All products
5102 products
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Ashioto, the first international solo release from Japanese drummer-percussionist-composer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. Active for over a decade, Yamamoto has performed and recorded extensively with artists such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, as well as participating in innumerable improvised and ad hoc groups.
Ashioto presents two wide-ranging pieces that combine Yamamoto’s percussion work with piano, field recordings, electronics, and contributions from guest musicians Daisuke Fujiwara and Eiko Ishibashi.
Beginning with a passage of chiming metal percussion, the first side slowly builds into a rolling, open groove reminiscent of Yamamoto’s work on Eiko Ishibashi’s acclaimed Drag City LP The Dreams My Bones Dream. Spacious piano and synth notes, along with Ishibashi’s spare melodic figures on processed flute, hover above this propulsive rhythmic foundation, the whole effect adding up to a more abstract take on the area explored on Rainer Brüninghaus’s ECM classic Freigeweht.
The LP’s second side opens up a cavernous space filled with ominous electronics and shimmering metallic percussion, which organically transitions into a passage of rumbling piano chords and mysterious concrète sound. Later in the piece, Daisuke Fujiawara’s saxophone enters, playing melancholic melodic fragments that are looped and layered, creating a seasick swaying effect familiar to listeners of James Tenney’s works with tape delay systems. Beginning as delicate bass drum pulses, Yamamoto’s accompanying percussion eventually builds the piece into a raging torrent of free-improv splatter, processed sax and fizzing electronics.
Though grounded in instrumental performance, Ashioto is very much a studio construction, making inventive use of electro-acoustic principles in its editing and mixing. Together with its sister Ashiato – a different take on the same ‘script’ released simultaneously on Japanese label Newhere – Ashioto demonstrates to an international audience for the first time the true breadth and ambition of Yamamoto’s work.
Seminal Japanese jazz album from 1971. Journeys through jazz fusion, soul and big band moods. Impossible to obtain in its original format, these days. Hozan Yamamoto was recognised as a "living national treasure" by the Japanese government in 2002. This highly sought-after album from the Japanese wood flute player is more upbeat and swinging than some of his other records. The big band he recorded this album with (Sharps & Flats) played a big part in the genesis of the album’s groove. Forming in 1951, they helped to make jazz popular in Japan after World War II. Yamamoto's flute lines weave over the heavy brass sound and groove, creating an MPS label blending of funky jazz and Japanese vibes. The closest comparison would be Dorothy Ashby's grooviest albums for Chess / Cadet – substituting Yamamoto’s flute for the harp. Licensed courtesy of Universal Music Group Limited.
Love generously robs us, and love tears us apart ... all the crystals of loss that were once launched beyond post-punk are now regaining glare! A collection of phantom sound sources by the late Kiyoaki Iwamoto, finally lifted after about 40 years !!!-Tamotsu Mochida (factory worker and real industrial writer)
There used to be a musician who buried his past and disappeared. Its name is Kiyoaki Iwamoto. I don't know the reason. What we know is that we have left behind a "super-translation" cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which surprised even the minimum original songs and ECD.
Iwamoto appeared in the post-Tokyo rockers era scene and participated in that "Urban News" as a post-punk band
This work is the only solo work "SOUGI" (1983) that Iwamoto independently produced by Kojima recording, a rework of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Chisako and Junta, and NOISE "Emperor" by Tori Kudo and Reiko somewhere. It is the addition of an unreleased song by Rei Mi, which is reminiscent of. Iwamoto's four original songs, including the song "In the Sad Town" from the beautiful era, have a rhythm box, several chords played on guitar and bass, and short poems that look like they have been cut down. It is a characteristic of Japanese punk / new wave that frustrating emotions hit the inside of oneself, but Iwamoto's humorous vocals seem to amplify the frustration even more, and Joy Division's "super translation" has a nihilistic climax of loss.
Was "SOUGI" a "funeral"? ?? Michio Kakutani would have responded. The untouchables of the 80s indie film continue to shake us and bite those who want to be loved!
Love generously robs us, and love tears us apart ... all the crystals of loss that were once launched beyond post-punk are now regaining glare! A collection of phantom sound sources by the late Kiyoaki Iwamoto, finally lifted after about 40 years !!!-Tamotsu Mochida (factory worker and real industrial writer)
There used to be a musician who buried his past and disappeared. Its name is Kiyoaki Iwamoto. I don't know the reason. What we know is that we have left behind a "super-translation" cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which surprised even the minimum original songs and ECD.
