MUSIC

In 1980, Les Rallizes Dénudés, with the participation of Fujio Yamaguchi, made a legendary studio recording.

Side A
1. 氷の炎 / Flame of Ice
2. 夜の収獲者たち / Reapers of the Night

Side B
1. 夜、暗殺者の夜 / The Night, Assassin's Night
2. The Last One_1980

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.

Eddie Chacon experienced proper, peak-nineties acclaim in the soul duo Charles and Eddie: they scored a global No. 1 in 1992 with “Would I Lie To You,” appeared three times on Top of the Pops, and featured on soundtracks from True Romance to Super Mario Bros.. Their crooning style was clearly pop-ready, but undeniably reverent: the pair first met when Eddie noticed Charles carrying a vinyl copy of Marvin Gaye’s "Trouble Man” on a New York subway train. By that time, Chacon had already been navigating music in interesting ways, all the way back to his teen garage rock band with the late Cliff Burton (Metallica) and Mike Bordin (Faith No More). In the late ’80s, he released a full-length on Uncle Luke from 2 Live Crew’s label and signed to Columbia as a solo act. He was a working artist, always popping up in unexpected places: through the course of his career, Chacon would write, sing, or produce ten Top 40 hits around the globe. In the words of Mac DeMarco: “Eddie Chacon is planet earth’s number one musician. Yesterday, today, and forever.” Years ago, Chacon retired from music for a second calling as a fashion photographer and creative director. In an interview at the time, he said, “I was fortunate to have a 35-year music career and felt that there wasn’t that much more for me to say or achieve.” Very thankfully, that’s no longer the case. Private experiments, far from the major-label center he once frequented, began to feel urgent and new. “There’s nothing more exciting for me than getting to start from the beginning again,” he says today. “Pleasure, Joy and Happiness” will be available July of 2020 on the boutique Los Angeles-based label Day End Records. This is a thoughtfully considered album of quiet, confident R&B: it doesn’t jump out at you, but rather gets in you. Produced by John Carroll Kirby, the like-minded artist and collaborator with Frank Ocean and Solange Knowles, it features restrained percussion from Kanye West’s Sunday Service drummer Lamar Carter. Celestial soul as a break from chaos, these are quietly challenging songs as timeless as they are contemporary. “What a rare and cool challenge it was for me to help Eddie re-emerge after a long hiatus,” says John Carroll Kirby. “I was excited to produce a record for him that captured the chill, laid-back wisdom and easy vocal mastery he has that you don’t see that much these days.” Lead single “My Mind Is Out of Its Mind” finds a deep groove to try and contain spiraling heartbreak, while the sweet and wobbly “Trouble” balances the delightful near whisper of the title track “Pleasure, Joy and Happiness.” But even the project’s lightest moments feel sincere and mature. Altogether: a truly unifying release, coming from a man who’s earned the right to share such a regal, romantic sound. “I used to think to myself,” Chacon says, “if I ever make a record again, I’d want it to be a record you’d have to be my age to make.”

Organic, electric, freeform. Pete Jolly's Seasons is comprised of melodies and textures composed live and without pretense—its grooves contain a complete and divine listening experience that surpasses all others of the era in which it was originally released, coming as close to transcendent musical meditation incarnate as one could possibly imagine. Seasons is an unsung masterpiece of ensemble groove and stellar musicianship, equally unsurpassed and inspired in its quiet excellence. While Seasons never had significant commercial success upon its release, it has since amassed a cult following, leading collectors to pay top dollar for copies of the rare record. Out of print since 1971, it has only been reissued once on CD. In his liner notes accompanying this release, Dave Segal puts the album’s massive demand in perspective: “British label owner Jonny Trunk put up an original pressing of the LP for sale for an undisclosed but large sum on Instagram in January 2023, and it sold in five minutes. With Seasons back in circulation, maybe Pete Jolly will finally gain the broader audience that his phenomenal skills merit,” writes Segal. “If nothing else, it serves as a valuable lesson to artists: venturing outside of your comfort zone can bring the most interesting, enduring results.” Remastered from the original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Coherent Mastering, this record not only foreshadows the roots of hip-hop but manages to embody the richness of a full album listening experience that few records can offer. Its timeless appeal is rare—and its dynamic range sets it apart as an album that straddles both the jazz and pop worlds in a way that almost no others can. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the changing and complex colors of Seasons for the first time ever since its initial release.

