Japanese

Is this a projection of the world bursting out of a formula?
Or is this an indistinct report from a three-dimensional intersection where indifference and anonymous malice scramble?

After the breakup of the legendary psychedelic rock band White Heaven and The Stars, Yo Ishihara, who in recent years has been active as Hiroshi Ishihara with Friends, has now completed his solo album.
Ishihara is also known as a sound producer for the bands "Yurayura Teikoku" and "Ogre You Asshole," but this is his first solo album in 23 years.

The music and songs that can be faintly heard from the depths of the urban hustle and bustle are not ambient, avant-garde, or so-called mellow, but rather a sensual music that has never been heard before,
It is an extremely conceptual and innovative work that shows the distance between music (Ishihara) and the world.

The musicians include Michio Kurihara, who has worked with Ishihara for many years in White Heaven and The Stars, Tomohiro Kitada and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and Soichiro Nakamura, a former member of White Heaven who also serves as engineer.

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 2009.

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 1999.

Official reissue of the sophomore album from fabled folk singer-songwriter/actress/writer, and one of the most gorgeous voices of Japanese music, Hako Yamasaki, originally released in 1976 on the legendary Elec Records, one of the first independent labels in the country. Tsunawatari is a perfect follow-up to her classic debut Tobimasu, immortalizing the bitter beauty of heartache with tearful performances and nostalgic empowerment. Hako Yamasaki is considered a pioneer in both the creative boom and the rise of feminism of 1970s Japan. This album is released in conjunction with Tobimasu, also available on WRWTFWW Records. Folk, Alternative, Psychedelic, Soft, Poetic

Originally issued by Crammed in 1987, this is one of the most sought-after releases in our legendary Made To Measure series. Known for his numerous albums, soundtracks, and collaborations with an impossibly broad array of artists (from Ryuichi Sakamoto and DJ Towa Tei to Van Dyke Parks, Björk, Manu Dibango and Elvin Jones), composer, saxophonist and producer Yasuaki Shimizu also released several electronic music productions during the '80s, which are currently generating a lot of interest (a.o. his recently reissued Mariah project).

"Music For Commercials" is a brilliant and inventive collection of short pieces, initially conceived as soundtracks for Japanese TV commercials (and bearing sweet titles such as “Seiko”, “Sharp”, “Honda” etc). These twenty-three tracks (each clocking in at two minutes or less, except one longer piece composed for a computer-animation short) abound with hit-and-run sound collages, twittering computers, and energetic ricocheting between myriad styles of music. This album has achieved near-mythical status in the last few years, which have seen artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never sing its praise.

Here's a great one. This is from Death Is Not The End, a great place for digging up antique music from all over the world, from pre-war blues to immigrant music and South American folklore. It's also a great place to dig for antique music from all over the world. This Japanese project follows on the heels of Katsutaro Kouta, which was released in 2018 and was very popular in our store, and contains haunting and unique sounds that show how cultural fusion with the West was beginning to be reflected in popular songs before the influence of Western pop music during the post-war American occupation. This is a work that every Japanese should be exposed to at least once.

Musique Hydromantique is the second solo album by Tomoko Sauvage archiving many years of her performance-based practice on the waterbowls -- the natural synthesizer of her invention, composed with porcelain bowls filled with water and amplified via hydrophones (underwater microphones). While her first album Ombrophilia (2009) was studio-recorded/composed work, Musique Hydromantique is about experimentation and improvisation with the environment -- acoustics affected by the architecture, temperature, humidity, and the human presence. For more than ten years, Sauvage has been investigating the sound and visual properties of water in different states, as well as those of ceramics, combined with electronics. Water drops, waves, and bubbles are some of the elements she has been playing with to generate the fluid timbre. Since around 2010, hydrophonic feedback has been an obsession -- an acoustic phenomenon that requires fine tuning depending on the amount of water, a subtle volume control, and interaction with the acoustic space. "Calligraphy" was recorded in a genuine echo chamber, with about ten second reverbs, situated in a former textile factory. Like an endless exercise to draw perfect curves and forms floating in the air, the subaquatic feedback frequencies are pitch-bended with the mass of water sculpted by a hand changing its quantity. "Fortune Biscuit" is about the singing bubbles emitted from the pieces of "biscuit" (porous terra-cotta). Depending on the texture of the surface, each biscuit makes different sound. "Clepsydra" (meaning "water clock") features Sauvage's classical technique, a random percussion with dripping water. Sauvage tunes the waterbowls by adding and removing water, making flowing glissando, to find the balance point in ever-changing tonalities. Just as the flow of water is subject to a number of variables such as temperature and pressure, water clocks mark a time that is shifting and relative. However, slowness dominates throughout the album as a result of favoring the full resonance of the instrument. Hydromancy is a method of divination by means of water. Unpredictable bubbles and water ripples become oracles. Evaporation and acoustic space constantly play a chance operation. All the tracks were live-recorded without electronic effects or editing. Recorded during night or very early in the morning, and the whole album is to be listened to during that period of a day. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. CD version comes in a digipak; Edition of 1000.

