Another kind of "Group Ongaku"
This Yoko Ono thread reminded me that she and other Japanese artists, mostly loosely part of Fluxus, appear on UBUWEB:
Group Ongaku
Yoshi WadaIt was the men and women who made up the insane music concrete troupe Group Ongaku, whose ultra extreme and instant form of happening sounds had filled up the 1960 LP MUSIC OF GROUP ONGAKU, whom we can thank for the later evolution of the later Taj Mahal Travellers sound. Group Ongaku's brutal muse was more sonique-concrete than musique-concrete. Opening with kitchen sounds, bottles clinked together, wild spaced out women's voices, hoovers, insane pianos, shortwave radio, tannoy voices, etc., it was the performances of the musicians of the ensemble itself that set MUSIC OF GROUP ONGAKU apart from every other bunch.
Yoko OnoLament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile rewards the listener with a series of awe-inspiring vocal chants, a side-long marathon for your ears that comes close to delivering the power of a shamanistic trip. In fact Yoshi himself describes something approaching a hallucinogenic state as he stood there wailing his baritone drones against the tiled wall of an empty swimming pool for hours.
Takayuki Nakano's Sound Poetry
The founder of Group Ongaku, Yasunao Tone, is still going strong and appeared earlier on FG here. Yoko Ono also on FG here
