Japanese

Lily’s early life runs parallel to an untold story of post-war Japan, that of the marginalised hafu - children of half Japanese / half foreign parents. Likely to be a target, a vessel for the bitterness, from
the humiliation of the American Occupation, to the buried guilt
of Japan’s own atrocities, enacted on their Asian neighbours. Her troubled formative years - an absent father, and losing her mother
in her teens - possibly contributed to the development of the bluesy edge of her vocal style, or maybe it was the smoke from the jazz bar her mother ran.

As with many outsiders of the 60s and early 70s, she turned up in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, a famed spot for many a writer, actor, artist
and musician. It was here her songs first aired, and she was swiftly booked to record her music.

With a groove set in stone with her Bye-Bye Session Band - later including Ryuichi Sakamoto and jazz keyboardist Hiroshi Sato - this selection covers her 70s period, with strong seams of soul, funk, touches of folk- and space-rock, and her signature (in Japan) heartbreaking ballads.

Vibrations from the other side of the globe, in the same period as classic Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Cymande, Sly & The Family Stone, and the rest, all with Lily's voice make this music utterly unique.

Compiled by Howard Williams, whose Japanese music show
Japan Blues has been a mainstay on NTS Radio since 2014. He has released several retrospectives of Japanese music for various record labels, covering traditional folk (Nippon Folk, Japan Blues for The Trilogy Tapes); kayoukyoku & Nihon Indigo (also TTT); 70s female gangster soundtracks (Killing Melody, Ethbo); 50s rockabilly (Nippon Rock’n’Roll, Big Beat); surf guitar and funk rock (Nippon Guitars, Big Beat); soul, funk and disco (Lovin’ Mighty Fire, BGP); and the jazz singer Maki Asakawa for Honest Jons, after co-compiling their Moondog retrospective, Viking of Sixth Avenue.

With liner notes written by Lily’s original producer, Yukiji Teramoto translated by Alan Cummings, and the photography of Jin Tamura.

This is a great masterpiece that further updates the boundaries of what can only be described as his unique style. As a member of the famous hip-hop crew, Origami, he has been active with Nanorunamonai. In 2021, he released his self-produced full-length album "SHINGANGINGA".

This is the second album released from HIFUMI Records in 2000.

Kinichi Motegi (Fishmans, dr) participated in this ambitious album, which was recorded simultaneously with live instruments under the theme of "brown, light blue, and green = sky, earth, and natural trees" to contain the body heat and even the atmosphere of the place with humans and instruments. The album is a unique work with a fairy-tale, nostalgic worldview and experimental musicality full of humor, and the covers of "Give me a good word" by the Fishmans and "Minna yume no naka" by Kounosuke Hamaguchi are also wonderfully expressive!
The analog mastering by ZAK, who recorded and mixed the album at the time of its production, is used for The jacket photo by Masafumi Sanai is also a mysterious one.