Ship to Shore PhonoCo., in conjunction with Sony Music Entertainment, is proud to present Hirokazu Tanaka & Keiichi Suzuki’s original soundtrack to the 1994 Super Famicom classic MOTHER 2: ギーグの逆襲 (MOTHER 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back!). MOTHER 2, released as EarthBound in the West, is revered as one of the most offbeat and memorable RPGs. Citing influence from artists such as Brian Wilson, Frank Zappa and John Lennon, Suzuki and Tanaka created a diverse soundscape quite unlike anything that came before it. Remastered specifically for vinyl and released outside of Japan for the first time ever, MOTHER 2 is a must have for video game music and soundtrack fans.

Here is the second album of original japanese freak Magical Power Mako, originally released in 1975. A truly iconic acid folk manifesto, interspersed with intense moments of pure psych rock. A sonic journey into imaginary lands !

A command across genres has distinguished Yasushi Ide’s work as a DJ and producer since emerging from the multi-scene spawning big bang that was Tokyo’s highly influential club milieu of the 1980s. His productions draw variously from hip-hop, dub, house, punk, jazz dance, exotica and electronic music - and at their most expressive, synthesize sensibilities within a single track. The respect Ide’s earned is well evident in the impressive roll call of collaborators he’s accrued over the years - Masters At Work, Tom Verlaine, Don Letts, James Chance, DJ Krush, Pharaoh Sanders, U-ROY, and Bongo Herman, just to name a legendary few. “A Place In the Sun” is in many respects a consummate distillation of Ide’s inspirations and artistry. An exquisitely sparse down-tempo instrumental composed and produced by Ide, it features the unmistakable guitar stylings of Jamaican music giant Ernest Ranglin alongside Takayoshi Matsunaga’s steady bass, Nobuyuki Nakajima’s sparkling Fender Rhodes touches, and Yoko Ota’s tight drum programming. The track’s lovely original incarnation saw release as a Japan-only album cut from Ide’s album 2012 Late Night Blues. But in a serendipitous turn, Love Injection’s Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele encountered “A Place In the Sun” by way of an elusive 1-of-50 dubplate remix by Kaoru Inoue, aka Chari Chari (founder of the SeedsAndGround label, a subsidiary of Kenji Takimi’s respected Crue-L Records) while traveling and gigging in Japan in 2019. Barbie and Paul brought the dubplate back home to New York City, and still buzzing in the afterglow of their Japan trip, promptly fell for its perfect evocation of warmth in all its meanings, and intuitively understood: this should be more widely heard. Now available for worldwide distribution from Love Injection Records in both digital and 7-inch 45 vinyl formats, the Yasushi Ide “A Place In the Sun (Kaoru Inoue Remix)” is paired with the equally gorgeous “A Place In the Sun (Dub).” On the former, Inoue’s treatment largely strips away the track’s beats, anchoring it to a subtle percussion pulse that emphasizes the composition’s irresistible melodic qualities. The latter finds Yoko Ota at the controls restoring and pushing reverb-soaked drums to the forefront of the mix, accentuating Ide’s affection for the sound system aesthetic while exercising just the right amount of spacial arrangement flourishes to inject some brawn amidst the beauty. These serendipitously rediscovered renditions of a back catalog deep cut are just the latest examples of Yasushi Ide’s artistic reach. In addition to recording such acclaimed albums as 2020’s Cosmic Suite and its 2022 sequel (for which Love Injection has remixed a track), his work has spanned music supervision of some 200+ compilations for major labels, artist management, his Grand Gallery shop/gallery proprietorship, and books showcasing the depth of his archival sensibilities, including vintage t-shirt and ephemera curation. Perhaps most inspiring, however, is that Ide is still winning new appreciators and collaborators in unexpected ways four decades into a revered career that continues to evolve and expand.

