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C418 - Minecraft Volume Beta (2CD)C418 - Minecraft Volume Beta (2CD)
C418 - Minecraft Volume Beta (2CD)Ghostly International
¥2,135

ドイツのミュージシャン/作曲家のDaniel Rosenfeldが変名C418にて製作した傑作!物理世界とピクセル化された世界の両方で響くサウンドを描き上げた『マインクラフト』のオリジナルサウンドトラック盤『Minecraft Volume Beta』が〈Ghostly International〉からアナログ・リプレス。前作『Alpha』には未収録の楽曲だけでなく、ゲーム内では使用されたなかった楽曲も収録したC418自身のオリジナル・アルバム的一枚!牧歌的で穏やかなサウンドスケープに仕立てられた前作と比してよりダークで内省的な側面もクローズアップされた魅惑のアンビエント/エレクトロニック・ミュージックが収められています。

Jammin' Sam Miller - Super Metroid (OST Recreated) (2LP)Jammin' Sam Miller - Super Metroid (OST Recreated) (2LP)
Jammin' Sam Miller - Super Metroid (OST Recreated) (2LP)We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want
¥5,473
Full HD re-creation/restoration of the legendary soundtrack for 1994 Exploration / Action-Adventure / Sci-Fi / Alien video game Super Metroid by Louisiana-based composer and producer Jammin' Sam Miller. Jammin' Sam Miller explains: "Composed by Kenji Yamamoto. Recreated by me. This was made possible by locating the original instrument samples from workstation keyboards and drum machines before they were put into the game and rebuilding the soundtrack from the ground up, applying some modern mixing techniques along the way to lift the veil of 16bit compression and create an updated listening experience." *For fans of Video Games, SNES, Samus Aran, Atmospheric Sounds, Zebes Music*
Jay Richford and Gary Stevan ‎- Feelings (LP)
Jay Richford and Gary Stevan ‎- Feelings (LP)Be With Records
¥4,571
More than once Jay Richford and Gary Stevan’s Feelings has been described as the greatest library record ever released. Of course Be With can’t be seen to be playing favourites, but we have to admit, it’s pretty good. Insanely rare and immensely sought-after, it’s a tough funk, street jazz masterpiece coveted for many years by collectors of all musical genres. Groove-laden bass, irrepressible horns, sweet flute lines, warm Rhodes, lush string arrangements, blaxploitation-styled wah-wah guitars and so, so much more make this one of the finest instrumental soul LPs of the 70s, if not of all time.
石橋英子 Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist (LP)石橋英子 Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist (LP)
石橋英子 Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist (LP)Drag City
¥3,759
Following their collaboration on 2021’s Oscar winning Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi & filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi up the ante with a deeply inspired synergistic exchange: music for images, visuals for sounds. Eiko’s score initiated the project that has become his celebrated new film (Best Picture – BFI London Film Fest, Asian Film Awards, Silver Lion – Venice Film Fest, Best Score – Asia Film Awards). Every nuance mixed & mastered by Jim O’Rourke.

