Hijokaidan @ Tusk Festival 2014

In Tokyo in 1979, Jojo Hiroshige was trying to steer his band Rasenkaidan into more freeform and extreme directions. After one particularly caustic rehearsal, member Ken’ichi Takayama remarked that it sounded more like Hijokaidan (emergency staircase) than Rasenkaidan (spiral staircase) and the King Of Noise was born. Initially dabbling with Faust and Hawkwind covers, Jojo quickly led the alternating combo into uncharted extremes, inspired notably by his love of the LAFMS noise-chestra Airway, developing the Hijokaidan sound that will still knock you to the back of the room any time you see them live. Into their 4th decade, the Hijokaidan core centres around Jojo, the extreme vocals of his wife Junko and the legendary table-top noise of Toshiji Mikawa. Jojo’s musical interests remain as open and diverse as ever, hence recent dabbling with ultra-mainstream Japanese pop-ettes BiS and their BiS-kaidan collaboration, a project latterly morphing into the Hatsune-kaidan project you’ll see live at TUSK too. But no