Tori Kudo

Tori Kudo is a ceramicist, filmmaker, anarchist, and cult icon of Japanese underground music. A skilled pianist and self-taught guitarist, Kudo first trained on a Yamaha pump organ at the age of two-and-a-half before studying jazz piano in his later years. In the 1970s and '80s, Kudo played with a slew of noise, drone, and psych-punk units, including Guys & Dolls, Noise, Snickers, Sweet Inspirations, and Tokyo Suicide. He is the ringleader of the loosely formed collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz, which he began in 1984 with his wife and longtime collaborator Reiku Kudo and the euphonium player Hiro Nakazaki. With a freeform sound and a fluid ensemble of primarily untrained musicians, the collective has produced more than two dozen records. Kudo studied design and pottery in London in the late '90s and has produced ceramics since the '00s.