Kohei Gomi’s Pain Jerk was part of a second wave of Japanese noise, which picked up on the possibilities offered by figures like Merzbow, Masonna and Solmania. Indeed, Gomi built direct links with his precursors, joining Mikawa and Kosakai in Incapacitants for a time. Pain Jerk’s noise has a particularly corrosive, corroded attack – sometimes it feels like a blunt tool, worrying away at the same terrain, trying to get to the very core of the matter. The pulsing overwhelm of the noise in this particular video, captured relatively recently in Oslo, Norway, makes clear why Gomi has developed such a strong working relationship with English artist Russell Haswell. And in a 2012 interview with ATTN: magazine, Gomi explained the drive behind his noise perfectly: “The situation of a sound that is so terribly loud as to abolish all meaning is good.”