Iwamoto appeared in the post-Tokyo rockers era scene and participated in that "Urban News" as a post-punk band
This work is the only solo work "SOUGI" (1983) that Iwamoto independently produced by Kojima recording, a rework of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Chisako and Junta, and NOISE "Emperor" by Tori Kudo and Reiko somewhere. It is the addition of an unreleased song by Rei Mi, which is reminiscent of. Iwamoto's four original songs, including the song "In the Sad Town" from the beautiful era, have a rhythm box, several chords played on guitar and bass, and short poems that look like they have been cut down. It is a characteristic of Japanese punk / new wave that frustrating emotions hit the inside of oneself, but Iwamoto's humorous vocals seem to amplify the frustration even more, and Joy Division's "super translation" has a nihilistic climax of loss.
Was "SOUGI" a "funeral"? ?? Michio Kakutani would have responded. The untouchables of the 80s indie film continue to shake us and bite those who want to be loved!
We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records is thrilled and honored to announce the first ever official vinyl pressing of the soundtrack for Mamoru Oshii's critically acclaimed and all around legendary science fiction anime film GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995), adapted from Masamune Shirow's groundbreaking manga series of the same name.
Cut from the original master reels at Emil Berliner Studios (formerly the in-house recording department of renowned classical record label Deutsche Grammophon), the album comes as a LP accompanied by a bonus one-sided 7" housed in official Ghost in the Shell artwork sleeve with silver gilt printing and a Japanese obi, and contains extensive 24-page liner notes.
The haunting score is composed by Kenji Kawai, one of Japan's most celebrated soundtrack composers, alongside Joe Hisaishi and Ry?ichi Sakamoto, whose work includes Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998) and Ring 2 (1999), Death Note (2006), Hong Kong films Seven Swords by Tsui Hark (2005) and Ip Man by Wilson Yip (2008), and countless others. Kawai's compositions see ancient harmonies and percussions uncannily mesh with synthesized sounds of the modern world to convey a sumptuous balance between folklore tradition and futuristic outlook. For its iconic main theme "Making of Cyborg", Kawai had a choir chant a wedding song in ancient Japanese following Bulgarian folk harmonies, setting the standard for a timeless and unparalleled soundtrack that admirably echoes the film's musings on the nature of humanity in a technologically advanced world.
Ghost in the Shell is widely considered one of the best anime films of all time and its influence has been felt in the work of numerous movie directors, including James Cameron (Avatar), the Wachowskis (The Matrix), and Steven Spielberg (AI: Artificial Intelligence).
Reiko Kudo first debuted on the Tokyo underground music scene in 1980 with NOISE, a duo which apart from herself under her then maiden name Reiko Omura on voice, guitar and trumpet featured Tori Kudo on organ. Their only album TENNO (1980 on Engel) is probably one of the most outstanding and uncompromising records of all time.
Like other pioneering female producers from Japan such as NON (of NON BAND), PHEW and HACO, who had all begun their startling careers in the early days of the japanese Punk era, Reiko Kudo can surely be regarded as one of the most unique, uncategorisable and daring voices in the entire field of electronic and experimental music ever.
RICE FIELD SLOWLY RIPING IN THE NIGHT was REIKO KUDO's second album under her own name. It features TORI KUDO (MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ) and SAYA and TAKASHI UENO (TENNISCOATS) on various instruments. The recordings took place in 2000 at Reiko' s and Tori's house in the rural surroundings of Shikoku island.
All recorded music on this album sounds like it originates in a parallel dimension where time and key signatures simply don't exist, Some might describe this as outsider music, but this doesn't really begin to do justice to the quality of the tracks, there is nothing accidental or forced here, this is simply music created in a very different way. Yet again REIKO KUDO had conceived of something utterly beautiful.
"After producing the album "Souvenir de mauve" with Maher Shalal Hash Baz which we released on our label Majikick, the idea came to us, to release Reiko Kudo's work. For Reiko's work, we brought our recording equipment from Tokyo to Shikoku and recorded the entire album at her house.
The piano was positioned in a room with a high ceiling. We would set up our small recording equipment in the room and started to record. The basic tracks were recorded without any rehearsal and just a few overdubs were added on top of it. To have a distant sound on the recording, Tori played trumpet in the next room. The choir was standing outside the house, singing "Enya-totto, enya-totto" through the open window. It was early spring, I remember that it was still a bit cold and the members of the choir were freezing outside.
Reiko plays only at certain times of the day, so that we were able to complete only two or three recordings a day. Therefore we had plenty of free time. We went to a hot spring, to a cafe, or we tried pottery on a spinning wheel at Tori's workshop. It was a very rewarding time.
When this album was finished, we brought it to her to listen to. She said happily "I think this is the best work I have ever done." We felt that all our efforts were richly rewarded. Secretly, we thought the same, so we are delighted that this album will be re-issued." - Saya and Ueno (Tenniscoats), Tokyo 2018
