Pain Jerk

Kohei Gomi has recorded as Pain Jerk since the 1980s, one of the more prolific and influential noise artists of the 1990s and one of the leading figures — alongside Merzbow and Kazumoto Endo — of noise’s “dynamic” style: dense, loop-driven pieces built from cycling and layering rather than sustained drone. Gomi owns the noise label AMP, through which much of his catalog, including Spitfire (1997) and Mission Invisible – Kill the Poor (1997), has appeared.

Gomi split the 1996 release Fragmentagraph with Monde Bruits, and recorded with Aube’s Akifumi Nakajima as Meiji Jingu and, joined further by Solmania’s Masahiko Ohno and Toshiji Mikawa of Incapacitants, as the four-way Atsuta Jingu. With Mikawa and C.C.C.C.’s Fumio Kosakai, Gomi also forms the noise supergroup Gomikawa Fumio, whose releases include Return of Gomikawa Fumio (2002, Alchemy Records) and The Rise and Fall of Gomikawa Fumio (2021).