Trailblazing instrumental synth pop experiments created to soundtrack Japan’s booming 1980s cartoon and comic industries. The brightly futuristic instrumentals on this collection reflect the mindset of composers and musicians who believed in a technological future where everything was possible. In the late 1980s Japan experienced a brief but heady period where societal changes combined with new-found wealth to open up a world of possibilities. A huge influx of cash - artificially created by slashed interest rates after an agreement with the US to weaken the dollar relative to the yen - resulted in the inflation of real estate and stock market at a rapid pace. While the economic bubble it created was unprecedented and impossible to sustain, for a while money was in plentiful supply. The musical genre City Pop reflected the aspirations of the country’s booming leisure class. Video games flourished with Nintendo's 1983 launch of their Family Computer (or FamiCom). Studio Ghibli was founded 1985 to later became one of the most famous and respected animation studios in the world, and Anime and Manga were established as major forms of entertainment for all generations of the Japanese public. Music was no mere footnote to the anime and manga boom: the two forms of media often went hand in hand, and not simply through the presence of background melodies. With generous budgets available, even two-dimensional static manga comics could be released with an accompanying soundtrack of original music known as an ‘Image Album’. Composer and arranger Kazuhiko Izu was one such beneficiary of this open budget approach. Written to accompany artist Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga comic Domu, the composer and arranger took advantage of the world-leading (and wallet-busting) Japanese synthesiser technology available at King Records’ fully equipped studio. Featured on this compilation, A3: Act 2 Scene 26 reflected the story’s sci fi themes with a blazingly futuristic yet warmly funky slice of synth pop that presents a joyful celebration of synthesisers and their seemingly endless possibilities. Kan Ogasawara was another composer who made early mastery of the litany of synthesisers, drum machines and sequencers that had become available. Two tracks written to accompany the 1985 period manga Yume No Ishibumi are featured here; Honowo’s experimental electronic textures add spice to a jaunty electro pop melody that recalls the Rah band’s 1983 hit Messages From Stars; the jazz-tinged Utage rounds out Ogasawara’s shimmering synth textures with beautifully crafted backing from legendary musicians Yuji Toriyama (guitar), Pecker (percussion) and Jun Fukamachi (piano). Before becoming one of the pioneers of Japanese Kankyo Ongaku (Ambient Music), Takashi Kokubo worked on the proto techno track Kiki (Jungle At Night). It was put together for the 1984 anime film Shonen Keniya (Kenya Boy) using some of the most expensive music technologies available at the time. This Africa-Inspired dance track offers a contemporary parallel to the early techno music that young Detroit based producers were then creating using cheap Japanese Roland drum machines and synthesisers. This is the first compilation of Japanese anime and manga soundtracks curated by Kay Suzuki and Rintaro Sekizuka from Vinyl Delivery Service (a Tokyo based online record shop which also operates in East London's renowned wine and hifi shop Idle Moments). With a cover by artist Kazuki Takakura and two pages of liner notes, this vinyl only compilation of music never before released outside of Japan, captures a vital aural snapshot of an era whose forward-thinking sounds went hand in hand with cutting edge technology.

A work by Makoto Kawabata, leader of Acid Mothers Temple, and Toyoyuki, cosmic sound synth hermit. It is another extreme sound of Acid Mothers Temple.

japanese veteran electronic music producer kuniyuki takahashi’s fourth album on mule which is released in 2013 on only cd is finally available on vinyl! some of our respected artists like bugge wesseltoft,anne clark, henrik schwarz,fumio itabashi are featured. it’s a first class mixture of jazz, african,soul in a modern electronic music. we would say one of the masterpiece in our music scene. limited to 500.

In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan. This year, Glossy Mistakes are proud to present the first official vinyl editions of Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, originally released on CD during the golden days of the format. Packaged in reimagined cover artwork created by the celebrated Japanese visual artist Masaho Anotani, these two albums perfectly capture the diversity at the heart of Yokota-san’s oeuvre. Across Fruits of The Room, he takes us on an expansive odyssey through his personal visions for deep house, street soul, jungle/drum & bass, digital dub and the slipstream moments between genres. A totally inspired dancefloor exploration. When Yokota-san wrote and produced the music on Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace in 1997, he was reflecting on the broader culture that surrounded dance music in Japan in the early to mid-nineties. It was an era when the psychedelic culture of late sixties America, the afterglow of UK acid house/rave, the new age movement and cyberpunk dovetailed together. Within DJ Miku and Yokota-san’s social circles, the thinking of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs electrified the air. By 1996, the moment, brilliant and blinding as it was, was over. “We all felt that the rave scene fizzled out,” DJ Miku says. As he puts it, there was a collective feeling around him that it had all become too much. From the calm that followed, DJ Miku, Yokota-san and their open-eared peers made the decision to switch tracks and start from scratch. DJ Miku believes that with his Stevia releases, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, Yokota-san wanted to express the sweet and sour nature of the passing of those wild early days and his wish for true peace. “At the time, we saw eye-to-eye, with an implicit understanding of each other,” he explains. “Even now, twenty-five years later, I am confident it was like that.”