Uliel - Boca Muralha (CS)Uliel - Boca Muralha (CS)
Uliel - Boca Muralha (CS)Horror Vector
¥2,585
Synthesised vocal madness from Porto’s Jonathan Saldanha, a founding member of HHY & The Macumbas and a sound artist in his own right, operating in intersecting fields of film, sound design and installation works. On his debut for his Horror Vector label, Saldanha works with vocalists Catarina Miranda and Luísa Saraiva, queering their voices through vintage delay units to generate a time-fluxing signature that's utterly psychedelic, like some unhinged Robert Turman, Robert Ashley x Kara-Lis Coverdale threeway. Originally written to accompany Catarina Miranda's ambitious Boca Muralha dance piece, a duet inspired by ancient Greek deities of vengeance the Furies, this tightly-coiled experiment comes off like Steve Reich in a k-hole. Saldanha makes use of a delay to manipulate and control the two voices, freezing fragments and curving them into slippery vortexes. Raw syllables are repeated, intersected and phased from staccato passages into operatic, rhythmic choruses, time-stretching snowballed clusters of ululations. Theatrical but never overblown, the music is boldly unadorned, preferring to highlight the idiosyncrasies of the methodology than resort to extraneous processing. There's little if any reverb: Miranda and Saraiva's voices sound almost obnoxiously dry, which only serves to further harden their impact. Glassy and cloying, the repetition is taken to extreme levels; Saldanha's usual noisy maximalism is nowhere to be found, but his mischievous streak is omnipresent. The vocals bounce left and right like a Reichian call and response, and while complex rhythms do eventually form as he futzes with the loop points, the music starts to dissolve into a spellbinding purr. At times almost alarmingly unadorned, it’s a brave and supremely mind-altering release from a promising new label. The dream is the dreamer!
SQÜRL - Music for Man Ray (Clear Vinyl 2LP)
SQÜRL - Music for Man Ray (Clear Vinyl 2LP)Sacred Bones Records
¥4,525
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan (founding members ofSQÜRL) return with a sonic exploration of the cinematic works of Dadaist pioneer Man Ray, a captivating project that melds music and film. Over the past eight years, SQÜRL have been enchanting audiences with their live scores to Man Ray’s short films across sold-out shows in prestigious venues like the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The culmination of their endeavor took place in the spring of 2023, on the 100th anniversary of Man Ray’s inaugural foray into filmmaking, when the newly restored Return to Reason premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Produced by Womanray (Marieke Tricoire) and Cinenovo (Julie Viez),Return to Reason unfolds as an anthology featuring four silent short films by Man Ray—Étoilede mer (1928), Emak bakia (1926), Le Retour á la Raison (1923), and Les Mysteres du Château de Dé. (1929)—each paired with an original score by SQÜRL. Jarmusch and Logan, two multidisciplinary artists known for their experimental prowess, approached these scores as a way to create an ecstatic state, a space between consciousness and unconsciousness, reality, and the surreal. The resulting album, Music for Man Ray, born out of a live recording at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in February of 2023, features distorted guitars, hypnotic feedback, loops and affected synthesizers. In the words of Logan, “It’s a journey we want to take the audience on, illuminating themes throughout these films. They are discrete, but there are also recurring echoes throughout the whole program.” Jim Jarmusch adds, “We feel very proud to be Man Ray’s backup band.” Now both the film Return to Reason and the resulting music in the form of Music for Man Ray are seeing the light of day—both stand as a testament to the creative synergy between Man Ray’s groundbreaking cinema and the innovative musical interpretation by SQÜRL.
Mort Garson - Mother Earth's Plantasia (CS)
Mort Garson - Mother Earth's Plantasia (CS)Sacred Bones Records
¥1,897

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytum comosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.
The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’s new renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

