Tatsuya Yoshida discovered prog rock as a teenager, instilling a deep love of complex structures and irregular time signatures, but it was listening to Magma and This Heat that inspired him to start making music of his own. As a composer, drummer and vocalist, he’s spent much of his career pursuing a maximalist vision with minimal means, most famously with his bass/drums duo Ruins. As he says in an Invisible Jukebox interview in The Wire 470, he wanted “to cut things down to the core, then the rest was just fighting spirit.” That spirit has propelled Yoshida through dozens of bands and collaborations with a who’s who of the Japanese underground, as well as fellow travellers ranging from Mani Neumeier to John Zorn.

YBO²
“Amerika” (Live)
From un
(Transrecords/Fool’s Mate, 2017)



Yoshida’s closest brush with mainstream success came early in his career with YBO², an eclectic rock outfit led by Masashi Kitamura, founding editor of music magazine Fool’s Mate. The group were at the forefront of Japan’s 1980s indie boom, a parallel world in which prog had never gone out of style. YBO²’s studio albums never quite captured the ferocity of their live performances, heard in this blistering rendition of the opening track from their 1986 debut LP, Alienation. Yoshida’s thunderous drumming is complemented by abrasive guitar work by KK Null, who would later recruit him to play in Zeni Geva.

Ruins
“Power Shift”
From Burning Stone
(Shimmy Disc, 1992)



For many fans, bassist Ryuichi Masuda’s tenure with Ruins represents the band’s quintessential lineup. Their first album together marks a midpoint between the noisy, lo-fi stylings of the first few Ruins records and the increasingly complex, more slickly produced music that was to come. All the hallmarks are here: the whiplash tempo changes, off-kilter time signatures and Yoshida’s irrepressible gibberish vocals. The preponderance of heavy riffs, given extra oomph by Masuda’s fuzz bass, reveal that Yoshida is also partial to a bit of Sabbath. “Power Shift”, on which both bass and vocals are run through pitch-shifters, is a lysergic highlight.

Musica Transonic
“Αυγυβριουσ”
From Musica Transonic
(PSF, 1995)

The Japanese underground spawned a slew of fearsomely heavy bands during the late 1980s and 90s, and Yoshida seemed to play in at least half of them. Musica Transonic, a self-described “contemporary improvised heavy psychedelic group” with bassist Asahito Nanjo and guitarist Makoto Kawabata, took the power-trio format of Blue Cheer and Cream and pushed it way, way into the red. “Αυγυβριουσ” is a standout from their 1995 debut album – given an expanded reissue by Black Editions in 2020 that slightly dialled down the overblown sound of the original, without dimming the intensity of the playing.

Zubi Zuva
“Danzotto”
From Jehovah
(Tzadik, 1996)

Magma may be one of Yoshida’s most formative influences, but he drew more inspiration from Christian Vander’s vocals than his drumming. Perhaps the best example of his larynx-mangling exploits is this a cappella trio with Hideki Takahashi and Yukifumi Shibasaki. Zubi Zuva’s songs – most of which are just repeating the group’s moniker, or reciting lists of place names – mash together doo-wop, kecak, Gregorian chant and speaking in tongues vocalisations, to lunatic effect. In a discography full of outré moments, Jehovah must be one of the weirdest.

Masabumi Kikuchi The Slash Trio
“Spiral”
From Slash 1º
(PJL, 2001)

Yoshida had already clashed with improv heavyweights such as John Zorn, Derek Bailey and Kazutoki Umezu when he joined this trio led by veteran jazz pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, yet it still took some of his fanbase by surprise. Instigated by Kikuchi’s bassist nephew, Masaaki, the Slash Trio did free jazz with a prog rock pulse, playing off the contrast between Yoshida’s drumming – all sharp angles and complex metres – and the bandleader’s infallible sense of swing. The difference is most pronounced on their debut album, which anticipates the way jazz drumming has evolved over the subsequent two decades.

Koenjhyakkei
“Fettim Paillu”
From Angherr Shisspa (Revisited)
(Skin Graft, 2019)



Zeuhl has been a constant touchstone for Yoshida, no more so than with Koenjihyakkei, whose expanded lineup enables him to push things to operatic heights. Formed in 1991, the group’s membership seems to change with each album, but they reached a zenith of sorts with 2005’s Angherr Shisspa, which benefits from the strident soprano vocals of Kyoto Yamamoto. On “Fettim Paillu,” a Slapp Happy-esque intro leads into hulking riffs and mass vocals redolent of Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh-era Magma, only to pare things back to sparse clarinet jazz before returning for a raucous ensemble finish.

Korekyojinn
“Isotope”
From Jackson
(Magaibutsu, 2006)



With Ruins, Yoshida deemed a guitarist superfluous, but Korekyojinn shows what he can do with a third member onboard. One of his most enduring bands, the trio for many years consisted of Bondage Fruit guitarist Natsuki Kido and bassist Mitsuru Nasuno (Altered States), though the latter was recently replaced by Kei Koganemaru. Ditching his trademark vocals, Yoshida serves up a virtuosic brand of jazz inflected rock that’s not so far removed from the brutal prog of The Flying Luttenbachers, though never quite as chaotic. Larded with dizzying polyrhythms, tracks like “Isotope” invite comparison to the mathiest of math rock, and Kido is on stellar form.

Sanhedrin
「許さなくていいよ」という認識の思い込みの呪縛からいつ抜け出られるものか?
From さあ 真ん中だ どんな感じ
(Breathing Bass, 2008)

A 2002 duo album with Keiji Haino, Until Water Grasps Flame, led to this improv power trio (also sometimes billed as Sanhedolin – and, at one point, Sun Head Ring) with Yoshida’s Korekyojinn bandmate Mitsuru Nasuno on bass. The latter would later go on to play with Haino in Fushitsusha, but Sanhedrin are an altogether different prospect. Yoshida’s drumming keeps the music on a rolling boil, while Nasuno often takes the lead as Haino summons vast squalls of guitar noise. On this track from 2008, they seem to be working their way towards noise rock nirvana, only to switch suddenly into a stuttering funk groove.

Ruins Alone
“Stonehenge”
From Ruins Alone
(Skin Graft/Magaibutsu, 2011)



After going through four different bassists, Yoshida continued Ruins as a solo project, playing to a pre-recorded backing track – which by this point seemed like the only thing that could keep up with him. While the Ruins Alone experience is best enjoyed live, this 2011 album – consisting mostly of back catalogue staples recreated in chintzy synth renditions – packs a surprising punch. That’s testament both to the strength of the compositions and to Yoshida’s spirited performances. What could easily have degenerated into a glorified karaoke session ends up feeling like a pure distillation of his art.

Tatsuya Yoshida & Risa Takeda
“MACV”
From Nervous System Error
(Magaibutsu, 2022)

One of Yoshida’s most fruitful creative partnerships in recent years has been with Risa Takeda, a classically educated pianist with a finely honed appreciation for Frank Zappa. Unlike some of his duo collaborations, Takeda already speaks Yoshida’s language, meaning they can skip the pleasantries and launch straight into intense bouts of improvised prog jazz splatter. Their pandemic-era performances are exhaustively documented on Bandcamp, where they’ve released two dozen live albums to date. Nervous System Error – on which Takeda deploys swooshing space synths and uses effect pedals to give the music a shifting, hall-of-mirrors quality – is a good place to start.

Read James Hadfield's Invisible Jukebox interview with Tatsuya Yoshida inside The Wire 470. Wire subscribers can also read the interview online via the digital library.