Quality control is something few recording artists manage gracefully. What back catalog doesn't contain its share of half-realized (or half-baked) ideas or downright duds?
Avant-garde musicians, with their preference for music's lawless outer fringes, are often the worst offenders: producing masturbation masquerading as music. Thus the recent releases by two of Japan's leading experimental guitarists, Seiichi Yamamoto and Kazuhisa Uchihashi, are startling both in their diversity and their sheer quality.
Listening to the new albums from Yamamoto, one is left wondering if there is anything the man cannot do. He is involved in so many projects that reporting on Japan's musical cutting edge is like stalking him. It's not just quantity either, though Yamamoto has a superhuman ability to record and perform. His projects are apt to be outstanding in their respective genres -- or paradigm shifting unto themselves.