-Andy Beta 

Richard Teitelbaum - Asparagus (2LP)
Richard Teitelbaum - Asparagus (2LP)Black Truffle
¥6,216
Black Truffle is thrilled to announce a major archival release from legendary American composer and live electronics innovator Richard Teitelbaum, centred around his soundtrack for Suzan Pitt’s cult 1978 animation Asparagus. Best known to some listeners for introducing Europe to the Moog synthesizer as a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome, Teitelbaum’s extensive and radically experimental body of work includes collaborative recordings with master improvisers like Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille and George Lewis, intercultural experiments combining electronics with non-Western instruments such as the shakuhachi, works for computer controlled piano, and large-scale multi-media operas. Recorded at York University, Toronto in 1975–1976, ‘Asparagus (European Version)’ sprawls across both sides of the first LP. Discovered by composer Matt Sargent in Teitelbaum’s tape archive, this is a previously unheard major work for Moog modular and Polymoog synthesizers, unique in Teitelbaum’s oeuvre for its lushness and gently melodic quality. The music unfolds slowly, submerging lyrical melodies and burbling arpeggios into uneasy, glacially shifting harmonic swells, the luscious texture thickened with subtle changes of modulation and phase, calling up the shifting layers of Costin Miereanu’s classic Derives or the kosmische Musik tradition more than any academic synthesizer exercise. Teitelbaum incorporated much of this material into his soundtrack for Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus, which receives its first official release here. Asparagus, famously paired with David Lynch’s Eraserhead for a two-year run of midnight screenings at New York’s Waverly Theatre, uses hand-drawn and stop animation to unfurl an oneiric succession of images, beginning with a sequence in which the female protagonist defecates two stalks of asparagus, which multiply and float out of the toilet bowl to form the letters of the title. Teitelbaum’s soundtrack interweaves delicate drifting tones from the ‘European Version’ with contributions from Steve Lacy and Steve Potts on saxophones, George Lewis on trombone and Takehisa Kosugi on violin. Edited closely to the film, even without images the soundtrack proposes a surreal journey through floating synth tones, squealing horns, propulsive arpeggios, distant chatter, and an old-timey waltz. The final side of the set presents a new realisation of Teitelbaum’s text score ‘Threshold Music’, performed at a memorial concert at Roulette, New York in 2022 by Leila Bourreuil (cello), Alvin Curran (sampler and objects), Daniel Fishkin (daxophone), Miguel Frasconi (glass objects) and Matt Sargent (lap steel). The piece asks musicians to match their instrumental volume to that of the sounds of the environment in which they play, sometimes with the addition of recorded environmental sounds, reinforcing frequencies they encounter in listening deeply to their surroundings. Here the players use a field recording taken at Teitelbaum’s home in Bearsville, New York, their long tones and shimmering, glassy textures delicately emerging from the white noise of the location recording. Released with the full approval of both Richard Teitelbaum and Suzan Pitt’s estates, Asparagus is illustrated with striking images from Pitt’s film and accompanied by detailed liner notes by Francis Plagne. These previously unheard pieces shed new light on the work of a key composer in the American experimental tradition, offering up some of Teitelbaum’s most beautiful and engaging music.
Eiko Ishibashi - Drive My Car Original Soundtrack (CS)
Eiko Ishibashi - Drive My Car Original Soundtrack (CS)SPACE SHOWER MUSIC
¥2,200
A short story published in 2013 by Haruki Murakami, a writer with a passionate fan base all over the world, was adapted into a film directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who has been called the best young director in the Japanese film industry. Drive My Car. The soundtrack for this film was created by Eiko Ishibashi, a musician based in Japan who has released works on overseas labels, toured and performed at festivals in Europe and other countries, and created music for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. This is the long-awaited analog version of the original soundtrack by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi, two people who were destined to encounter each other. This is a must-have item for fans. Ten pieces of music unleashed from two melodies. The music written for the film has been newly constructed as a single musical work. Jim O'Rourke, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Marty Holoubek, Toshiaki Sudo, and Atsuko Hatano, all of whom have worked with Ishibashi on original works in the past, participated in this project, creating a wonderful fusion of live acoustic music, electronics, and environmental sounds used in the film. The album was mixed and mastered by Jim O'Rourke, the jacket was designed by Yutaka Kimura (Central67) who has worked on many of Ishibashi's works, and the jacket illustration was drawn by Mayo Akao based on the visuals of the film. The jacket illustration was drawn by Mayo Akao based on the film's visuals. This is a masterpiece that shines with the film.
C418 - Minecraft Volume Alpha (CD)C418 - Minecraft Volume Alpha (CD)
C418 - Minecraft Volume Alpha (CD)Ghostly International
¥1,979
Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