Studio recordings of "Kobeta Piano" by electronic musician and sound engineer KND, keyboardist Shoichi Murakami, and drummer/percussionist Watz Uematsu. from Kyoto Japan. Jazz layers, Afro-essence, and modular sounds are woven together to create Kyoto's advanced music.

Finally this ghost gem left by Jiro Inagaki's Soul Media has been repressed on vinyl for the first time thanks to Cinedelic Records. ‘Woodstock Generation’ is a masterpiece of Japanese jazz/rock funk/soul that for some it even considered better then the acclaimed "Head Rock" in terms of perfection; surely there are many points in common between the two albums having been made a few months later, in 1970. Behind "The Soul Medium" name hides saxophonist Jiro Inagaki, an iconic figure of the japanese Jazz Rock scene during the late sixties to the early seventies. Jiro is supported by his legendary quintet "Soul Media" under its first incarnation featuring Ryo Kawasaki (g) Yasuo Arakawa (b) Masaru Imada (org) Sadakazu Tabata (ds) with Tetsuo Fushimi & Shunzo Ohno on trumpet in addition. "Woodstock Generation" is a tribute album to the Woodstock Festival including cover of songs performed on the stage by Sly & Family Stone (I Want To Take You Higher) The Who (Summertime Blues) or Ten Years After (Spoonful) but also Woodstock (written by Joni Mitchell in honor of the Festival) and Mamma Told Me (Not To Come) written by Randy Newman for Eric Burdon and The Animals. Titles include also variations on the "Head Rock" theme "The Ground For Peace” and original composition of Masahiko Sato "Knick Knack". All tracks arranged by Jiro Inagaki. Artwork by Eric Adrian Lee. Jiro Inagaki - tenor saxophone soprano saxophone Masaru Imada – organ Ryo Kawasaki – guitar Yasuo Arakawa – bass Sadakazu Tabata – drums Tetsuo Fushimi, Shunzo Ohno – trumpet

A well-known masterpiece that has been further foiled by the recent re-evaluation of city pop has been re-released from Italy's . Haruomi Hosono, Masataka Matsutoya, Shigeru Suzuki, and Tatsuo Hayashi, who have been active as backing bands for numerous works under the name of Caramel Mama since 1973, have been renamed Tin Pan Array and announced in 1975. 1st album. Yoshitaka Minami, Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Ohnuki, Makoto Kubota, Masahiro Kuwana and others are participating as luxurious guests! Also includes Haruomi Hosono's self-cover "Choo Choo Gatta Got '75" and the tropical masterpiece "Yellow Magic Carnival" reminiscent of Martin Denny's sound, which seems to have started here three years before the formation of YMO. !!

Great JPN New Wave /Walearic! This is the first LP reissue of the '88 album by Yukako Hayase, who made a name for herself with her ennui whisper voice, including a cover by Yuko Ando and her influence on Kahimi Karie.

Tender tonkori melodies, meditative dub excursions and hallowed folk vocals combine on Tonkori In The Moonlight, an 11-track collection of mostly traditional songs performed by indigenous Ainu musician OKI. Born on the Japanese island of Hokkaido in 1957, OKI's released his debut album in 1996 and since then he has recorded 11 studio albums both solo and with his Dub Ainu Band and toured internationally -- from WOMAD in the UK to the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC via festival appearances in Singapore, Australia and across Europe. OKI is one of only a handful of musicians who play the tonkori, a five-stringed Ainu harp, which is both the pulse of this record and the force that unifies the disparate sounds he introduces such as reggae, dub, Irish folk, throat singing, African drumming and music from Central Asia. Tonkori In The Moonlight features Umeko Ando and Kila. For fans of: Midori Takada, Siti Muharam, Minyo Crusaders, Les Filles De Illighadad, African Head Charge, Mamman Sani. "Supercool Japanese minimalism" --The Observer. "Like nothing you've ever heard before" --The Wire. "The edgy cool of Jamaica meets the kitsch cool of Japan... charming and compelling" --The Independent.

Obscure Japanese New Wave/Dub! The only album he left in 1982 is finally reissued on LP!

