A couple of years ago, I started to get a sense of deja-vu while loitering on the weirdo fringes of Japan's club scene. Whenever I asked DJs or producers what homegrown music they were most excited about at the moment, the same name kept coming up: Goat.
The Osaka quartet (stylized "goat," in a vain attempt to avoid confusion with the similarly named Swedish psych-rockers) had been busy frazzling minds with its ultraminimalist brain-funk. Using a deceptively simple lineup of guitar, bass, drums and saxophone, the band conjured a rhythmic assault with a pointillist rigor that verged on inhuman, like an alien funk outfit playing Steve Reich, or U.S. math-rockers Battles after a Ritalin overdose.
Koshiro Hino, Goat's guitarist and sonic architect, explains that he discovered power in restraint: using melodic instruments as percussive elements, paring the drum kit back to just a snare, kick and hi-hat.