Black Editions

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.

Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970's, his 2004 P.S.F. album "far and wee" was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations - Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrument's true masters and innovators. Newly mixed and remastered under Imai's supervision, available for the first time ever on LP. Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI and housed in heavy Stoughton "tip-on" jacket with laminate gloss finish and additional insert. Originally released on CD in 2004 by P.S.F. Records, Japan.

Masayuki Takayanagi was one of the truly iconoclastic musicians to emerge from Japan, or anywhere else, in the 20th Century. Though he won acclaim in the 1950s and '60s as a master of the electric guitar and jazz improvisation, Takayanagi was a restless spirit, deeply engaged with the era's new movements in contemporary art, music, literature, and philosophy. His work, beginning in the late 1960s placed him on the leading edge of these developments; he began expanding on the most radical elements of American and European free jazz, infusing them with the raw feedback and dissonance of electronic and avant-garde music. With his various New Direction groups, Takayanagi broke free of traditional structures and developed a new theory of music that embraced an aggressive and unrelenting style of playing that has remained almost completely unparalleled in its ferocity. Of all the albums to be released during Takayanagi's lifetime, 1975's Eclipse was perhaps the most enigmatic and sought after. Released in an edition of only 100, it almost immediately disappeared and became a holy grail for Japanese connoisseurs of adventurous music, and rightly so. It's first side contained a two-part realization of Takayanagi's "Gradually Projection" modality -- a searching interplay between instruments -- slowly emerging from a sparse open field and building with the tension of a looming thunder storm. The second side contains an epic performance of a "Mass Projection", a high energy, densely layered barrage of sound that in its 25 minutes, never once slackens its intensity. It would be another 31 years before this key album in Takayangi's oeuvre would finally have a (slightly) wider audience through a CD release by Japan's P.S.F. Records. Black Editions present a deluxe vinyl edition of this masterwork, revealingly remastered from the original tapes by Elysian Masters. The album is packaged in a heavy double tip-on gatefold jacket that pays tribute to the original handmade packaging and features a previously unseen studio photograph of Takayanagi by Tatsuo Minami. Recorded in Tokyo, March 14, 1975. Engineer: Mikio Aoki. Cover, photographs and design by Kazuharu Fujitani. Gatefold photograph by Tatsuo Minami. Insert Notes by Yasunori Saito. Produced by Satoru Obara, Yoshiaki Kamei, Nihon Gendai Jazz Ongaku Kenkyukai. Originally released in an edition of 100 by ISKRA Records, Japan in 1975. Remastered from the original master tapes by Dave Cooley, Elysian Masters, and produced by Peter Kolovos. Deluxe heavy tip-on gatefold LP with matte black paper, second tipped-on metallic gold wrap and insert.

White Heaven’s second album, Strange Bedfellow, is one of the great unsung albums of the 90’s Japanese underground. Released two years after their striking debut, Out, the album reveals the group shifting to a more dynamic and finely honed sound. You Ishihara’s songwriting & arrangements take center stage, leading the group to transmute classic west coast psychedelia and garage into a thrillingly direct collection of songs that span from fuzz drenched, driving rockers to smoldering numbers that fade into the night... Only ever available in an edition of 700 LP’s released in 1993 by PSF Japan, Black Editions is pleased to present Strange Bedfellow, newly remastered in this deluxe edition.

When it was first released in 1997, White Heaven founder You Ishihara’s solo debut Passivité seemed to vanish into the ether, going largely unnoticed; the scant coverage it did receive in the Japanese music press was confused or even dismissive and it hardly reached an overseas audience in that moment just before the online music era. It was released by the short-lived Japanese Creativeman Disc label, which also produced albums by other luminaries of the Japanese underground, including Phew, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, C.C.C.C. and Ground-Zero. Yet, even in that eclectic company, Ishihara’s album stood apart in a world all its own, out of time in that, or any other, era.

Passivité arrived at a pivotal point in Ishihara’s career, just as White Heaven dissolved and before the formation of his next group, The Stars. To realize the album, he recruited a choice group of players, including Michio Kurihara (White Heaven) on guitar, Chiyo Kemekawa (Yura Yura Teikoku) on bass, and Koji Shimura (Acid Mothers Temple) on drums, arranging them in no less than five configurations. The result revealed an expansive creative and even conceptual vision that could only find expression outside the band context. In the twenty-odd years since, the album has found adherents who, like P.S.F. Records founder Hideo Ikeezumi, praised its tremendous depth and discovered that they experienced something new each time they listened to it. Listening back today, Passivité sounds timeless and, in a sense, encapsulates the concepts, feeling, and brilliance that have marked the near 50-year career of one of the key figures in Japanese underground music.

