OHAYO!HOAHIO!

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To all intents and purposes, this eccentric, perverse and altogether delightful Tzadik album, the second by all-female Japanese noise-pop-improv trio HOAHIO, is actually a posthumous release. The group came together in 1997 as a trio of singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Haco (of After Dinner fame), the extraordinary koto abuser Michiyo Yagi and sampler specialist Sachiko M (perhaps still best known for her long-standing association - in various contexts - with Otomo Yoshihide). In the three years since they've managed to record two albums (97's Happy Mail, Amoeba Records, Japan) and this follow up, tour Europe, Canada and Japan and, I'm afraid, split up. The highly recommended Improvised Music from Japan website tells us that as of Spring this year HOAHIO became a loose collective of two, three or four female musicians led by Haco and that this particular trio will no longer perform.

More's the pity, on the strength of OHAYO!HOAHIO! which somehow blends these three musicians' highly diverse talents, inclinations and instrumental resources with apparent ease. In terms of tone, the album runs the gamut from cute kitsch to angry dissonance. Generically, it's as happy to reference bubble gum pop or three-minute punk as it is improv, folk music and minimalist electronica. The results could be argued as throw-away, but I don't think so. There's a mutual respect and shared sense of fun and even wonder here that lift the music above the merely playful (though it's that, too, very often). I'm hooked.