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consciousness through ecstatic dance. Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were a world unto themselves.
Despite featuring an extraordinary cast of musicians (with credits including Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis, Santana, Stevie Wonder, Milton Nascimento and much more) and selling hundreds of thousands of albums, the music of Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors remains largely unheard beyond their sphere. Conceived as live, improvised soundtracks to Roth’s transcendental dance workshops, musical acclaim was never on the agenda.
Instead, for a passionate dancer and spiritual polyglot like Gabrielle Roth, movement was a means through which to channel a wide spectrum of teaching, from experimental psychology to psychedelic counter-culture. It was from this heady mix that she devised a movement meditation known as 5Rhythms, which came to define her life’s work.
As “guide and catalyst”, Roth would dance to inspire the percussion-led instrumentals that would in turn fuel her 5Rhythms workshops, stimulating a secular form of ecstatic dance with roots in Native American shamanic traditions, Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and Yoruba drumming.
Using anything from a Sioux pony drum to East African kihembe and Japanese Kabuki drums, Gabrielle’s lawyer-turned-drummer husband Robert Ansell set the foundational rhythms for The Mirrors’ recordings, each of which would then feature a rotating cast of friends and professional musicians.
“The secret of everything we’ve done is that we never told anybody what to play,” Robert shares. “Instead of our albums being a musical vision of one person like me or Gabrielle, they were the musical vision of a whole bunch of people.”
At times the recordings have a Middle Eastern flair, at others, West African and spiritual jazz modes come to the fore. Hints of kosmische musik, proto-house and electronic ambience are laced like LSD through the organic rhythmic structures. This was kaleidoscopic ambient music to stir the body and free the mind.
In practice, the task of synthesising these different elements fell to Scott Ansell, Robert’s son and a recording engineer whose credits now include Nile Rogers, Duran Duran, Grace Jones. With meticulous attention to detail he captured and translated the dynamic energy of each drum onto record. Their sessions became legendary, and with access to the best studios in the NYC, The Mirrors sparkled.
Despite being initially overlooked by the burgeoning ‘80s New Age market, which preferred pipes and gongs to The Mirrors’ heavy-grooving drums, Robert Ansell set up Raven Recording to self-release the music, creating a vast sonic archive of sixteen albums over almost forty years.
The breadth of Raven’s catalogue is such that curator Pol Valls had to cut an initial selection of sixty-six tracks down to the eleven featured here. What crystallises is a stunning, mind-altering collection which spans, in Pol’s words, “a variety of genres, styles, and vibes within their catalogue, whether it is emotional, esoteric, spiritual, melancholic, hypnotic, dark, or at times a combination of these elements together.”
Music for immersive and intimate environments, Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were born from the dance. In the hands of the right DJ, at the right time, in the right place, they might just return there.
Diving deeper into the story of Japanese reggae pop, Tokyo Riddim Vol. 2 explores an electronic, new wave and often experimental sound unlike anything Japan or Jamaica had ever heard before.
The first time Ryuichi Sakamoto left Japan, he did not go to the United States or Europe - he went to Jamaica. It was 1978, YMO were about to release their debut album, but Sakamoto was in Kingston, invited to play synths for Japanese idol singer Teresa Noda at Dynamic Sound Studios in a band alongside Neville Hinds and none other than Rita Marley. It’s not a story many know, but one which would spark Sakamoto’s fascination with dub and mark a new chapter in the ongoing Japanese love affair with reggae.
The Teresa Noda tracks they cut - ‘Tropical Love’ and ‘Yellow Moon’ - bookend this second volume of Time Capsule’s Tokyo Riddim compilation, which tells the wider story of how a fascination with Jamrock swept Japan, adding a dash of lime to that sweet city pop sound, embracing a globalised musical palette and creating a whole new genre in the process.
For some, like Sakamoto, a diversion into reggae was part of broader fascination with new sounds and styles, tipped into the global disco of homage and appropriation that made Japanese music of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s some of the most creative and undefinable in the world.
You had iconic shape-shifter Yosui Inoue, who toyed with reggae, afro-beat and electro-Balearic, (and whose For Life Records released several tracks on this comp), and Kay Ishiguro, who enlisted J-reggae originator Pecker on the ambitious Stevie Wonder-esque ‘Red Drip’.
