Pachinko isn’t a pleasurable experience. This is especially when it comes to the noise those Christmas-tree-bright machines spit out as you try to launch metal ball bearings into Goku’s nose. Anyone who has even walked by a parlor at the moment the automatic doors open know it’s a pounding, crushing aural feeling. Yet that’s exactly what makes Pachinko Machine Music so absorbing — the ability for the Wasabi Tapes project to take what might be the ugliest, most jarring set of sounds available in Japan and find something mesmerizing about it makes it one of the most exciting musical outings going now.
Pachinko Machine Music 2 continues venturing into the cacophony the first installment plumbed. There’s nothing new here in concept — this is pachinko machine music, harsh and clanging sounds looped into something resembling a song, with characters screaming Japanese words and sudden lifts of song flowing out of the machines. Yet the fun is listening and watching the patterns develop, like the especially pounding final stretch of “Pachinko Machine Music 005” or the Oneohtrix-isms creeping out — and suddenly vanishing — of “006.” Chaos rarely sounds this good. Get it here, or listen below.