A buoyant masterpiece from the early 90s, “The Water Garden” was created by Okinawa-born Kojun Kokuba under the inspiring image of a “happy Asia” thriving in the sea-based trading networks of the medieval to pre-modern era, with the concept that various types of music, as well as physical goods, were distributed and dispersed across the seas connecting various parts of east and southeast Asia. Fittingly, the music here has definite and distinctive Ryukyu island roots, but is informed by a number of other Asian musical traditions, layering phrases derived from numerous Asian scales, often altered by Kojun, eschewing typical Western chordal harmonic movement. Kojun uses the synths and multitrack recorders of the early 90s to, in his words, “pile up lines” in sweet and not at all overbearing melodic accumulations, with a desire to distribute and disperse a new energy from Okinawa to the rest of Asia and the world. Despite a pleasing and compelling rhythmic lilt and the use of synths and drum machines, this music was not created as a product for the dance floor; Kojun envisioned a type of electronic salon music, a “light music” made with contemporary technology. This is the first LP edition of the self-produced original 1993 CD release and includes bonus tracks and liner notes in English and Japanese.

Here is a portal to a vast and relatively unknown world, the Japanese cyber-occult underground media scene of the early 1990s; our guide is the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer whose expansive and visionary conception of digital technology merged with a desire to break free of the constraints of mere rationality. This collection, the first-ever archival release of his work, is drawn from recordings released during the period 1991-1996, an exceptionally fertile time for Kawahara. Originally released on CD by a few Japanese independent labels including Hachiman Publishing, a cyber-occult/new-age book specialist, the releases were available mainly in book stores, so this sumptuous and prescient music has remained relatively unknown. The original titles and tag lines of the CDs give clues about Kawahara’s interests and the music itself: Digital Mushroom, Subtropical Illusion, Never-ending Asia, and so on. This 15-track gateway compilation is available on double 12” vinyl and DL; the CD version has two extra discs featuring sound from two art installations entitled "Dysteleology - α" and "Dysteleolog - β" from the 1990s. All formats feature extensive English liner notes. 

-------------------------------- 

Henry Kawahara has been called “the Jon Hassell of Japan”, but upon closer inspection one finds that his work operates on very different terms. Like Hosono's forays into computerized Ryukyu folk “sightseeing music” or Tsutomu Ōhashi's Ecophony trilogy, Kawahara's world projected ancient musical traditions and notions of cultural identity onto the modern digital plane through a fusion of cybernetic thinking and pan-asian cultural introspection that makes Western attempts to do the same seem quaint in comparison. Kawahara's omnidirectional sound “illusions” were constructed not as albums but psychological experiences, billowing with a then-nascent notion of early 90s cybernetic spirituality that was proliferating on both sides of the Pacific as the hyperlinked state of global connectivity we know today was just beginning to crystalize. Through digital representations of folk instruments, shifting MIDI sequencing and custom binaural recording technology he aimed for psychoacoustic effect as much as artistic, all via a countercultural form of distribution untethered from the commercial expectations of post-bubble modes of artistic production. This EM collection draws out the best of his fruitful early-mid 90s period into a revelatory sequence, generously opening Kawahara's world to all. —Spencer Doran (Visible Cloaks) 

