For many, Masonna (alongside Merzbow) is the most emblematic, representative Japanese noise performer. It’s partly down to the immediacy of his legendary live act – exhaustingly physical, the short and sharp shocks to the collective system offered by a Masonna gig somehow manage to harness the great velocity and thrill of rock, but without all the excess flab that so often goes with the form. The project of Takushi ‘Maso’ Yamazaki, Masonna began in 1987 with a series of cassettes full of formative experiments – it took a while for his art to really take shape, but by the time of the early-to-mid 1990s, with albums like Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Aureole and Inner Mind Mystique, he’d settled on a fiercely streamlined approach, where torrents of gasping feedback meet extremist vocalisations and air-crinkling, psychedelically detourned distortion. It’s in live performance that Masonna is truly in his element, though – immaculately dressed, the direct interaction between sound and movement has Yamazaki playing jump-cut edits in real time. There’s plenty of great Masonna footage out there, but this clip from his 25th anniversary show at Bears, Osaka, feels somehow definitive. Yamazaki seems to be kicking back into action recently, too, with a reissue set of his ‘80s Coquette cassettes, and a new project, Controlled Death.

• Jon Dale