Then there were the Compass Point devotees - producers and musicians alike who were enthralled by the sound of the Bahamas studio and drew on the detached cool of Grace Jones - as heard in the music of Juicy Fruits, and the disco noir of Casablanca-signed femme fatale Yuki Nakayamate. Sometimes, as was the case with Risa Minami, the J-reggae influence said more about Japan than it did about Jamaica.
But where Tokyo Riddim Vol. 1 focused on the city pop sound, this compilation goes further, digging out the more experimental collaborations and hybrids exemplified by Tomoko Aran, who in working with Yusuaki Shimizu and Mariah emphasised just how far reggae had travelled to be recast into something entirely new on the other side of the world.
Perhaps more than anything, in connecting the dots between Tokyo and Kingston, between Jamaica and Japan, the Japanese reggae was building a musical language that existed outside of the paradigms of US and European cultural hegemony - an encounter shaped by commerce, capital and creativity that is now being recognised more broadly for the first time.
The percussive new age soundtracks of '80s and early '90s Japanese TV, anime and manga built alternative worlds and pushed boundaries in the process.
When Japanese composer Yas-Kaz left Tokyo for Bali in the mid 1970s he had little idea of how influential his trip would become. In studying the storied art of gamelan, the jazz and avant-garde percussionist opened a door to a world of sound and rhythm left behind by the West. The music he and his contemporaries made would become known as new age. It also happened to soundtrack the golden era of anime.
Awash with money and with the prerogative to entertain the burgeoning middle classes, anime in the 1980s experienced a creative and commercial boom. Not constricted by generic expectations, production houses such as the now renowned Studio Ghibli were able to experiment liberally with both form and content. And with it came the space for composers to be similarly adventurous.
TV, Anime & Manga New Age Soundtracks 1984-1993 charts this moment across eight tracks spanning classics of the genre and previously unknown rarities. The collection brings together music that found kinship in electronic and acoustic instrumentation, often combining spiritual or environmental themes with percussive, varied and highly refined syncopations of non-Western musical traditions.
Among them is ‘Kaneda’ by Geinoh Yamashirogumi, the shape-shifting group of self-styled musicians, anthropologists and computer scientists that masterminded the soundtrack to game-changing dystopian anime Akira - and with whom the sound, tuning and breakneck speed of Balinese gamelan has become indelibly entwined.
Reflecting the desires of the era to reach beyond Japan’s borders, many of the soundtracks featured were commissioned for narratives set in distant lands or alternative worlds. There’s violinist and composer Norihiro Tsuru’s ‘Farsighted Person’, written for The Heroic Legend of Arslān, set in ancient Persia; Yas-Kaz’s own ‘Hei (Theme of Shikioni)’, for period sci-fi manga & anime series Peacock King - Spirit Warrior; and two tracks - Tassili N’Ajjer and Fiesta Del Fuego - from Yoichiro Yoshikawa’s soundtrack to NHK’s proto-Planet Earth series The Miracle Planet.
Such was the variety and quality of the music produced, if there is a guiding principle to the tracks collected here it is a sense of escapism and adventure that came with the confluence of modern electronic instruments and a fascination with percussive traditions.
Elsewhere, pioneering children’s TV composer Chumei Watanabe’s ‘Fushigi Song’ (performed by a vocal group Korogi ‘72) offers a trippy and infectious groove with sonic similarities to Don Cherry’s ‘Brown Rice’; little-known jazz-funk library group Columbia Orchestra showcase the best of Tokyo’s session musicians on ‘Hearts Beats - Theme for Andrew Glasgow’; before lawyer-turned-composer Kan Ogasawara closes out the compilation with a dramatic flourish on ‘Gishin Anki’.
Following on from Time Capsule’s acclaimed deep-dive into the world of manga & anime synth-pop in 2022, this vinyl only collection is set to broaden and diversify an understanding of how soundtracks shaped the sound of new age music in Japan for a generation.
One of the most innovative and ambitious albums ever made, Genioh Yamashirogumi’s Ecophony Rinne is a sonic masterpiece featuring over 200 musicians that expanded the limits of what music and sound could do.
Before Akira there was Ecophony Rinne. Originally released in 1986, Ecophony Rinne is a four-part symphony of “ecological music” by Geinoh Yamashirogumi that married ancient tradition with technological innovation, and changed the way we listen to music in the process.
Half-speed mastered at Abbey Road by Miles Showell, Time Capsule’s high-tech analogue reissue is the first to reproduce composer Ōhashi’s ground-breaking “Hypersonic Effect” theory on vinyl, cutting frequencies beyond the realm of human hearing into wax to capture the full spectrum emotional impact of this extraordinary work.
