The Tokyo artist who emerged in the first wave of Japanese noise as Violent Onsen Geisha, became Hair Stylistics in 1997, and built a parallel career as a prizewinning novelist.
Hair Stylistics is the current name of Masaya Nakahara, born in Tokyo on 4 June 1970, whom I keep at Tier II. He began making music with a multitracker and sampler around 1988, and as Violent Onsen Geisha he was part of the first wave of Japanese noise, his first split LP issued on RRRecords in 1990. Alongside Merzbow, Hijokaidan and Masonna, the project gained international attention as Japanoise broke globally in the early 1990s.
His method set him apart from the start. Where much of the scene pursued pure abrasion, Nakahara worked in cut-up and collage: sampled junk, turntable scratch, snatches of appropriated pop and sudden eruptions of noise, a high-and-low postmodern mix. He drew openly on Dada sound collage, Jamaican dub, Fluxus auto-destruction and the art-damaged spirit of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, and the approach prefigured the mash-up sensibility of later generations.
In 1997 he changed the project's name to Hair Stylistics, and Custom Cook Confused Death in 2004 marked the new run; he has since been prolific in both records and live work. The noise career has always run alongside another: Nakahara is a celebrated novelist, awarded the Mishima Prize in 2001 and further literary prizes after, as well as a film critic. He has toured with Sonic Youth and Beck.
My reading. Hair Stylistics is at Tier II as a first-wave Japanoise figure with a distinct collage method and an unusually broad reach across music, fiction and film.
VAGO · c. the Anthropocene