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With Musica Transonic, three giants of the Japanese underground Nanjo Asahito (High Rise), Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple), and Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) pushed the rock power trio to its absolute, overdriven limits. Supercharged with complex rhythms, blistering psychedelic guitars and heavy bass attacks, the group's unmatched sonics retain the ability to shock even now, 25 years after this, their self titled debut, was originally released by P.S.F. Japan.

A mystifying work of Japanese avant-garde shamanism, Toho Sara's 1995 debut introduced a radical new sound from Asahito Nanjo (High Rise), Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and Hisashi Yasuda - playing an array of ancient instruments including tabla, piri, harmonium, biwa, shakujo and hansho the group evokes otherworldly ritual music, meditative and haunting.

Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970's, his 2004 P.S.F. album "far and wee" was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations - Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrument's true masters and innovators. In 2004, Kazuo Imai (Marginal Consort, East Bionic Symphonia) recorded a series of nylon-string classical guitar improvisations at the request of P.S.F. founder Hideo Ikeezumi. "far and wee," the resulting album, vibrates with the inherent duality of nylon: the strings stretch and snap back like rubber tautened and released, and paint the softest of caresses in silky washes. Imai was a student of two of the foundational artists of the Japanese Avant-garde: Masayuki Takayanagi, the pioneering free-impovising guitarist and Takehisa Kosugi, the visionary Fluxus composer also known for his work with Group Ongaku and The Taj Mahal Travelers. A sense of inquisitiveness about how far he can push himself and every part of the guitar pervades these performances as Imai makes everything from the pegs to the bridge to the strap pin explode with resonate. For over 20 years, Imai has been a driving force behind Marginal Consort a collective of Japanese avant-garde musicians devoted to collective improvisation, known for their incredibly layered and varied annual performances that last for three continuous hours. Using a blend of homemade and traditional instruments, electronics, and sculptural and natural forms, they create auditory experiences of exceptionally unique color and vibration. The same dedication to vitality and variety is found in Imai's guitar music, and it is via the guitar that his vast studies in philosophy and music come together in extreme focus, allowing him to tease and extend the history of the instrument while interrogating the limits of its edge. "far and wee" continues the tradition of the SOLOWORKS concerts that Imai has been giving for several decades, and allows the listener to breathe in the unique space of Imai's thought processes. He attacks the instrument: the nylon strings explode against the guitar. And he caresses it, soothing each centimeter of string with delicate force and concentration. The range of emotions encountered is limitless, and yet all are unexpectedly inter-related. Reflecting on his musical philosophy, Imai states "as I move through the world I create vibrations, which I then connect to the phenomenon of sound. That's the only way I can sustain the reality and the intensity of the sounds I create, as I exist in this dubious world of ours, exchanging money for goods, eating adulterated food, kissing my lover, weeping. That's the only way I can make those sounds resonate with other who rotate together with me on this planet.

GO HIRANO's third album, Corridor of Daylights, is a quiet work of dreamlike brilliance. A home field recording where fragile piano melodies float alongside wind-chimes and wistful melodicas _ insects hum in the distance and a breeze gently rustles as summer day eases toward evening. Originally released in Japan by P.S.F. Records in 2004, Corridor of Daylights is a beautiful, soulful dispatch from early aughts Tokyo. In the already eclectic spectrum of music released by the revered Tokyo based P.S.F. label, Go Hirano's three releases are true outliers in the catalog's thirty year history. In contrast to the loud or more maximalist rock releases by Keiji Haino and High Rise or the wild historical free jazz of Kaoru Abe and Masayuki Takayanagi, Go Hirano's music floats in the gentler waters of the sonic palate. Hirano's work emerges from a more intimate kind of intensity; he creates sparsely contemplative and alternately playful music that at times evokes Erik Satie or even Hiroshi Yoshimura. A multi-instrumentalist and composer, Hirano's main tools are piano, melodica, percussion and the spaces in between the repetitions. He utilizes slight variations of gently mapped out introspection while embracing a more organic sense of openness and feeling. Speaking of his approach when he first starting out Hirano states "It seemed like a lot of musicians were aiming for perfection, but the more they applied themselves to that pursuit, the less interesting the music became. The most important thing for me was that initial, unadorned expression, regardless of whether or not the playing was technically impressive or not." From an early age Hirano immersed himself in a Japanese musical underground that seemed to embrace the entirety of radical and new musics emerging around the world during the 1970's and 80's. From new wave to noise, ambient industrial and the avant garde and his eventual discovery of P.S.F.'s record store Modern Music, Hirano began to develop an intensely perceptive ear. In one of his earliest musical forays, Hirano created music for an experimental butoh dance troupe that toured in Japan and overseas in Canada and the U.S. during the late 80's/ early 90's. Later he would collaborate with White Heaven, one of Japan's most legendary psychedelic rock groups. His first album Distance released on P.S.F. in 1993 reflected a more avant garde, free form approach. During this time Hirano began to realize that his truest form of musical expression lay along a different path from that of his peers. He set aside rock's raw energies and the draw of abstract dissonance for more melodic, quiet sounds. "I felt like jazz and classical were too excessive, or packed too tightly with the requirements of the genre. So I thought there should be a simpler approach that integrated elements of classical and jazz but only as needed, in moderation," Hirano said of his musical intentions. To his surprise, Hirano found that P.S.F. founder Hideo Ikeezumi, embraced this new direction music and offered to release his second album 1995's beautifully melodic, minimalist Reflection of Dreams. Released nearly a decade later the music found on Hirano's third and final album for P.S.F. Corridor of Daylights presents a deeply developed but deceptively simple musical vision. The songs are compact and stripped down to an elegant simplicity, melodic sketches emerging from domestic country-side field recordings. Speaking of his approach on the album Hirano says "I wanted to present each song as a sketch, in the sense that I was whittling down the feeling of each space I recorded in. The recording process was fragmentary - I recorded each song in a different space at a different time - but I wanted the songs to play off of one another in a way that made the album resonate as a whole."