The solo album by Satoshi Murakawa "Jimmy" Murakawa, the vocalist of "Mariah", a band internationally reevaluated for its progressive musicality, has finally been reissued straight from the press amidst a lot of WANT.

The minimal beat "Down? Down, Down!", which was reconstructed by Chee Shimizu, the oriental ambient dub "Beauty", and the cold wave "Cat's Eye", which sharply disturbs the auditory senses, are all featured on this album, with sound design by co-producer Yasuaki Shimizu reflected in every part. The album features a total of 10 tracks that reflect the sound design of co-producer Yasuaki Shimizu.

It was created for the "FORESTRO SUMMIT" event space held at Forest Limit in Hatagaya, Tokyo in January 011. The sound was selected from natural environmental soundscapes, sound effects, low frequency, electronic music, and experimental music. It is a 70-minute mix including silent time, which is connected to "SOMETHING IN THE AIR" in 2012, which I personally started to experiment with during this period. I tried to create a "sound prescription" worldview that is not ambient, experimental, new age, or healing, but rather a guide to the air and space, a "sound prescription" that you can listen to and feel with your free senses and imagination, while stimulating your perception to a good degree. It is a record of the first phase of the mind-drawing challenge to explore the space between music, song selection and mix arrangement. Ten years after the recording, we felt that the appeal of this mix could be better conveyed by listening to it on cassette tape. Compuma

Red/White two-color body cassette.
Limited edition of 200 copies.
All profits from this release will be donated to Ukrainian volunteer groups UAnimals and Save Pets Of Ukraine.

Felis Catus and Silence is a breakthrough release for Tokyo composer-guitarist Leo Takami, following the milestone albums Children’s Song (2012) and Tree of Life (2017). Takami counterpoints the soothing aesthetics of prime-era Windham Hill New Age guitar-heroism with meditative, intellectual compositions comprised of ambitious, process-oriented arrangements. While Takami largely wears his genre influences on his sleeve -- jazz, classical, Japanese gagaku -- the influence of ambient music is a tacit foundation of his work. Working diligently outside of any established communities for fringe musics, Takami conjures this association through a patient focus on generous musical intervals. Steady, kaleidoscopic unfolding of his compositions reflect Takami’s creative intent to “become aware of precisely the time and place I am living.” The unabashedly sweet, tuneful virtues of his music in concert with this reflective form provide an artistic relief of Takami’s thematic harmony. “Each song is based on birth and death, and moving onto the next stage...”

Leo Takami, born 1970, studied guitar under Hideaki Tsumura (aka Kamekichi Tsumura) and performs regularly in Tokyo.