Founded by genius polymath Tsutomu Ōhashi aka Shoji Yamashiro, Geinoh Yamashirogumi is a shapeshifting collective of over a hundred members from across disciplines. Rejecting professional musicianship, Ōhashi cultivated an ethos where neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, journalists, engineers and students could critique society through artistic expression and pursue their research in ethnomusicological performances that spanned global traditions, Eastern spirituality and Western classical form.
Ecophony Rinne represents the pinnacle of this vision - an expansive orchestral suite made with over 200 musicians that channeled Ōhashi’s thinking about mankind’s relationship with nature, and fundamental questions of life, death and rebirth.
Here pipe organ synths made from sampled Tibetan horns sit alongside field recordings from Central African forests, Buddhist mantras circle dummy head microphones, Javanese Jegog percussion ensembles pulse like verdant ecosystems, and the acoustics of temples, caves and landscapes are conveyed in the mix. Weaving together culture, nature and technology, it is a record that vibrates with the polyphony of life on Earth.
But Ecophony Rinne was not only musically innovative. Noticing the difference between vinyl and CD versions of the album where digital reproduction limited the sound, Ōhashi developed a theory of “Hypersonic Effect”, determining that ultra-high frequencies above 20khz can impact human perception even if they are inaudible. At once a physical and a psychological experience, to listen to Ecophony Rinne is to feel music differently.
The rest is history. After its release, Ōhashi was approached by director Katsuhiro Ōtomo to produce the soundtrack for Akira, the work for which Geinoh Yamashirogumi is best known. Emerging from the shadows at last, Ecophony Rinne was its transcendental blueprint, reissued in its most complete hypersonic form on vinyl for the first time.
Rather than describe nature, Ecophony Rinne embodied it. Rather than reflect culture, Ecophony Rinne defined it. Rather than explore technology, Ecophony Rinne changed it. As a work of art, it is more relevant than ever. You won’t have heard anything like it.
Who would expect that a new Krautrock release on Macadam Mambo would come from a Japanese band called Heavenphetamine?! The duo/couple have been touring all over Europe in the past two years, and started to build a serious fan base, as every performance they deliver is leaving an imperishable memory. This is on a date in Belgrade at Karmakoma that they met with Sacha. They had this album recorded and auto-release on tape but not on vinyl, and it came completely naturally to decide to release it as a LP on Macadam Mambo. The tracks on the album are new versions a bit different from the tape, let’s say a bit more mature and minimal than from the first ones recorded and give the feeling of listening to a masterpiece in the genre. It can be dark and profound but also enough light to bring back this little sun that has trouble to shine in the winter. This album has been highly influenced by their experience with the war in Ukraine, and the friendship they made there, where it has been recorded, and it express this mix of emotions due to the feeling of exasperation and the hope to see someday this conflict come to an end and the relief of the peace…
Haruomi Hosono's Tropical Dandy receives its first-ever international reissue. Originally released in 1975, Tropical Dandy is a cult classic that marked Hosono’s shift toward genre-blending, fusing exotica, jazz, and pop to lay the groundwork for Japanese City Pop – described by none other than Van Dyke Parks as "cinematic romance with sonic texture."
Classic black and limited edition Ocean Blue. 180-gram vinyl, pressed in the US featuring exclusive OBI and a new translation of Haruomi Hosono's 1975 liner notes.
Like on the early solo Haino album that shares the group’s name (released on P.S.F. in 1993), the instrumentation swims in reverb (the use of which Akiyama recalls as ‘a kind of point of the band’), often obscuring the instrumental sources. On the short opening piece, a distant reed instrument arcs long buzzing melodies over a bed of cymbals and gongs, like a psychedelic take on Tibetan music. The epic second part, occupying almost 50 minutes, begins as a splayed, near-formless cloud of electric guitar and bass, shadowed by bowed and plucked strings, the three elements working through twisting atonal shapes.
At various points in the recording, we hear what seems to be the sounds of musicians moving between instruments, their shuffling and bumps fitting seamlessly into this radically open music. Eventually, what sounds like electric guitar moves closer to the foreground, fixing on a repeated melodic cell around which hover mysterious clouds of long tones and a sporadic shaker. At the half-hour mark, the music begins to build to a violently emotive climax, Haino’s impassioned vocal cries punctuating a lumbering, bass-heavy murk, contrasted at points by what sounds like a tin whistle. Suddenly, the volume drops to a near-whisper, opening the way for the stunning final moments, which touch on the slow-motion balladry of Haino’s classic Affection, here given an eccentric twist by an occasional woodblock hit.