-------------------------------- 

Henry Kawahara's deal is Intimate, Intuitive, Adventurous, and Acidy! Spice is added to all, whether its ethereal guitar, nature effects, gamelan club trance, or LSD experimentations. In the vibe of Coil's “Love Secret Domain” and out there clubgamelan. The creative force of the jungle is mutated and interchanged with further sound palettes, and his effex palette has the schwing of a 90s grunge guitarist. His musical tendencies are natural and his scope and variety are dangerous. —Spencer Clark (The Star Searchers / Pacific City Discs)

he unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono is the auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world, putting his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as an artist, session player, songwriter, and producer. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career. Hosono made his professional debut in 1969 as a member of Apryl Fool, whose heavy psychedelia was somewhat at odds with his influences, which leaned towards the rootsy sounds of Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. The latter was one of the main inspirations for his next group, Happy End, whose unique blend of West Coast sounds with Japanese lyrics proved to be highly influential over the course of three albums. After the band’s amicable break up in 1973, Hosono began his solo career with Hosono House, an intimate slice of Japanese Americana recorded inside a rented house with recording gear squeezed into its tiny bedroom. Hosono’s solo career would take many twists and turns from this point forward, with forays into exotica, electronic, ambient, and techno, culminating in the massive success of techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). Released in September 1978, a mere two months before YMO’s debut, Cochin Moon is a clear precursor to the groundbreaking synth and sequencer-dominated sounds that would come to define the iconic trio. Credited to Hosono and Pop Art legend Tadanori Yokoo (who created the cover art), Cochin Moon is a fictional soundtrack to a journey into unknown worlds, inspired by Hosono and Yokoo’s trip to India. Initially the album was to be a kind of ethnographic musical document, using found sounds and field recordings made by Hosono himself. Instead, after Yokoo introduced Hosono to the sounds of Kraftwerk and krautrock during the trip, Cochin Moon became something much stranger. Created almost entirely on synthesizers and sequencers with the help of future YMO collaborators Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hideki Matsutake, the music on the album is the perfect encapsulation of Hosono’s concept of “sightseeing music,” transporting the listener to an exotic place that may or may not exist. This highly sought-after album sees its first-ever official release outside of Japan. Admired by artists ranging from Van Dyke Parks to Mac DeMarco, Hosono continues to forge ahead as he heads into his fifth decade as a musician. With the re-release of his key albums for the first time outside of Japan, his genius will be discovered by a whole new generation of fans around the world.

The poetry of the human voice encounters the magic of contemporary electronic musical technology. Heart, mind and spirit, conveyed by the word, are augmented and altered, enhanced and embraced, by electronic sound. “Air from Air” is a collaboration between Japanese vocalist/producer Dove and American electronic duo Georgia. This singular partnership is a collection of audio poems in which words breathed by Dove are modified and expanded, cradled and celebrated, syllable by syllable and phrase by phrase. Georgia thoughtfully highlight Dove’s voice, transforming breath and air through the ether of circuitry, dismantling meaning, yet paradoxically revealing new meaning, both verbal and musical. Part of the magic here is that Japanese-speaking listeners will find clouds and constellations of meaning in these atmospheres, while those who do not understand Dove’s native language will nevertheless find pure pleasure in these same atmospheres. While some listeners may perceive it as a brand new extension of the attempts of contemporary music pioneers to explore the possibilities of human voice sound in sound art and electronic music, “Air from Air” will be rather a foray into the unexplored territory of new music, yet difficult to be named, extended into modern bass music and other fields. Available on LP and DL. Vinyl edition disc is made of environmentally friendly new material BioVinyl. Cover art by Sakura Kondo.

Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886 Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory. An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date. For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich. The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures. Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.

New soundscapes inspired by the architecture of V&A Dundee, the first ever dedicated design museum in Scotland. Midori Takada Legendary Japanese Ambient pioneer Takada was specially commissioned by MSCTY and one of UK's leading art institutions, V&A Dundee, to create a soundtrack to the museum itself. Sympathetic to the architect Kengo Kuma's use of natural materials in the landmark building's construction, Takada bases the compositions around huge wood marimbas, creating atmospheric, hypnotic beauty inspired directly by Kuma's organic vision. This album contains the complete works, constituting 3 connected compositions. Midori Takada plays a special live show at Kings Place, London in September, the month of the album's physical release. Her recently reissued 1983 work 'Through the Looking Glass' was hailed as "mesmerising" and an "ambient minimalist masterpiece" by Pitchfork who awarded it their best reissue of 2017. SHHE SHHE is the alias of Scottish-Portuguese artist, musician and producer, Su Shaw. Her work is influenced by environment and ecology, exploring themes of identity and connection at the intersection between sound, space and liminal states. SHHE's eponymous debut album was released by One Little Independent Records and was shortlisted for Scottish Album of the Year 2020. This new album features an exclusive 45 minute composition specially commissioned by MSCTY and V&A Dundee, which is located in her town. Based on the sounds of the water around V&A Dundee, with the music reacting to the movement of the pools and the tides, the piece is inspired by the rugged exterior of the museum architecture and its location by the River Tay.