Previously unreleased Misako Oshiro recordings produced by Makoto Kubota are now available on 7" analog vinyl! Two songs recorded at Kadena Studio One in Kadena, Okinawa in 2007 are now available on 7" analog vinyl after 15 years of recording!

A long-standing figure on the London jazz scene, trumpeter Harry Beckett kept his music fresh over a long career, and none more so than on his debut On-U Sound release in 2008 produced by Adrian Sherwood, which invites reggae and dance music influences to happily live alongside his modal jazz flavours. Harry sadly passed away in 2010 but this is a fitting testament to the versatility and innate musicality of his talents.

Miraculous reissue of a Japanese 80s new age - ambient masterpiece! The spiritual sound spun by the original composition of synthesizers and live sounds such as flute, oboe, guitar, and percussion!

After a classical career as a flutist, Matsuzaki became a composer/arranger in 1982, and from 1985 to 1987, she worked as a studio musician and tour support member as a flutist, synthesizer/keyboardist mainly in London, gaining a high reputation overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene. Yuko Matsuzaki, who was highly acclaimed overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene, has decided to reissue "Raden no Hako (Box of Raden)", an extremely rare album she produced in 1985 before moving to the UK in a limited edition of 100 copies/LP only! The spiritual and fantastic sound with a hint of Japanese taste in many places was inspired by Simon Jeffs of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, who heard this work and decided to participate in "Pink, Blue and Amber" by Roderius, a German electronic musician and pianist known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and others. This album is a world-standard masterpiece that was born in Japan during the late 80's, when ambient music was expanding globally along with the rise of house and techno music!

Originally released on CD in 2000 from South Indian Carnatic music label and reissued on vinyl and digital first time in 2019 by Time Capsule. New 2024 repress vinyl has different tracks on the B side and it still remains as the reverse cut as the 2019 version.

⚠️Reverse Cut Vinyl ⚠️

This record plays from the inner groove to the outer groove. You don’t need to change any settings on your turntable; Just place the needle where the record usually finishes and play normally.

A long-playing record like this (over 20 minutes long) tends to have lesser dynamics and sound quality when it’s closer to the center of the record due to the progressive reduction of linear resolution as the record progresses to smaller diameters. Since this music starts quietly at the beginning and then has greater dynamics and volume towards the end, this way of cutting vinyl yields superior results.