Sheida Gharachedaghi & Mohammad Reza Aslani - Chess of the Wind (Transparent Amber Vinyl LP)Sheida Gharachedaghi & Mohammad Reza Aslani - Chess of the Wind (Transparent Amber Vinyl LP)
Sheida Gharachedaghi & Mohammad Reza Aslani - Chess of the Wind (Transparent Amber Vinyl LP)Mississippi Records
¥3,768
The lost soundtrack to “Chess of the Wind”, Iran’s banned 1976 queer-gothic-class-horror masterpiece, restored by the director and released for the first time. Not for the faint of heart! A masterpiece of world cinema, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s “Chess of the Wind” was banned in Iran and thought to be lost until a complete print of the film re-emerged in an antique shop in 2014. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and released to rapturous reviews in 2020, “Chess of the Wind” has taken its rightful place as one of the most visionary and daring films of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema. The film’s soundtrack, by one of the nation’s most revered female composers, Sheida Gharachedaghi, is just as daring - a combination of Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance drawn from her Western conservatory background. Woodwinds, traditional Persian percussion, and the eerie moan of the ancient sheypour horn reflect the film’s battle between feudalism and modernity. As one scholar said, it sounds like “Ornette Coleman visiting a holy shrine in Iran.” For this release, the director and composer worked with film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani to reimagine and restore the music, combining it with work from another (as yet unreleased) Aslani/Gharachedaghi project “Therefore Hangs A Tale.” The result is two side-length sound collages, a new sonic work that Aslani had long dreamt of creating. The work is a legible sonic journey that speaks to the film’s feminist themes, tracing a long battle for freedom in Iran from the early 20th century through today’s Women Life Freedom Movement. Mississippi is proud to release a major work by two of Iran’s most visionary artists. The release comes with 8 full-size pages of liner notes and stills from the film, including song translations and an in-depth history by film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani.
Thom Yorke - Confidenza (Cream Vinyl LP+Obi)Thom Yorke - Confidenza (Cream Vinyl LP+Obi)
Thom Yorke - Confidenza (Cream Vinyl LP+Obi)XL Recordings
¥5,972
with Obi. Japanese edition. Thom Yorke composed the original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza, an adaptation of the Italian drama based on Domenico Starnone’s novel of the same name.
Shoji Yamashiro - Akira O.S.T. (LP)
Shoji Yamashiro - Akira O.S.T. (LP)Victory
¥3,276
The strength of the Akira soundtrack lies in its unique blend of traditional Japanese instruments and futuristic electronic sounds. Shoji Yamashiro weaves together an eclectic mix of influences, creating a sonic landscape that mirrors the dystopian and cyberpunk themes of the movie. The use of traditional chants, taiko drums, and Shakuhachi flutes alongside electronic synthesizers and orchestral elements generates a hauntingly mesmerizing atmosphere that perfectly complements the visuals on screen. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of Akira.
Mort Garson - Journey to the Moon and Beyond (Mars Red Vinyl LP)Mort Garson - Journey to the Moon and Beyond (Mars Red Vinyl LP)
Mort Garson - Journey to the Moon and Beyond (Mars Red Vinyl LP)Sacred Bones Records
¥3,397
Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives (Plantasia, Ataraxia, Lucifer) have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. For decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.
haruka nakamura - from dusk to the sun (-Light years Ⅲ- THE NORTH FACE Sphere M/N) (CS)haruka nakamura - from dusk to the sun (-Light years Ⅲ- THE NORTH FACE Sphere M/N) (CS)
haruka nakamura - from dusk to the sun (-Light years Ⅲ- THE NORTH FACE Sphere M/N) (CS)灯台レーベル
¥2,750
This is a soundtrack created by haruka nakamura for THE NORTH FACE Sphere in response to a request for "one album for each of spring, summer, fall, and winter. This project, entitled "Light years," is a project to produce four albums over the course of one year.
haruka nakamura - 「少年の日」-Light years Ⅱ-THE NORTH FACE Sphere A/W (CS)haruka nakamura - 「少年の日」-Light years Ⅱ-THE NORTH FACE Sphere A/W (CS)
haruka nakamura - 「少年の日」-Light years Ⅱ-THE NORTH FACE Sphere A/W (CS)灯台レーベル
¥2,750

This is a soundtrack created by haruka nakamura for THE NORTH FACE Sphere in response to a request for "one album for each of spring, summer, fall, and winter.
This project, entitled "Light years," is a project to produce four albums over the course of one year.

