Ground Zero

Today you find yourself in an aggressive mood. A car's siren woke you up from a bad dream featuring your mother being gang-banged by a group of fourteen dwarfs. Your girlfriend just told you she's a lesbian, your dog is basically a cat, you find that you are adopted, and that NOISE of that car's siren drives you mad. Wait a moment, it is not only a car, it's a whole army marching down your very own street. You are asking yourself what the hell are they doing here, but you cannot finish your thought, as your upstairs neighbor has just activated his newly purchased vacuum cleaner. The noise from upstairs would be very dominant, unless the slightly retarded son of Mr. and Mrs. Rabinovich would not be practicing the drums all afternoon, and from the next-door apartment the old and deaf Mrs. Kavanova would not scream at her dead husband all day.

Such things, and more, occur at the same time in Ground Zero music, a Japanese "Hard Rock-Noise-Electronic" group.
As it is constantly multi-layered and so many things happen simultaneously, your ear is being assaulted by this hardcore blend of sounds- including car noises, sirens, all kinds of drums, turntables (played by Otomo Yushihide, also very famous in the scene on his own), occasional screams in Japanese, original samples, lots of feedback, great saxophone playing and lots of other unrecognizable noises. Basically, All-in-one. Or, in other words, everything needed for your neighbor to finally file a law suit against you and convince the others to get you out of the building, pronto.

The group worked during the 90's and has released 6 official CD's- Ground Zero, Null and Void, Revolutionary Pekinese Opera, Plays standards, Consume Red and Conflagration (most are available on iTunes). Their most ambitious and perhaps best well-known project was Consume Red, a 57 minute continuous piece, which begins with a repetitive sample of a Korean reed instrument. The music develops very slowly, almost meditatively. Only after 30 minutes sax and drums join the samples, and in the last 15 minutes you get an almost shockingly dense cloud of noise.

I, for one, prefer their slightly more accessible work, "plays standards". As the name suggests, each one of the 12 tracks is freely based on a different song (most are not that famous, except of "Those were the days" and "I say a little prayer"). Although each one of the tracks is very original and unique in its sound and mood (one track stands out- "The Bath of Surprise", which has been recorded in a bathtub), apart from two (relatively) quite songs, it is very noisy and it's generally hard to listen to the whole album from start to end.
This music is not recommended for everyone. However, it is highly recommended for anyone who can handle it, for its great originality and impressive sound structure. It is hard and sometimes unbearable- But isn't life the same?