Masahiko Ohno's Osaka project, founded 1984: harsh noise wrung from self-built, bizarrely modified multi-neck guitars, one of the earliest Japanese noise acts and a pillar of the Kansai scene.
Solmania is the guitar-noise project of Masahiko Ohno, founded in Osaka in 1984, and the Bureau files it at Tier II as one of the earliest Japanese noise acts and a pillar of the Kansai scene. It began as Ohno's solo unit and became a guitar duo from the mid-1990s with Katsumi Sugahara, formerly of the punk band Outo.
The project's signature is its instrument. Ohno builds his own electric guitars from spare parts, heavily modified into multi-neck and harp shapes with extra necks, strings and pickups in unusual places; he has built nine over the years. From these he generates noise live and in the studio, supplemented by tape, radio, metal, turntable and voice. The early recordings sit closer to post-No-Wave skronk; the later ones reach the point where the guitar stops sounding like a guitar at all.
Most Solmania records appeared through Osaka's Alchemy Records, where Ohno also worked as the graphic designer responsible for nearly the entire catalogue, while his own Works Fatagaga label handled tapes. The discography runs from Highdrophobia (1986) and Morphine Nocturne (1992) through Trembling Tongues (1995), the first with Sugahara, to the later Kill (2016).
Solmania appeared on the canonical Osaka noise compilations of the early 1990s alongside Merzbow, C.C.C.C., Masonna and Incapacitants, placing it at the centre of the Kansai noise world this archive documents.
The Bureau files Solmania at Artists · Tier II as a formative Japanese noise act and the clearest case in the catalogue of the guitar, rather than electronics or feedback, as the engine of the noise.