Finally, His First Album: The Flower of Youth / Souls / Yumiko’s Spring / Song from the Void / Grave / Hail the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Sutra / Phone Call / An Akita Fox Song Run Amok / World School / Resistance, Age 23 / Mr. Ishimori / First Bon / A Cat Burglar in the Night / Bright Night Straight from the Throat: Grampa / Goddam Winter / American Kuyuran / Dagadzugu / A Fitting Adolescence / Footbridge / The Spring is Here Again Song / Fridge / Smithereens / Don’t Kill the Sea Lions / Harmonica / A Little Ditty / Stone A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth: Try Saying You’re Alive! / Kill or Be Killed / Memory / Got a Problem? / Namahage / My Hometown is Also Inside a Dog / The Boys of Hachiryū / The Donpan Song Goes Off the Rails / Runaway Boy / Missed My Time to Die A poet, soothsayer, bicycle race tipster, actor, prolific drinker, self-taught guitarist, and living legend of Japanese sound, Kazuki Tomokawa catapulted into Tokyo’s avant-folk scene in the mid-1970s, forging a sound and sensibility marked by throat-wrenching vocals and searing ennui. Among his musical peers in postwar Japan, Tomokawa distinguished himself as a pioneer of radical individualism. He had “the personality of a hydrogen bomb”—as the notorious ultraleft band the Brain Police once put it—and a sound to match. Now, Blank Forms Editions gathers Tomokawa’s earliest records for the first time in a deluxe three CD box set comprised of Finally, His First Album (Harvest Records, 1975), Straight from the Throat (Harvest Records, 1976), and A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth (Harvest Records, 1977). In each record, Tomokawa shouts, cries, wails, and croons, his folk stylings tinged with psychedelia and swelling into ground-shaking rock.. Many tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a highly regional vernacular of north Japan rarely heard beyond the prefecture, and even less often used in music. Matching his guttural, all-out vocals are profoundly existential meditations on everyday life and the world around him; this is, as record executive Kiichi Takara dubs it, “I-music.” It looks toward the interior, the quotidian, and the domestic with piercing and ever-honest eyes. The accompanying liner notes (here translated for the first time) include introductions by Takara, a round table discussion with Brain Police, and lyrics for all three albums—tracking the rise of Tomokawa as the “screaming philosopher” of Japan. The box set will be in conjunction with the release of each record in LP format in 2022, and the musician’s 2015 memoir, Try Saying You’re Alive! (Blank Forms Editions, 2021), the first-ever English translation of his prose; together they provide the definitive introduction to the singular world of Kazuki Tomokawa. Kazuki Tomokawa (b. 1950) is a prolific singer-songwriter from Hachiryū Village (now the town of Mitane) in the Akita Prefecture area of northern Japan. Since his first release in 1975, he has recorded more than thirty albums. The 2010 documentary about his life, La Faute des Fleurs, won the Sound & Vision award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, and that same year saw the Japanese release of the book Dreams Die Vigorously Day by Day, a collection of his lyrics spanning forty years. His most recent albums are Vengeance Bourbon (2014) and Gleaming Crayon (2016), both on the Modest Launch label.

After a small nap, Tokyo’s finest Studio Mule is back on the scene, bringing the world some deeply composed guitar music from Japan, crafted by Shin Sasakubo. Since almost 20 years the guitarist is specialized in classic and contemporary Andean and Peruvian music. a knowledge that he deepened through a three-year stint in Peru between 2004 and 2007. During his time in Latin America, he played live in Argentina, Chile, or Bolivia and researched in the works of Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist José María Ar-Guedas, as Shin Sasakubo’s take on art is not one-dimensional. He also loves movies, painting, photography, writing, and theater - artforms that con-stantly influence his music on many different layers. since his return to his hometown Chichibu City in the japanese Saitama Prefecture, he launched the "Chichibu Avant-Garde School”, a college that looks through art and lectures on the Chichibu region, and his en-vironmental and folkloristic history. As sincerely driven composer, he released three guitar leaning albums in the past ten years. his latest sensation “Chichibu”, originally only released in Japan, now travels the globe via Studio Mule, making his fantastique listening voyage available for all those souls that seek joy through the sound of guitar strings.

Finally! The long awaited reissue of a very rare album that was originally released in 1985 on For Life! One of the last treasures of Japanese music, highly recommended for lovers of Japanese New Age, Japanese New Wave and Avant New Wave. This is an analog reissue of the only work left by MU-PROJECT, a fantastic unit formed by synthesizer player Ryoichi Kuniyoshi, known for his participation in the works of Riri, Yoshikazu Sasaki, and Motoharu Sano, and engineer Kiyoshi Toba! The original was priced at nearly 30,000 yen and has been long overdue for a reissue. Shuichi Murakami (Ponta), Hideki Matsutake, Kiyohiko Semba (Haniwa-chan), Keishi Urata (Aragon, The Seatbelts), and many others participated in this exotic oriental/ Balearic new age album. I recommend this album to a wide range of listeners who are looking for something out of the ordinary, not only Mariah and YMO, but also to those who like Digital Trip and the Synthesizer Fantasy series!