The third piece opens with a hazy trio of rumbling bass, bowed strings and abstracted slide guitar, the latter calling to mind some of Akiyama’s later solo work. Eventually joined by Haino’s voice, its fragile, haunted tone might remind the listener of the man in black’s documented love of the madrigals of the murderous Count Gesualdo, before the recording abruptly breaks off mid-note. In this new edition, the Nijiumu trio recording is supplemented by a piece recorded solo by Haino in 1973, a bracing electronic blowout stretching almost half an hour. Using a homemade electronics setup to unleash a barrage of crunching distortion and shuddering harmonic fuzz, it takes its place in the canon of extreme live electronics next to Robert Ashley’s Wolfman and Walter Marchetti’s Osmanthus fragrans, looking forward to extreme noise years before Merzbow. Taken as a whole, these four sides of music are a stunning document of some of the lesser-known waystations of Haino’s singular creative path.
I've just released a collaboration CD album under the name of my Agencement with Masami Akita's Merzbow, which was recorded in autumn 2024.
I hadn't been in contact with him for a very long time, but we were recontacted and considered for a collaborative project for a few years, and we finally did it this time.
We also did the cover artwork for each side.
This is not a digital-only release, so please pick up the CD and listen to it.
Emerging from the Kansai underground with a sense of ritual and restraint, G Version III returns with a slab of meditative pressure, carved for sound systems. Following last year’s cassette release on Digital Sting, the Kyoto-based producer deepens her exploration of experimental steppers and sacred low-end science.
TRK 1 treads heavy—medium-tempo four-to-the-floor steppers, soaked in 80s/90s UK dub DNA and wired with flickers of celestial synth energy, edged with something unknown.
TRK 2 drifts off-grid—a 100bpm oddity conjuring sacred synth rituals and off-beat spatial tension. Droning and eerily weightless, it hangs like a vapor of frozen scent in an echo chamber.
Flip the plate and TRK 3 and 4 ignite—raw, unrelenting steppers built to test the physical limits of the rig. No compromise, no decoration—just ritual voltage for the floor.
Riddim Chango’s 16th release channels something ancient through circuitry, born for the weight.
On a class debut for Biscuit’s choice Good Morning Tapes label, Kyoto’s dub specialist G Version III runs signature fusions of digidub steppers, drill and holographic, minor key FM synths - big FFO Devon Rexi x John T. Gast, Equiknoxx, TNT Roots, Element. One up to her 12” for Riddim Chango last year (plus the ‘Scenery From Double Glazing’ tape for Digital Sting in ’24), G Version III’s ‘Chapter II’ most finely chisels her lucidly rugged definition of the late ‘80s / early ‘90s mystic steppers sound. The OG Caribbean spirit is heard filtered thru UK dances and shored up in Japan, where G tessellates its salient points with a palette of glassy Japanese synth tones and chamber music to exquisite effect. If Wendy Carlos was a soundgyal?! Across 6 cuts she builds the dance around digidub x drill waltz ‘Livin 4’ and a haunted dancehall special in the harpsichord/horn riff of ‘An Idyll’, impressing her prowess on the fusion of subcontinental scales with a drill-tipped skip in ‘Queen G Theme Chapter II,’ and tucking right into an aerodynamic, flying steppers mode shades away from Element in ‘Motherearth Guidance.’ At a slower, wider stride her ‘Higher Grade’ goes eyes-down on massive subs, and ‘Voice of Mystique Warriyah’ adapts the classic skooled sound like TNT Roots in Tokyo. Big!
If punk culture and aesthetics ever had a poet, it would undoubtedly be Kō Machida. Best known as the visionary frontman of the pioneering punk band INU and later acclaimed as a novelist, essayist, and professor, Machida has built a career at the intersection of raw musical energy and razor-sharp literary craftsmanship. Eleven years after the groundbreaking 1981 masterpiece INU – Meshi Kuuna!, Machida returned with a new creative chapter: the album *Harafuri*. This record marked a significant evolution, fusing his uncompromising lyrical power with the modernized sonic force of Kitazawagumi, a band whose sound became the perfect canvas for Machida’s sharp wit and emotional depth. Now, Harafuri sees its first-ever official reissue, presented with utmost care and attention to detail. Every element has been restored to honor both its cultural resonance and artistic precision. Most notably, this edition includes meticulously retranslated English lyrics—bringing Machida’s singular voice to an international audience without losing its vivid intensity and layered meaning. At once biting, poetic, and ferociously alive, Harafuri is more than an album: it is a literary and musical landmark that speaks across time and geography. With this reissue, listeners everywhere are invited to rediscover Kō Machida not only as a pioneering punk icon but as one of Japan’s most vital contemporary voices.