2024 new vinyl press tracklist

A1 : Sada Bala (Slokam)
A2 : Bhajeham Bhajeham
B1: Keshvaya Namaha
B2: Raghavam

Finally…Terre Thaemlitz saves the most sought-after cuts of her debut LP ‘Tranquilizer’ for the third and final of its 30th anniversary, first-time vinyl editions, including that stunning Memphis rap x proto-dubstep dedication to MLK - 100% essential ’90s ambient bass, oneiric concrète and breaks driven deep house for the heads. Frankly unmissable if even just for the album’s opening killer ’040468’ - named for the day MLK departed - which sounds better than ever on its sumptuous vinyl cut, ‘Tranquilizer EP3’ is the one the stans have been eagerly awaiting. It brings to a close a necessary reissue series for a prized totem of‘90s ambient music, conceived in the wake of the KLF’s inspirational ‘Chill Out’ album, after Terre had laid deep roots in NYC’s queer deep house club scene, and began to seed one of the most distinctive catalogues in contemporary electronic music. Semi-autobiographical and coloured with an inherently political take on ambient music, the album can be heard to reference their background in the US Midwest via the track titles and aesthetic inference of wide open spaces at night, as in ‘2am on a Silo’, and on thru their formative journey of self-discovery in downtown NYC, where they took up residency at a queer bar playing earliest deep house to sex workers during the years of devastation from the AIDS pandemic. While that would be expounded more explicitly in their later albums as DJ Sprinkles, on ‘Tranquilizer’ it’s implied by a deep sense of melancholy and longing. ‘Tranquilliser EP3’ pretty much distills and triangulates the album’s most salient points in a discrete story unto itself. Her politics are writ in a titular nod to the day Martin Luther King died on ’040468’, which we’ve long marvelled at as a remarkable prototype for both booming Memphis rap instrumentals, and the mid ’00s halfstep dubstep sound, due to its sweeping subs that go all the way down, and then some, under a blanket of starlight twinkles and bluest pads. An absolute all timer - trust. The nocturnal is also evoked in the wheezing electro-acoustic rawness and plangent beauty of ‘2am on a Silo’, like the soundtrack to a memory of a dream, and perfectly characteristic of a sound sensitivity that became Terre’s calling card, whilst ‘Raw Through a Straw’ offers the most tangible bridge between her deep house background and the emergent ambient house sound in its mingling of gorgeous organ ruminations rolling out into Dennis Coffey’s ‘Scorpio’ break, a cornerstone of hip hop deployed in deadliest deep house style. Finally we can rest easy knowing this one’s on wax.

A groove so deep and bewitching that one hesitates to lose oneself in it. Guitarist Kiyoshi Sugimoto has been sharply piercing through the heart of the times. This is the highest point of his career. His cutting-edge and versatile sound has always been at the forefront of both modern jazz and jazz-rock, and he has sharply penetrated the heart of the times. There can be no disagreement that "Babylonian Wind" captures one of the pinnacles of his musical expression. Hideo Ichikawa's rippling electric piano, Yoshio Ikeda's lush yet restrained bass, Motohiko Hino's grainy and propulsive drums, Takao Uematsu's wild and lustrous saxophone, and Sugimoto's sharp-edged guitar. Listening through "Babylonia Wind," which seems to be bobbing in the deep sea, to "Hieroglyph," which leaves a delicate and fragile aftertaste, one is struck by the diversity of expression and is struck by the glamour of the music.

 ** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline purity that the recording captured and the CD newly presents in all its singular beauty."(Andrea Centazzo)

Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of getting them to put together a trio that would perform several concerts and recording was one of the most exciting moments of my career. Our three languages found a common ground of expression where different musical backgrounds came together and created a unique blend for that period of time. (Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert Rome, Italy December 13, 1977
Engineer: Nicola Bernardini
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

“I have worked together with sheep before” – says Henning Christiansen – introducing the performance he did in front of the Brucknerhaus in Linz in July 1988. But this time he went beyond, building a “Concert-Castle” with hay blocks where thirty sheep could perform music. Another time the animals – Christiansen’s obsession and passion – become the musical instruments used for his compositions: “Originally most of instrumental sounds derived from animal voices or other sounds of natural phenomena. The violins, for instance: someone found out that stretched intestines, dried bowels, could produce a sound. This has simply been civilized, refined”. Schafe statt Geigen (Sheep Instead of Violins, 1988) and “Verena” Vogelzymphon (Bird Symphony, 1990) first appeared as a small CD edition issued by Galerie Bernd Klüser in 1991. Both works, each one occupying a full side of this LP edition, extend from one of Christiansen’s long standing conceptual strategies – deploying recordings of animals as stand-ins for musical instruments, sheep and birds respectively. While each work allows these source to take the natural lead, at times masquerading as field recordings, both feature subtle tonal and electronic interventions by the composer, creating strange and brilliant compositions which shift the terms and subjects of music as they were long understood. Accompanied by a twenty page booklet featuring drawings and texts by Henning Christiansen, as well as pictures of the performance by René Block. “The background, the space where music happens is what I want to put into the foreground.” 500 copies on black vinyl. Includes 20 page photographic book.

