The guitarist has his back to the audience. Every 10 seconds he plucks a string. People titter nervously, not sure if this is intentionally funny or if he is about to storm off in a huff. Finally, three minutes later, a loud electronic hum fills the air. It wavers, thickens slightly, dies away. The man stands up and the audience applauds.
So begins the night's odyssey through the fringes of the fringes of the Japanese musical underground, lovingly packaged into one diverse extravaganza by the avant-garde guitarist and turntable abuser, Otomo Yoshihide.
A colourful dish of oriental sonic delicacies is served up with a slightly bewildering mixture of good-humoured self-mockery and glacial, intellectual intensity. The main purveyor of the latter kind of entertainment is Sachiko M, who makes us all feel vaguely sick by generating waves of high-pitched sound from her empty sampler.
In a separate solo turn Toshimaru Nakamura uses a mixing desk to pummel us with a loud klaxon, which evolves into a roar of tortured electonica. Ultimately a rumbling percussive onslaught crescendos into the sound of a colossal space-age loco thundering through a city that is being bombarded with nuclear missiles. The audience applauds politely.
It is Yoshihide himself who has grasped that the best way of getting people to enjoy "difficult" music is to make them laugh, and he elicits whoops of delight by spinning a cup on his turntable before attacking it with a drumstick and a spoon. This kind of thing goes down badly in Japan, but the English have an ancient affinity with the absurd.
Later, winsome Japanese pop singer Haco duets with Sachiko, garnishing her unconstructed primordial soundscapes with a fragile computerised voice that repeats the words "dream time". If you have ever heard sounds like these in your dreams you'd be advised to consult a psychiatrist as soon as possible.
The warmest applause is reserved for the traditional musicians. Folk singer Yasukatsu Oshima enchants us with ancient song, while Yagi Michiyo demonstrates divine mastery of a huge stringed thing from the eighth century. Finally the show is stolen by Furuta Mari who must be the first percussionist ever to play cymbals with a violin bow.
In its fusion of avant-garde, pop, folk and general oriental inscrutability, "Japanorama" will give you the most transcendental and stimulating headache you've ever had.
• Japanorama play the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield (0114 221 0393) tomorow and Kendal Brewery Arts Centre (01539 72513) on Sunday.