From the moment they emerged in the early days of the 80’s Tokyo underground, High Rise set themselves apart as radical outliers, shattering the limits of rock and psychedelic music with a ferocity unmatched even in that heady era. The group’s core duo of Asahito Nanjo on bass/vocals and Munehiro Narita on guitar had an explosive chemistry; they mutated, distorted, amplified the raw velocity, heaviness, and electricity of late 60’s / early 70’s rock into an entirely new, monstrous form. Running in similar circles, their approach paralleled that of Les Rallizes Dénudés, but with a more garage / proto-punk attack and the blistering intensity of a full-on amphetamine rush. While Mizutani’s guitar is what took Rallizes’s to another level, the same can be said for Narita’s guitar work in High Rise- rightfully placing him in the pantheon of psychedelic guitarists and for some to call him “the undisputed king of the motorcycle fuzz guitar”. The band inspired the launch of the legendary P.S.F. label, giving it its first two releases which along with its third release, the debut of Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha, signaled a new era in the world of Japanese underground music. High Rise’s second album, 1986’s II, was a triumph and fully lived up to the group’s original “Psychedelic Speed Freaks” moniker, instantly raising the stakes for any band to follow. It carved out a new stream of rock music, rooted in an encyclopedic knowledge of the music’s history and an almost metaphysical understanding of its raw elements and spirit. High Rise’s third album, 1992’s Dispersion, kept the group’s in-the-red intensity while pushing into new directions. Less grounded in speed, Nanjo along with drummer Dr. Euro build powerful, dynamic riffs that swing with crushing levels of heaviness. Slower pieces rife with blues infused tension appear alongside dissonant no wave inflected passages and rumbling biker rave-ups. All of which provide Narita with the room to create one of rock guitars most compelling high wire spectacles. Throughout the album he creates dizzying torrents of notes with a precision, control and endless inventiveness that crackles with chaotic energy. As P.S.F.’s own description proclaimed at the time “Munehiro Narita's guitar explodes!” this is “Killer-Fuzz-Wah-Wah psychedelic heaven!” Dispersion is “a masterpiece that should be a classic for all psychedelic speed freaks.” Black Editions is pleased to present the definitive edition of Dispersion, remixed and remastered from the original master tapes by Asahito Nanjo and released in a deluxe gatefold double LP edition housed in a die-cut slipcase printed entirely with spot colors and featuring spot UV gloss and soft touch finishes.

His name may not be instantly familiar, but Hideki Matsutake has had a huge influence over Electronic music. Starting his career as the assistant of Japanese Electronic Music master Isao Tomita in the early 70s, he went on to work with Ryuichi Sakamoto before joining Yellow Magic Orchestra as the group's keyboard programmer and unofficial fourth member. In 1981 he started his own Logic System project recording "Venus" that year in Los Angeles with Don Grusin, Nathan East and Michael Boddicker, brilliantly mixing Synth Funk, Ambient and Boogie with a touch of Smooth Jazz predating Vaporwave by 30 years. Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue this visionary album, which comes remastered from the original tapes and features Pater Sato stunning artwork.

The 17th album released in 1985. Produced by Toshiyuki Honda and Tetsu Yamauchi. It is radical and experimental, but also has a pop sense that shines through more than ever.

Distributed in 1984 by Sound Process Design, a company founded by Satoshi Ashikawa, a pioneer of environmental music in Japan, the entire body of work that has remained shrouded in mystery to this day is finally revealed. A thoughtful response to the works of great artists such as Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, John Cage, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Haruomi Hosono, and King Crimson in the early 1980s. The album features seven tracks, three from the original LP, a reprise of the album's key piece "Nocturne," and a previously unreleased recording and chamber music arrangement version of the sequel "Nocturne II.