M. Zalla - Problemi D'Oggi (LP)
M. Zalla - Problemi D'Oggi (LP)Black Sweat Records
¥3,684
Don't let the name mislead you! The enigmatic M. Zalla is one of the numerous aliases of the italian maestro Piero Umiliani who, during his period of fascination for psychedelic and electronic atmospheres, started to compose a good number of musical portraits dedicated, as the title reveals, to the problems of his time. We are at the beginning of '70 and italians are worried by mafia, terrorism and social conflicts: so it has sense that the music choosen to represent this anxious problems has a sperimental nature; dark and disturbing, a sort of unicum in the long and extremly productive Umiliani career. And if, in 2015, titlesas “Mondo in Crisi”, “Problemi Sociali”, “Azione Sindacale”and “Mafia Oggi” sounds still sadly actual, it's even more surprising find that the music of “Problemi d'Oggi” (Today Problems) is projected on the future, sounding still alien and uniques. The record presents a various styles: Pink Floyd atmospheres (or Braen's Machine if you prefer...) and compositions characterized by a wide use of drum machines and synthetizer (MOOG and Sinthy). We just have to listen to the opening track “Produzione” to give sense to the words of Sean Canty (Demdike Stare) that defines it the first techno/trance track of the history; but between the grooves of this vinyl it's easy to find intuitions that many other artist and musicians – from Residents to Aphex Twin and Four Tet – will be able to catch during their carrers. So “Problemi d'Oggi” is released in 2015. Perfect timing!
小野川浩幸 Hiroyuki Onogawa -  August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005 (LP)小野川浩幸 Hiroyuki Onogawa -  August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005 (LP)
小野川浩幸 Hiroyuki Onogawa - August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005 (LP)Mana
¥5,146
Sublime ethereal minimalism from Hiroyuki Onogawa on this retrospective compilation album for Mana, the first dedicated release and remaster of his soundtrack compositions. The album August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005 plots a decade of Onogawa’s compositions for films by the renowned filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii (formally known as Sogo Ishii). Ishii’s left-field and trailblazing cinema has proven highly influential - Crazy Thunder Road (1980) is frequently cited as the starting pistol for the Japanese cyberpunk genre [1] - and unfathomably difficult to source outside of Japan. This, coupled with the mysterious and artistic nature of the films, has seen him build a cult-like following. Most of his oeuvre remains undistributed outside Japan, though Third Window Films has recently taken great strides toward making some titles available internationally. This retrospective publication, sequenced into an album by Onogawa himself, spans a fertile period of collaboration with Ishii, through soundtracks for three remarkable films: August in the Water (1995), Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), and Mirrored Mind (2005). Each feels texturally and sensually linked with the spiritual, ambient, dreamlike quality that lingers in Onogawa’s music. The sound Onogawa conjures for these films is elegant and patient, often minimal or essential in form, but saturated in a poetic emotion and atmosphere that feels strange and otherworldly, touched by the metaphysical in subtle ways. Boundaries are crossed between New Age and science fiction, locating a blissfulness, melancholy and paranoia within the same spectrum, and moving toward an enchanting sense of mood and colour. It’s notable that the compositions on this album straddle the millennium, and the mix of divine and uncertain themes in the music carry that currency. New listeners might hear links to Mark Snow’s compositional work for the X-Files and Millennium, or other celebrated future-facing and future-fearing Japanese anime or cyberpunk. Onogawa’s music adds great depth and tenor to the sensory experience of the films themselves, but it stands just as strongly as a listening experience on its own terms, a virtuosic example of ambient that changes in hue when turned in the light. Remarkably, and in similar circumstances to Ishii, Onogawa’s work has never been widely available outside of (always highly enthusiastic) underground fan posts, usually sourced from extremely limited and private CDs limited to Japan. This retrospective seeks to remedy that, and hopes to achieve recognition for Onogawa as one of the great composers of the last three decades. Onogawa continues to work in film, both in the creation of soundtracks, and now as a producer and director. He composed the music for Koji Fukada’s Harmonium (2016), which won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as for Fukada’s A Girl Missing (2019). As a director, he received the Grand Prize for Best Short Film in the Noves Visions category at the Sitges Festival in 2022 for Flashback Before Death (Guu) [2], co-directed with Rii Ishihara. This release includes liner notes specially commissioned by writer Tony Rayns, and words by Gakuryū Ishii.
