Zornlisters, First, thanks so much to whoever it was who mentioned that this show in St Louis was coming up soon. I was able to cram a lot of weekend grading in and drive 2 hours to St. Louis' Washington University to catch the quartet (Otomo, Sachiko, Hautzinger, Coleman). I've been listening to this sort of 'environmental," minimal, post-AMM improv for a couple of years-- thanks mostly to leads taken from this list-- but I'd never seen it performed live. I found it riveting, intellectually and emotionally stimulating, all that great stuff... I'm writing about it all here because of an interesting bit in the concert program. I'll quote: "Literally meaning 'reverberation of sound,' onkyo-ha or onkyo-kei (onkyo school) started to be used about five years ago among musicians and music writers in order to refer to a certain type of music, and musicians playing the music. It is now recognized as a genre distinctive to Japan, in which more importance is placed on sound texture than on musical structure, combining many elements of the three genres techno, noise, and electronic music." So I'm wondering about this term 'onkyo-kei': does this passage I've quoted serve as a good description of the concept? Has the term been written about or theorized or historicized (in English)? To what extent is the concept 'distinctive to Japan' (whatever that means)? I know perfectly well that lots of people hate labels, but it strikes me that without some sort of common language, all we can do is recommend CDs to each other... not that this is a bad thing to do, but there's more to talk about, surely? Anyway, does anyone know more about the 'onkyo' concept? Andy