Originally released in 1981, this is MIZUTAMA SHŌBŌDAN’s legendary debut album. A wild theatrical mix of avant-post-punk material worked out by one of the most uncompromising women’s brigades ever. An outstanding document from “another” Japan! MIZUTAMA SHŌBŌDAN were a force of nature – powerful and original and unapologetic. I saw them live before I heard the first record and was very impressed. I liked the way the group interacted, it was a very good atmosphere between everybody. I really liked the contrasting sounds and styles of Kamura and Tenko, two very different kinds of voices that really worked well together.
‘Fred Frith’
CONTAINS PRINTED INNER SLEEVE AND 4-PAGE FOLD-OUT INSERT
ASA-CHANG & Junrei’s stunning second album, *Hana*, a masterpiece they created with an eye toward the future, is finally being released on vinyl after 25 years!
A collection of intimate songs traced from the spectral darkness by Asahito Nanjo, the notorious leader of some of Japan’s key underground psychedelic units (High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Transonic, Toho Sara, etc) Recorded between 1980 and 1988 and previously only available in a cassette micro-edition released by his La Musica Records label in the mid-1990’s. Remastered and available for the first time on vinyl and digital. “A compilation of secret projects recorded over a period of twenty years. Deeply personal music that achieves a strange balance between beat folk balladry and off-key mumbling. Suggestive self-celebratory music conceived as a confirmation of existence.” – original La Musica cassette notes A lesser-known side of Nanjo Asahito – if all you know of his work is the overloaded, intensified psych-rock and free-sound of his group projects then the solo songs on M gently redraw the contours of Nanjo’s private universe. There’s something gem-like in the way these five songs are formed, even as they accrue grit and dirt while drifting out of the speakers. Here, Nanjo grabs handfuls of gentle chord changes, allows them to rotate in the air, suspended in reverb, flickering in half-light, as he murmurs drowsy melodies. The closing “Eucharist” pushes everything through a thin layer of distortion; elsewhere, tinkling piano, from guest Matsuoka Takashi, who also performed with Keiji Haino’s Nijiumu, disturbs dust molecules to dance through hazy air.
Recorded in 1996 and released without any identifying credits in an essentially private cassette edition, Bibiotheca Hermetica’s sole release, One, was only the second by the Japanese La Musica label and remains one of its more obscure and enigmatic entries. The group works in spaces adjacent to contemporaneous outfits like Nijiumu and Toho Sara though its non-idiomatic improvisations and decentred, free sound explorations call back to seminal collectives such as the Taj Mahal Travellers and the East Bionic Symphonia. The music constantly shuffles and sifts filled with hypnotic clatter and clamour, rattling percussion, toughly scraped strings, gurgling bass tonalities and pirouetting winds. An anonymous transmission from a spectral, dead-of-night mystery zone. “A group that deconstructs and liberates the chance nature of contemporary classical and noise music to such an extent that their boundaries blur. Their policy of fucking up musical relationships both acknowledges and ignores tradition and is totally different from previous strictly organised methods of composition. A work tonally constructed of foreboding musical vibrations.” - from the original La Musica cassette release Available for the first time on LP or any physical form aside from a small run of hand assembled cassettes on the Japanese La Musica label in mid ‘90s (LA-002). Housed in a custom die-cut, "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic ink, spot finishes and matching La Musica inner sleeve.
Eternal Almost is a collaborative album by Japanese musician Tomo Katsurada and Estonian composer Misha Panfilov. Born from the simple joy of songwriting and creative exchange, Tomo and Misha had long admired each other’s music from afar. When the opportunity to collaborate finally arrived, it felt completely natural, and by the time the album was finished, it almost seemed as though the two had known each other always. United by a shared sense of humour and musical curiosity, Tomo and Misha poured a raw, honest energy into these songs — one shaped by their intuitive rapport. In an increasingly artificial world, Eternal Almost subtly celebrates the qualities that make music feel most alive. Amid the weight of our current times, the pair hope this album brings listeners a sense of lightness, joy, and of course—a gently surreal journey from beginning to end.