Dripping sound...rippling into the womb and beyond. Yutaka Hirose "Nostalgia" world premiere LP release! The compilation of Japanbeat is here! Yutaka Hirose created the masterpiece ambient work "Nova," which was discovered and reevaluated from overseas. Nostalghia", a work that records the "drops" of sensitivity and sound that spring from within, free of all restrictions, has finally been released as the world's first sound source! The sound space of another dimension from the ambient/environmental music that abounds in the market blends into the everyday world in your wireless phone environment, and even expands horizontally into the space in a speaker environment? We Japanese will be the next ones to experience the sensibility of Japambient. NOVA", a piece from the environmental music series "Soundscape" planned by the Sound Design Office of the Misawa Home Research Institute in 1986, was re-evaluated overseas and released on CD in 2019 with bonus tracks by a Swiss label. Yutaka Hirose became a big topic of conversation. After the production of "NOVA", Yutaka Hirose faced with his own sound and recorded in his home studio, and released it in a limited 2-CD analog format with additional tracks different from the CD version!

Satoshi (Satoshi & Makoto) releases his first solo album - A collection of archival works and new compositions. Like his previous releases with Makoto, this album is performed mainly on the much revered Casio CZ-5000 synthesiser. Features include: Benedek (PPU, L.I.E.S. Second Circle) on on guitar, Makoto and Kuniyuki Takahashi (Percussion & Mixes).

Ecological Plantron" (1994) is a radical installation that uses sound to experience the ecological chain that surrounds our bodies from the perspective of plants.
This is a reprint of "Ecological Plantron" (1994), a radical installation that uses sound to let us experience the ecological chain that surrounds our bodies from the perspective of plants.

Bio-artist Yuji Dohkin researched and developed an epoch-making system in the early 1990s to create a device that speaks to plants and is spoken to by plants, which is "Plantron" (*I have a related doctoral thesis).
(*There is also a related doctoral dissertation.) This device, which extracts ecocurrents from plants (orchids) and converts them into physical phenomena that can be perceived by humans, is primarily intended to explore whether humans can perceive the intelligence of plants, and is not intended to entertain physical phenomena themselves. Ecological Plantron" is the "sound" record of the first installation of this "Plantron" in operation.

In this work, the copper-plated "Plantron" is constructed by composer Mamoru Fujieda into a sound system for installation, and the ecological current generated by the communication between plants and the human environment is programmed and converted into electronic sound, emitting irregularly shaped and irregular electronic sound particles.
(*Note) If I were to use a strong analogy, I might imagine an atmosphere somewhat similar to that of Xenakis or Penderecki's graphic notation music. Ecological currents remind us of the experimental music of Rosenboom and Lussier, who used human brain waves, but this work is not human-centered but plant-first, and it should be noted that it is not presented as a "musical work" in the first place.

For this reissue, we have remastered the independent recordings made at the gallery and included two works derived from Ecological Plantron, "Mangrove Plantron" and "Pianola Plantron," on a bonus disc. The first LP version is also available.
Since the experimental release of this device in 1991, pseudo-similar attempts have appeared, but it should be noted that the original was "Plantron". The commentary includes the latest contribution by Copper Gold, which reexamines the story of this experiment and its development, as well as the intentions of this work.

Note: Fujieda rediscovered the "melody" that modern music had left behind in the process of trying to extract some kind of regularity from this uncontrollable mass of sound, and this led him to compose and publish a series of works called "Plant Patterns.

This is first reissue ever Che-Shizu ライヴ集１（Steeple & Globe） www.discogs.com/release/1239264-シェシズ-ライブ集１1986-1988 With Download Code Chie Mukai Takuya Nishimura Yoshio Kuge Tori Kudo Masami Shinoda Yuriko Mukoujima Wataru Okuma Shinya Kimura Designed by Toyohiro Okazaki Remastered by Yasushi Utsunomiya Liner Notes by Shinji Shibayama Translate by Alan Cummings Limited Edition to 100.