Hanatarash
Snot-nosed. Fucking snot-nosed. Hanatarash pours out of your mouth like a coarse slur aimed directly at the son of a bitch who just laid his fist into your jaw. Historically-speaking, Hanatarash (Hanatarashi [literally meaning "snot-nosed"] as known earlier on in their development) were an outfit that developed from Osaka, Japan in 1984. Yamantaka Eye, who later started Boredoms, and Mitsuru Tabata made up the original line-up of this front (to refer to them as a band seems unwarranted or insult. Somewhere between these two junctures. Maybe more simply like a half-yellowed bruise that didn't hurt as much as it does now when it was a deep hematoma blue. Just before the heal). From its early, fierce development the duo were known for starting all-out, throwdown, drag-out war with the crowd present to see them. However, the waves were not so intense in its early stages. Using machinery and tools to create sonic baths to drench the crowd, soon the two became more violent in their performances (more especially the young Eye). Contact mic-ing and beating a dead cat lead to Eye nearly severing his leg off with a circular saw during a live performance to sheets of glass and oil drums being tossed into the crowd to a cruscendo of blowing through a venue's rear wall with a backhoe. An unimaginable presence of violence and noise brought out crowds to see such a sight, though only after having signed a waiver to excuse the onslaught and total abuse offered by Hanatarash. The faction was finally stopped when in the late 80s a ban was placed on them and their performances. Years passed and Hanatarash had the ban temporarily lifted to play a handful of shows so long as they promised to leave the destruction behind. Hanatarash spoke volumes with their presence in the mid to late 80s by defining what extreme an artist or artists are able to extend themselves to. Now as noise makes its way into pop culture sound and punk icons have made themselves known by similar trademarks, Hanatarash seems a vague and distant past of an extreme. A ghost of what boundary had been hurdled over in simulacra and sound. Still, it is undeniable how powerful their violence and sound was and to what extent how many in the modern avant-garde world will never be able to duplicate it.
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