Hiroshi Hasegawa's solo project, begun 1993: vintage analogue-synthesiser noise ranging from drifting space music to psychedelic harsh noise, the cosmic counterpart to his work in C.C.C.C.
Astro is the solo noise project of Hiroshi Hasegawa, begun in 1993, and the Bureau files it at Tier II as the synthesiser wing of the Japanese noise tradition. Hasegawa had been active in noise since the early 1980s, on voice and percussion, before forming the group C.C.C.C. in 1989; Astro is the disciplined solo counterpart to that band's overload.
Where much Japanese noise is built from feedback, junk metal or guitar, Astro is built almost entirely on vintage analogue synthesisers, including EMS and Moog instruments. It is a synthesist's approach to the form, and it gives the project a distinct character: the work ranges across a wide field, from drifting space music to psychedelically tinged harsh noise, favouring the cosmic and swirling over the purely abrasive.
C.C.C.C. (Cosmic Coincidence Control Center) remains Hasegawa's main band, an improvisational mass-noise act of very loud sound, and Astro reads as its focused solo shadow. He has also run the solo guitar unit Mortal Vision since 1990, and has collaborated widely across the international noise scene under both the Astro name and his own.
The project sits naturally beside the other C.C.C.C.-adjacent files in this archive and beside the equipment pages, given how central specific synthesisers are to its sound.
The Bureau files Astro at Artists · Tier II as the synthesiser strain of Japanoise: the cosmic, analogue-driven alternative to the harsh wall and the feedback schools, and the solo vehicle of a central figure of the Japanese underground.