SIDE-A
01. That Was Illegal
02. You Still OK?
03. Like A Fable
04. You Have Time But I Don’t
05. Sad Errand
|
SIDE-B
01. Star
02. Floating Weeds
03. Thickness of Love
04. One Day
05. The Whereabouts Of Romance

Written & Produced by Shintaro Sakamoto

Japanese Balearic Masterpiece ('93) is re-pressed on Clear Blue Vinyl! HIROSHI II HIROSHI" is a unit of Hiroshi Fujiwara and Hiroshi Kawanabe (Tokyo No.1 SOUL SET). This is their chill-out~Balearic classic (EP), which was distributed as a picture disc with a vinyl jacket at the time, and is now a popular and expensive item on the second-hand market. The EP features "H2O," the first track that takes you to a fictional resort with its gentle guitar strumming, and "Beauty & Beast + Bagle (Dub)," an exquisite summer resort dubwise track with melting sounds and the melancholy of the sun in the west. The album also includes six evergreen songs that pioneered the Café Del Mar craze that later spread throughout Japan. The artwork is a faithful reproduction of the CD-era design by Hiroshi Nagai.

The second album released in 1973, with Japanese lyrics on side A and English lyrics on side B. The ensemble with female vocals is also superb on this acid folk masterpiece.

Still Way" by Satoshi Ashikawa, one of the pioneers of Japanese environmental music, who founded the famous Sound Process label (Sound Process Design Co., Ltd.) and has brought out famous artists such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Oscilation Circuit, and Satsuki Shibano, has been reissued on CD and LP! Finally, the new age revival/domestic ambient reevaluation has come to an end! Originally interested in contemporary music when he was in college, he worked at Art Vivant, a store specializing in art books and contemporary music, and has been active in experimental performances since the late 70s, collaborating with Mamoru Fujieda, Midori Takada, and Hiroshi Yoshimura. The following year, he passed away at the age of 30. This album has a clear concept of ambient music in the lineage of Brian Eno, and was created as a work that can be listened to casually as a "sound landscape" or "sound object. Four players, including Midori Takada, perform music composed by Satoshi Ashikawa. Although the composition varies from piece to piece, piano, harp, and vibraphone are used. It is a beautiful work that depicts an emotionally rich landscape that passes through contemporary/minimal music and is very simple, but also has the beauty of a Japanese pull. In his own words, the music is like a series of still moments. The cover design is by Hiroshi Yoshimura. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa and Gareth Quinn Redmond are included.

On their first official collaboration, Japanese noise pioneer Masami Akita aka Merzbow and Australian sound sculptor Lawrence English present a harrowing, surrealist portrait of nocturnal industrial activity, spawned by field recordings made in a sprawling factory complex seven hours north of English’s home in Brisbane. He characterizes the area as “uneasy and unsettling,” awash in the sickly glow of smelters and refinement machinery, somehow not of this world – a liminal quality vividly captured in Andrei Tarkovsky’s sprawling purgatorial opus, Stalker, to which the title alludes. Akita, too, described early drafts of Eternal Stalker as feeling “like the soundtrack to a dystopian science fiction opera.” A mood of mechanical dread and ruined futures permeates each of the album’s seven potent compositions. Opener “The Long Dream” sets the stage with steady rain on sheet metal, punctured by thunder and metallic echoes, reverberating to the rafters in a collapsing warehouse. Quickly the tempest rises. “A Gate Of Light” and “Magnetic Traps” both convulse in churning furies of electric demolition and rattling chains, roaring and relentless. “The Visit” and “Black Thicket” operate more at a distance, surveying the topography of steam, rust, and liquid metal from above, their flickers of violence like gunfire swallowed by blankets of darkness. This is noise at its most elemental and unknowable: brooding, bristling, and opaque, stalking forbidden peripheries of chaos and creation. Discussing Akita’s music, English refers to its “intense substrata that is purely psychedelic; it consumes and confounds.” The seasick swells of friction and fracture subsume the listener, forcing an auditory surrender: “this saturation of the senses can be a euphoria.” Proof comes halfway through “The Golden Sphere,” when the howling mayhem subtly recedes, revealing an eerie siren drone hovering in the void, like the resonance of a dead star galaxies away. Slowly a seething, venomous wall of volume returns, shredding the signal until its frequencies fray, whipping away into the eye of the storm. The combined effect merges obliteration and liberation, rapture and ravagement; it’s the sound of dissolution as resolution, uprooted and unmoored, finally freed from form.