NHK'Koyxen

The third issue of Kouhei Matsunaga's Dance Classics series for the PAN imprint expands ever so slightly upon the brand of dented-and-scratched electronic music he has developed on earlier volumes. A prolific producer who records under a seemingly endless list of monikers, Matsunaga is a jack-of-all-trades, being an accomplished illustrator and a former student of architecture. His list of collaborators spans generations and genres: Matsunaga has worked with Conrad Schnitzler, Merzbow, Sensational (formerly known as Torture, of Jungle Brothers fame) and High Priest from Antipop Consortium. All of these elements — his extracurricular activities and his choice of co-conspirators — have been infused into his work as NHK'Koyxen. Matsunaga has deconstructed dance-based electronic music, injecting the resulting sonic DNA with a sense of randomness. Beats stutter, collide and nearly vanish while brain-melting melodies fall over each other like moving fractal images. This syncopation keeps the music from hypnotizing the listener, producing an array of singularities ripe for discovery and appreciation.