K2

Kimihide Kusafuka has recorded as K2 since the early 1980s, releasing chiefly through his own label, Kinky Musik Institute, founded in 1983. Rather than psych-rock-derived noise textures, K2’s work is built from crashing, creaking, and scraping recordings of metal and machinery — work later described as earning Kusafuka a reputation as noise’s “king of metal junk” — collected on releases including the four-part The Rust (1996) and the Early Kinky Works 1983–1988 compilation, reissued in 2025 with remastering by Grand Richardson and packaging design by John Wiese.