsaider issue 5 (Ukrania)

Why noise is pink? I guess because it is released on a compact disc that comes in a pink c-shell. These thirty minutes of crazed noise constructed of computer feedback and hysterical screaming were recorded by Japanese Junko (hysterics) and Basque Mattin (feedback) during one session on the 4th of April 2004 in Tokyo, and this track is heavily contaminated by the Japanese way of making music: noise here is not a decorative element of the music piece, but a self-sufficient sound object from a Japanese torture chamber, although it is not quite clear if the girl screams demented because of the noise, or if the feedback is produced to muffle her begging for mercy addressed at an unknown tormentor.

Roman Pishchalov

Чому нойз рожевий? Тому, що він виданий на компакт-диску, який вкладено у рожеву коробочку (c-shell). На компакт-диску 30 хвилин несамовитого нойзу, виліпленого з комп’ютерного фідбеку та істеричних криків. Записано японкою Юнко (істерики) та іспанцем Маттіном (фідбек) під час сесії 4 квітня 2004 року в Токіо, і сильний японський вплив відчувається: нойз тут не декоративний елемент музичної композиції, але самодостатня звукова скульптура з японської камери тортур. До кінця тільки не зрозуміло, чи то дівчина кричить, зшаленіла від нойзу, чи то фідбек покликаний заглушити її благання про пощаду, звернені до невідомого інквізитора. Роман Піщалов

1000+1tilt (Athens)

You see, the backyard of my house is opposite of a school. at the morning young brats of all ages (from 6 to 12 actually) run screaming in the schoolyard. one of them always talks, screams etc in a particularly irritating high-pitched, at-the-verge-of-nervous-breakdown and always complaining voice [which in my opinion is a proof that a) the parents of this kid are probably fucked up and b) the brat himself is gonna grow to be fucked up as well - but]. some mornings when i do my gardening his voice makes me absentmindedly ponder on the virtues of sterilisation among other things.
now this 30 minutes cd starts with junko screaming some japanese words. and you guessed it: he has very similar tone. the accompanying noise performed by mattin starts with a whitehouse style high frequency feedback and moves on in some modulating noises. by the point that after 25 or so minutes a sonar mayhem is blissfully created the guy has not yet stoped screaming. i wonder if this was a live take or maybe they looped his voice? but i think it was a"real" take. deary deary me.
i think i would love to see this live but (as is common in most noise releases) i am not sure i am gonna play this often. but then again you can call me prejudiced and you'd be right

Degenerate # 4 (Findland)

Utterly minimal release. Packaged in pink plastic case, and completely silver CD has only few lines of small white text on label side so you can identify what album this is.  Hmm.. and what does the texts say? Junko: voice - Mattin: computer feedback. .. computer feedback?!? I sometimes feel amazed, how simple things are turned into nonsense. For feedback, you need pretty much amplified speakers on other end and microphone in other. You can use guitar amp, stereosystem, boombox or whatever. Still, there is some artists who seem to prefer suffocate this number one noise element into laptop form. When I first put this in CD player, I was pleasured with trademark screaming of Junko, but so much irritated with the mechanical & dull computer feedback, that I actually stopped listen the CD and threw it back into "unlistened CD's" pile. It took several months, when gave it another try. And I must say, it is not that bad. As soon as mr. Mattin gets his shit together, there begins actually decent sounding stuff. Just beginning was such a turn-off for me. I must admit that without Junko's vocal contribution, I probably wouldn't listen this ever again. With the vocals, especially closer to the end, I was pleased. (M)

Transmediale Berlin, 2012

In the article “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1948) the “father” of information theory Claude E. Shannon famously said that “every transmission comes with noise”. For Shannon it was the ideal to reduce the noise in order to achieve as effective a transmission of information as possible. Not so for the artists Junko (Japan) and Mattin (Spain). On their collaborative album Pinknoise (named after a signal where the energy per Hz is inversely proportional to the frequency) they engage in half an hour of non-verbal screaming (Junko) and computer feedback (Mattin). Extreme physical performativity (it’s a one take recording!) and cool digital manipulation generate an intense hybrid of human and machine noise. Hard to listen to? Sure!

Dusted Magazine Gregg Kelley

The most intense vocalist on the planet transcends “extended technique” and even aesthetics, tapping straight into a state of primeval psychological ALARM. Mattin’s wall of computer feedback fills out the space, making sure you can’t parry your way out, all without muddying the waters.

You Tube, @happyspandex 2022

Truly the greatest "Tuning a dental drill in a rhesus monkey sanctuary" asmr I've ever listened to.

Sputnik Music

Noise/EAI
A benchmark for unlistenability. Junko in a single half-hour piece puts Diamanda Galas’ entire career to waste. Mattin, although normally quite ineffectual, and a decided outsider in the EAI scene (mainly because of his lack of attention to detail and quite embarrassing political posturing(s)) realistically does very little to mess with things. The feedback he provides (or perhaps more aptly, is responsible for) retains its painful high-pitched whistle for the duration of Pinknoise; noticeable and painful enough to make an impact, but not upfront enough to distract from Junko’s inhuman performance. An anti-musical statement of hatred and distaste for humanity, as portrayed by senseless screaming and tinnitus-inducing feedback. The sonic equivalent of a Diamanda Galas x Plague Mother rape-baby.

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