20th Anniversary Repress!
Merzbow's Merzbeat is one the most unique and legendary titles in the artist's vast archive. This 20th anniversary repress is being issued at the same time as CD reissue of his 1983 album Material Action 2 and a brand new collaboration with Arcane Device, all on Important Records....
Paulownia by Merzbow is a 2025 full-length statement comprising two lengthy compositions that fuse intense electronic manipulation with Merzbow’s enduring fascination for natural phenomena. Across both pieces, the album merges organic inspiration and harsh digital process, producing a hypnotic yet confrontational experience. **Edition of 200** With Paulownia, Merzbow (Masami Akita) delivers a formidable new addition to a catalog already legendary in the experimental music world. The 2025 release spans two extended pieces—“Paulownia part1” and “Paulownia part2”—each developing a dense matrix of sound where digital noise entwines with subtle references to organic structures. The album’s name, drawn from the paulownia tree, hints at Merzbow’s long-standing environmental preoccupations; here, they are rendered less as representational themes and more as evocative textures and forms. The compositions surge with layered feedback, haunting drones, and micro-rhythmic fluctuations, evoking an ambiguous, immersive environment that rewards attentive listening. What distinguishes Paulownia is its ability to generate tension and release from the interplay between ferocity and fragility. The music neither settles into a predictable assault nor dissipates into formless ambience; instead, it sustains a meticulously sculpted intensity. As always, Merzbow’s commitment to tonality, texture, and structure resists easy classification, maintaining a delicate balance between repetition and change, aggression and atmosphere. For those prepared to let sound define its own territory, Paulownia is a compelling testament to Merzbow’s ongoing innovation, fortifying his place at the core of the noise tradition while persistently opening new vistas for exploration.
These stunning recordings combine the great strengths of Pauline Oliveros on her Roland V-Accordion, Issui Minegishi; Ichigenkin master and great-great granddaughter of the founder of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin tradition and Miya Masaoka on her 21 string Japanese Koto. Together, these masterful improvisors create a beautiful and fascinating world of instrumental communication. This trio of legendary artists establish a sonic zone so compelling that you'll never want to leave. This double CD preserves the original session edits chronologically in order to preserve the emotional flow of the recordings. Disc one presents the first day of sessions and disc two presents the second day. Hence the title, Two Days In Dreamland.
Black Editions present the first vinyl reissue of Keiji Haino's stunning debut album Watashi Dake?, originally released in 1981. This first ever edition released outside of Japan features the artist's originally intended metallic gold and silver jacket artwork. Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances, Haino has staked out a ground all his own, creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over. Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision -- stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark silences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat, and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot -- Haino's vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920s blues and medieval music -- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Produced in close cooperation with Keiji Haino and legendary photographer Gin Satoh. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging, featuring the now iconic cover photographs by Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement. Housed in custom printed deluxe Stoughton tip-on jackets, including black on black inserts, extras, and hand-colored finishes; Remastered by Elysian Masters and cut by Bernie Grundman Mastering; Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI; Includes download code.
Junko Tange's second and final album is a minimalistic, phantasmagoric masterpiece of distant, dreamlike voices woven through pulsating, dubbed-out drum machines, synths and static, originally issued by Osaka's Vanity Records in 1981. Did this unassuming dental student (who vanished from the music world following this release) inadvertently invent dub techno? You be the judge. Label head Yuzuru Agi said this was his favorite Vanity release, and it's not hard to see why. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu from brand new transfers of the miraculously well preserved original analog tapes, this fully authorized 2LP (@45rpm) is the definitive edition of this landmark electronic work. Packaged in a deluxe, gatefold Stoughton tip-on jacket.
Excerpt from the text on the sleeve: Connecting cables, turning knobs, and capturing the fleeting modulations and articulations that emerge in each passing moment—this is a practice shaped as much by intention as by surrender. Sometimes you build sound with careful deliberation; other times, you simply let yourself drift and see where the current leads. Among the many ways one can engage with music today, modular synthesis is certainly not the most accessible. And yet, those who are drawn to this instrument around the world are, I feel, explorers who find meaning not only in the destination, but also in the journey of seeking a sound that belongs to them alone. By Yumi Iwaki (curator of the project)