Melt-Banana, xbxrx, Count Dracula’s Weed Smuggling Jam Engine

There should be a natural law which states that the more digital disillusionment permeates a given area, the greater and more proficient its experimental noise output will be. For more than a decade, Japan has led the world in abstract musical exports thanks to artists such as Ruins and Merzbow. In this realm, Tokyo’s Melt-Banana tends to lean more toward the Boredoms than Boris, condensing a media-saturated culture into minute-long blasts of erratic tech-punk led by vocalist Yasuko O. who speaks, squeaks and creaks foreign observations like Alvin and the Chipmunks on acid. The group cut 1996’s brilliant Scrach or Sniff with avant savants Steve Albini and Jim O’Rourke, recorded a Peel session, contributed the song “Hair-Cat (Cause the Wolf Is a Cat!)” to Cartoon Network’s Perfect Hair Forever and recently released their eighth noise bomb enigma, Bambi’s Dilemma, perhaps their most perplexing and polished effort to date, on their A-Zap Records. MxBx’s American equivalent, xbxrx, will open along with Austin-based Count Dracula’s Weed Smuggling Jam Engine.