Here's another older Charnel title that we just picked up, some of the last copies ever, and this one is another crucial disc from one of our psych-guitar/industrial heroes, Mason Jones. Mason's probably best known to a lot of you as one of the founding members of the heavy space-rock band Subarachnoid Space who released several albums on Relapse and Strange Attractors (and who are still kicking and writing killer new tunes, might I say), but before and during his time in Subarachnoid Mason was also working solo, both under the Trance moniker and later just under his own name. In either case, his solo material focused on abstract, usually fully improvised noise jams where he would collaborate with various other heavy rollers in the international noise/psych/improv/weirdo underground. International Incident is a full length album from 1998 that (as the title suggests) features Mason hooking up with some of his comrades in Japan, and the lineup of musicians that he engages with is impressive: KK Null from Zeni Geva/ANP, Kawabata Makoto from Musica Transonic/Mainliner/Acid Mothers Temple, Tsuyama ATsushi of Omoide Hatoba, Koizumi Hajime from Mainliner, JoJo Hiroshige from Hijokaidan, Yamamoto Seiichi from Boredoms/Omoide Hatoba, and Akifumi Nakajima aka Aube all appear on this massive collection of improvisational performances that range from creepy guitar-based ambient soundscapes to manic hardcore drum/guitar free-spazz workouts and immolating heavy psych rock meltdowns.

The performances that are featured on this disc were recorded in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto between 1995 and 1997; the first track features just Mason and KK NUll wrapping their guitars around one another in a sprawling, twelve minute wash of creepy atonal guitar noise, droning feedback and dissonant melodies that sound like they are melting as they drift through space. Very dark and eerie. Then we get another twelve minute-plus track that has Mason in full-jam mode with Kawabata, Tsuyama and Koizumi belting out a cacophonic psych freakout, acid guitar solos dueling and darting around the crash and bash drumming, sometimes pulling back and getting into a more jazzy mode but for the most part laying down ear-splitting garage psych miasma not too far removed from Mainliner or Acid Mothers Temple at their most chaotic, totally awash in feedback and reverb, played at top fucking volume.

The "duet" between Mason and Hijokaidan's JoJo is another dual guitar improv assault, and it's one of the most brutal performances on here. A fifteen minute descent into screaming, mangled guitar noise hell, where the musicians somehow took two guitars and make them sound like twenty, creating dense layers of distorted prog-like noodling and scathing feedback textures, high-end skree so vicious that I can feel my back molars screaming at me, torrents of squiggly, scraping guitar strings shrieking in a hellstorm of maggots and rusted metal. But then towards the end it sounds like hints of melody and actual riffing can be heard underneath of it all, and the track begins to transform into a massive buzzing space-drone, the guitars melting together into a single roaring tone while scratchy electronic noises circle overheard. Heavy! That one is definitely the noisiest performance that's featured here.

The 1995 recording from Osaka has Mason on drums for a change, playing with Yamamato Seiichi from Boredoms on guitar, and their improv set moves from fx-overloaded guitar feedback rushing over heavy percussive pummel to massive tribal beats alongside skronky psych soloing. Mason is no slough on the kit, and his muscular, hypnotic drumming anchors Yamamato's distorted, Hendrix-gone-nuclear guitar noise with rolling tribal beats. And the last track is the live collaboration between Aube and Mason...guitar fuses with electronics and oscillators for a sweeping acid nightmare, looped guitars cycling into infinity, piled high in unwinding clots of noodling and feedback over apocalyptic klaxon blasts of distorted electronics and high-end skree.

Obviously essential if yer as big of a fan of the heavy psych mutations of Mason Jones, but this rare disc is something that Japanese noise and psych fans will want to check out to. The disc is packaged in a full color digipack.