1st edition of 500 - no repress. Deluxe edition with two booklets. Originally released in 1974. Holidays Records: "Blending Native American references into a body of sonority that draws on free improvisation, experimental electronic music, and spiritual jazz, Pygmy Unit’s “Signals From Earth” - originally self-released by the band in 1974 - forges a singular and almost entirely unknown path, and stands almost entirely on its own in the history of west coast American jazz. First appearing on the San Francisco scene sometime during the early 1970s, almost nothing is know about the Pygmy Unit, a seven piece band steered by Darrel De Vore, who contributed flute, bass, percussion, piano, and vocals to the band's lone LP, first appeared with percussionist Terry Wilson within the psychedelic folk rock band, The Charlatans, who belonged to the legendary Family Dog scene. Jim Pepper, a Native American tenor saxophonist known for being a member of the Mal Waldron Quartet, played with Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and numerous others, and produced the cult favourite, “Pepper's Pow Wow”, for Embryo Records in 1971. John Celona, who contributes parts on sax, synthesizer, and percussion, would later go on to be regarded as an electronic composer of some note. Of the remaining members, saxophonist Frank Albright, bassoonist Ron Grunn, and percussionist Marvin Kirkland, very little else is known. It seems this LP is more or less all they recorded. While undeniably jazz - riding a remarkable line between avant-garde electronic music, spiritual jazz, and free improvisation - the band was very much a product of the diverse creative ferment that developed in their hometown of San Francisco during the 1960s. Embodying the raw spirit of DIY (many of the instruments used in the recordings were made by DeVore himself, self-described as an “itinerant flute-maker”) the ensemble channels references - via passages of chanting and percussion, as well as conceptual underpinnings - from Jim Pepper’s Native American roots, intuiting them with the soulfulness of spiritual jazz, wild moments of avant-gardism centred around synths and electronic effects, and explosions of wild free improvisation. “Development of new music is a continuous path that grows directionally according to psychoacoustical phenomena available for unification. This record is evidence of that development, containing 12 performance pieces, at 12 separate times in different acoustical spaces with various combinations of musicians and instrumentation. The music is shaped by signals, received and sent by life forms on this planet. It is unwritten, unrehearsed, utilizing new and traditional approaches to energy, motion, and form. Eventually, music develops as a natural extension of the environment in which it exists. It is the aim of the traditions… to signal the universe from the Earth.”

In 1986, the vibraphonist Tom Van Der Geld composed his personal ode to creation, a tonal poem for all natural beings. Small Mountain reveal a pure minimalist inspiration, a vibrant style of sound variations that is decidedly more Zen-Impressionistic than the mathematical-metaphysical works of Steve Reich. This music, for four marimbas and other percussion instruments suggests an emotional osmosis with all the elements, a flow of ecstatic progressions that is more immanence than transcendence. It's the rain that falls softly on fragrant moss or the fog that hides the frost on the grass; an exotic spectrum of mutliform colours, dances of leaves, branches, sticks, fronds, lianas, swirls of petals and bark. Ode to the wind, to the rainforest, a psalm to the waters energy that opens the portals of the temples of Nature. As in the aboriginal songlines, every place or being on Planet Earth becomes, through music, space for the sacred. credits

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.

Yusef Lateef (tenor sax, flute, oboe)
Georges Arvanitas (p)
Reggie Workman (b)
James Black (ds)

Limited re-pressing of the memorable first album by Happy End, released on August 5, 1970, in heavy vinyl (black).

Isao Suzuki, who became a popular bassist after “Blow Up,” released his fourth TBM album. The profound groovy sound he has created with the genius Kenji Mori and others has never faded away over time.

A classic free jazz record left over from the 60's. Fearless free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor features trumpeter Eddie Gale, saxophonists Jimmy Lyons and Ken McIntyre, bassists Henry Grimes and Alan Silva, and drummer Andrew Cyril. The four lengthy compositions performed here represent the pinnacle of the jazz avant-garde of the mid-1960s. The result is a free jazz masterpiece that is a large-ensemble tapestry of sound.

