ANBB: Alva Noto & Blixa Bargeld

Cor, it's like a buddy cop movie made for readers of The Wire magazine. The serious-looking chap behind the laptop is Alva Noto, a.k.a. austere sound artist and Raster-Noton co-founder Carsten Nicolai, who approached Blixa Bargeld of influential industrial act Einstürzende Neubaten a few years back with a view to performing some live collaborations. The vocalist turned out to be a good foil for Nicolai's minimal electronics, and their improvised tussles eventually spawned an album (last year's Mimikry) whose highlights included covers of Harry Nilsson's 'One' and US folk staple 'I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground'. Support for this Tokyo date comes from Ultra Functor – a collaboration between beatmaker Miclodiet and striplight-wielding noise artist Atsuhiro 'Optrum' Ito – and NHKyx, the solo project of electronica artist Kouhei Matsunaga.