Utollo Teshikai - Nekojiruso OST (LP)
Utollo Teshikai - Nekojiruso OST (LP)Sad Disco
¥4,400
More than 20 years after its release, the 2001 OVA work “Nekojiruso”, based on the “Nekojiru” manga by Tatsuo Sato and Masaaki Yuasa, continues to gain a cult-like fan base. The soundtrack work by Yutoro Teshikai, which had been extremely difficult to obtain, has been reissued on CD/LP for the first time!
Carmen Villain - Music from The Living Monument (LP)Carmen Villain - Music from The Living Monument (LP)
Carmen Villain - Music from The Living Monument (LP)Smalltown Supersound
¥4,462
Music taken from the Carte Blanche performance "Monument 0.10 : The Living Monument" by Eszter Salamon. This album contains selections from Carmen Villain's score for the two-and-a-half hour performance, most of them edited down from the long-form versions that accompanied the ultra-slow scenes of the performance. These are Carmen Villain's first compositions for dance. Acclaimed Choreographer Eszter Salamon’s dance performance The Living Monument is built on still life, slowness and the presence of the body. In the performance, the theatrical elements are equal and interdependent, and it develops into an installation of sound, movement and figures. Each tableau is bound together by Carmen Villain’s hypnotic score in which the audience is taken on a meditative journey through vibrant tableaus in a dreamlike universe. Carmen Villain's score is a suspension of time where her music is seeking a new form of slow-moving minimalism.
V.A. - They Move In The Night (Opaque Dark Purple Vinyl LP)V.A. - They Move In The Night (Opaque Dark Purple Vinyl LP)
V.A. - They Move In The Night (Opaque Dark Purple Vinyl LP)Numero Group
¥3,698
The second of Louis Wayne Moody’s trilogy of mid-century noirs, 1966’s runaway adventure They Move In The Night follows the escapades of “The Kids”—teenage siblings Cara and Applejack Seaworth—as they set out across America by thumb, rail, and bicycle in search of their long lost father—”The Man.” Hunted by the F.B.I., P.T.A., C.T.A., animal control, and a wicked grandmother dead set on claiming their inheritance, The Kids must come to grips with their orphaned reality and an unyielding future.Discovered after spending 58 years on a dusty shelf in the Louis Wayne Moody Pictures vault, this previously unissued soundtrack contains a backpack’s worth of grieving guitars, somber surf, and haunting hiss, zipped tight with the teeth of abandonment, dashed dreams, moral ambiguity, fate, tearful goodbyes, and lukewarm diner coffee. Because the long arm of society nips at their heels... They Move In The Night.
haruka nakamura - grace (LP)
haruka nakamura - grace (LP)fastcut records
¥3,960
The debut album “grace” by haruka nakamura was released on the schole label in 2008. It was first released on fastcut records in 2018 and sold out, but in response to many requests, it is now being re-pressed for the long-awaited reissue!
rei harakami - A Gentle Breeze in the Village / Tennen Kokekko (LP)
rei harakami - A Gentle Breeze in the Village / Tennen Kokekko (LP)Rings
¥4,400

Japan's world-famous masterpiece by the late Rei Harakami is set to be revived!

The soundtrack of "TENNEN KOKEKKO" (A Gentle Breeze in the Village), created by Rei Harakami, has been remastered by ex-Denki Groove member Yoshinori Sunahara and will finally be released on limited edition vinyl!

The soundtrack for the film adaptation of the manga by Fusako Kuramochi, which is one of Ray Harakami's most popular albums, is now being transformed into a long-awaited analog record. Ray Harakami, who passed away in July 2011 at the young age of 40, left behind a remarkable musical legacy.

Jim O'Rourke - Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (LP)Jim O'Rourke - Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (LP)
Jim O'Rourke - Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (LP)DRAG CITY
¥3,468
O’Rourke’s process – sourcing resonant sounds to enmesh together into a music that supersedes their resident parts – makes a fitting soundtrack for Kyle Armstrong’s “prairie gothic” tale of down-on-the-farm horror way up north in Canada. His minimalist score inhabits the wide open, big sky landscape, flowing into suddenly-deep (and opaque) emotional waters, then panning out to a chilly omniscient remove.

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