Unbalance Records is the Osaka-based independent label founded 1980 by Naoto Hayashi (d. 2003), then the leader of the Osaka band Auschwitz. The label operated for about four years before being effectively absorbed into Alchemy Records when Hayashi joined Jojo Hiroshige in cofounding the latter imprint in June 1984. The catalogue is small - roughly a dozen releases - but structurally definitional: Unbalance issued the two opening recorded documents of Hijokaidan and constituted, in the words of one Kansai chronicler, "the only real independent label in Kansai" during its operational years.
The pre-history runs through Hayashi's own band Auschwitz, the long-running Osaka punk-and-noise group whose driving force across the 1980s was the editorial sensibility that would shortly produce the label. Hayashi had begun documenting the Kansai scene almost as soon as he began performing in it. The August 1980 meeting with Jojo Hiroshige at which the latter pitched the release of a recording of Hijokaidan's ACB Hall performance constitutes, on the Bureau's reading, the moment at which Japanese noise's recorded life properly begins.
The opening release was Shumatsu Shorijo (終末処理場, "Sewage Treatment Plant"), the December 1980 split LP whose four sides documented Hijokaidan (still credited under their original name "Fushoku no Marie" / "Corroded Marie"), NG, and Jurajium. The Hijokaidan side captured the June 1980 performance at ACB Hall, Shinjuku, that Toshiji Mikawa had effectively concluded the early-Hijokaidan lineup with. The album was reviewed in Fool's Mate magazine by a young Masami Akita - that is to say, by the future Merzbow, before Akita's own recorded project had taken public form. The Bureau notes the curious editorial symmetry: Japanese noise's two founding figures appear in the recorded literature first in the same review, on opposite sides of the page.
The catalogue's defining document is Zouroku no Kibyo (蔵六の奇病, "Zouroku's Strange Disease"), Hijokaidan's first proper LP, released April 1982 and compiled from 1980–1981 live recordings at Sozo Dojo Osaka, Shinjuku Loft, Mantohihi, Takutaku Kyoto, Keio University and Doshisha University. The cover used Hideshi Hino's horror-manga illustration of the same title. The record predates Sonic Youth's debut by a year and the corresponding Swans LP also by a year, and is one of the holy grails of Japanese noise. The later reissue history runs through multiple Alchemy CD editions, the German Vinyl-On-Demand 2-LP set (2006), and the Urashima 40th-anniversary single-LP reissue (2022).
The catalogue routed Hayashi's editorial interests through the Osaka and Kyoto punk-and-no-wave scenes. Yoran's Montparnasse 12" - a cut-up of French cinema recordings, "a walk in Paris somewhere between the 30's and the 50's made by a Japanese lost soul" - remains one of the more sought-after Japanese rarities of the period. Auschwitz cassettes documented Hayashi's own band. Hijokaidan's early live-tape catalogue circulated through Unbalance. The roster routed through bands like Upmaker, Hillgate (later Honey & Costume), NG, and Hoburakin, and a distribution arrangement was struck for Doll magazine's City Rocker label.
The Unbalance-programmed live event was "Unbalance Day" at the week-long "Flight 7 Days" festival at Shinjuku Loft, Tokyo, August 1981. The bill was Hayashi's own selection: Hijokaidan (nine members at this stage, still pissing and vomiting and throwing fish, in one Kansai chronicler's account), NG (a strange heavy band somewhere between noise and electropop), and Hoburakin (whose bizarre sense of humour seemed to mystify Tokyo audiences). One hundred people attended; the label lost money on guarantees; the bands went home still stinking of fish and fermented soybeans, satisfied with their representation of Kansai.
When Hayashi joined Hiroshige in June 1984 to cofound Alchemy Records, the Unbalance catalogue's infrastructure was effectively transferred. The new imprint absorbed Hayashi's editorial role, the Hijokaidan-catalogue (reissued on Alchemy CD across the later decades), and the Kansai-roster relationships. Unbalance itself wound down. Hayashi continued with Auschwitz and his Alchemy editorial role until his death in 2003; the 20th anniversary of which was marked by P-Vine's 2023 Auschwitz live-archive 2-CD and the parallel Doomsday Processing Plant reissue of the 1980 founding split.
The Bureau's editorial reading: Unbalance Records is filed at Tier II as the pre-history of the Kansai noise tradition's recorded documentation. The small catalogue, the four-year operational life, and the absorption into Alchemy on the latter's founding mean the imprint sits one tier below its sustaining successor; but the position is essential rather than provisional. Without Unbalance and Hayashi's editorial decision to release the 1980 Hijokaidan recording, the recorded life of Japanese noise would have begun later, elsewhere, and under different editorial supervision.