In 2003, MF DOOM introduced us to one of his most intriguing alter egos, Viktor Vaughn. As the story goes, Viktor Vaughn was an interdimensional time-traveling MC from another realm where Hip-Hop was banned. He’d been exploring time and space looking for new dimensions to sharpen his MC skills, which eventually led him to 90s era NYC, where he found himself stranded from a mechanical mishap with his time machine. He began hitting open mics and small venues, battling other MCs and picking up side-hustles in order to raise the funds to repair his time machine.Vaudeville Villain is a concept album like no other, where MF DOOM re-envisions himself as a younger, hungrier, more brazen persona in order to explore a different point of view. Of course, developing a second self from a more technologically advanced universe, he took a new approach to the production too. Viktor Vaughn fittingly raps over next-school beats that move freely in spaces between Electronica and Hip Hop, courtesy of Sound-Ink producers King Honey, Heat Sensor and Max Bill, along with one track from RJD2. Vaudeville Villain is one of the more uniquely creative entries in the MF DOOM universe.

Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.

Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”

What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.

The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”

Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" packaging. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra. 
credits

180g vinyl, half speed mastered, heavy sleeve, obi Tracklisting LP A1. Hot House (Charlie Parker) A2. All The Things Your Are (Jerome Kern) A3. Red Carpet (Duke Ellington) A4. Bouncing With Bud (Bud Powell) B1. Embraceable You (George Gershwin) B2. Just One of Those Things (Cole Porter) B3. Mellow Dream (Ryo Fukui) Info We Release Jazz is so happy to announce the official reissue of Ryo Fukui’s New York sessions with Lisle Atkinson and Leroy Williams, the aptly titled album Ryo Fukui in New York, sourced from the original masters and available on limited edition 180 gram vinyl mastered at half speed for full audiophile sound, as well as on digipack CD. Recorded in February 1999 at Avatar Recording Studios in New York and inspired by Ryo Fukui’s idol and mentor Barry Harris, the fourth album from the famed Sapporo pianist captures memorable ses-sions with seasoned American jazz musicians (and frequent Barry Harris collaborators) Lisle Arthur Atkinson on bass and Leroy Williams on drums. Ryo Fukui in New York is pure bop heaven, glowing with poetic takes on classics by Charlie Parker, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Bud Powell, plus a supreme remake of Fukui’s very own “Mellow Dream". It’s expressive, soulful, and vibrating with a bouncing swing feel all the way through; every note falls exactly where it should, undeniable brilliance. Much like the other albums by the genius from Hokkaido, it’s got that “special something", hard to grasp, hard to describe, but 100% felt. Skills and heart, the Ryo Fukui way. Following his New York adventures, Ryo Fukui headed back to Sapporo, and more precisely to his jazz club Slowboat, where his newly acquired experience inspired numerous jam sessions and a full dedication to perfecting his craft. He sadly passed away in 2016, leaving behind a legacy of works that is sure to captivate jazz lovers for generations to come, and Slowboat, where the magics

Ai Aso’s immaculately crafted form of minimalist pop music skirts the edges of tensity with the manner and with the skill of a tight rope walker, calmly balancing repeatedly at every step, with a combination of surety and the risk of a slip, a fall, and an unknown uncoiling of events. Aso's capacity to capture, or inspire, the tension and attention from within the listener and observer are quite pronounced. At Aso's concert the performance constantly teeters near the brink, a sharpened awareness in the hall emerges from all observing, with the will of that most delicate balance. On “The Faintest Hint” she brings a meta level to the proceedings, the dream of a singer in a bright sunlit room in the centre of the density of the society, simply and precisely searching for single ideas, single tones, a sense of sensuality and even a dream of a grandeur (rock dream) emerge. A stillness prevails, even a sharp set of instances of dreaming, melancholia, nostalgia… or even saudade. The album was recorded, mixed & mastered by Soichiro Nakamura at Peace Music between 2018-2020. Atsuo and I joined these sessions as producers, and moreso as catalysts, yet also became the skeleton of a band on the album (with the tender touch). The legendary Japanese rock band Boris accompany Aso on two pieces. A faintest hint of sharpness and la tendresse féroce quickly erodes into a fine brief cloud of the purest crystalline dust.