Passivité is an entrancingly beautiful album that draws from rock and psychedelic music, the sounds of 60’s America as well as elements of jazz, bossa nova, soul, and even electronic music. It’s an enigmatic late-night meditation that unfolds in a cool darkness pierced by scattered flashes of light and heat. The album’s opening tracks “K” and “Nachbild,” as well as the second side’s nearly 15-minute “Nightwalker,” slowly float in the night, quietly seductive, stripped down, and soulful. Even as Ishihara seems to surrender to these nocturnal atmospheres, he cuts to songs that erupt with urgent energy, overdriven fuzz guitars, and even dives into an electronic excursion recorded 18 years before. Through all of this, there is a clarity and cohesion of vision. On Passivité, Ishihara both embraces and departs from his work with White Heaven. The music is deeply personal and intimate even as it operates on a conceptual level with a masterful nuance and subtlety.

Black Editions presents Passivité for the first time on vinyl in a meticulously remastered deluxe edition, including metallic silver tip-on jacket with gloss film laminate finish, matte pigment stamping, two inserts with liner notes in Japanese and English newly written by renowned music critic and editor Masato Matsumura (Studio Voice, Tokion) and the original notes by Shinji Shibayama (Nagisa Ni Te, Hallelujahs, Org Records). 

A dreamlike dispatch from mid-80's Japan, the first and only Hallelujahs album is an entrancing and gentle work of psychedelic pop brilliance. Friends gathered in the studio by Shinji Shibayama (Nagisa Ni Te), Hallelujahs created a music of deep feeling and wonderment with simple song craft and a guileless magic. The album was the first release by the now revered ORG Records in 1986 in a micro-edition of 300 copies. With affinities to the sounds of the Rough Trade and Flying Nun labels, the Paisley Underground and Galaxie 500, the album is an utterly unique masterpiece that remains a touchstone for generations of like spirited artists in Japan and around the world. Black Editions is proud to present this all-time classic in a deluxe vinyl edition, remastered from the original tapes and presented in a heavy tip-on jacket with textured paper, mounted high quality print, foil stamped finishes and spot colors. Also released with a special limited edition 7" featuring two previously unreleased tracks and hand stamped envelope with seven photo cards.

For over 50 years, Kan Mikami has stood as a master of the Japanese blues and outsider folk. His unmistakable, powerfully evocative voice and surrealistic poetry reveal a gritty, transgressive life on the margins shot through with evocations of sex and violence, religion and romance. Released in 1991, I¡Çm the Only One Around was Mikami's first album with Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. Records and heralded an artistic renaissance. It marked the beginning of an incredibly productive and wildly creative era for Mikami that extends to the present day. This opening salvo presents the essential core of Mikami¡Çs music; With nothing but his voice and a stripped down electric guitar the album is a powerful, effortlessly emotional statement filled with moments of both brutal passion and gentle revelation. It is unrestrained, direct, brutally honest. It embodies Mikami¡Çs philosophy: ¡ÈIf you¡Çre going to make music, stake your life on it - it¡Çs worth it. Making music is an intensely human act.¡É In the newly translated notes to the album, Hiroyuki Itsuki, one of Japan¡Çs most renowned writers perhaps put it best: ¡ÈWhat erupts here is all the fury and grief of Jōmon Man (the prehistoric people of the Japanese archipelago), lobbed into the middle of a 1990s city. Kan Mikami is unchanging, yet definitely in motion. He advances not forwards, but backwards. Not a retreat, rather he consciously progresses backwards. At the final destination for his full-steam astern poésie lies a massive, gaping black hole, exuding a dazzling, black light. This is the image evoked by the world of Kan Mikami that you can hear on this album.¡É Mikami would go on to release 15 solo albums with P.S.F. as well as numerous collaborative efforts with other giants of the Japanese underground including Motoharu Yoshizawa, Masayoshi Urabe and Keiji Haino, with whom, along with Toshiaki Ishizuka he formed the group Vajra. Black Editions is honored to present the first ever vinyl edition of Kan Mikami¡Çs ¡ÈI¡Çm the Only One Around¡É featuring lyrics translated by Drew Stroud and newly translated notes by Alan Cummings. Remastered and cut to vinyl at Elysian Masters Los Angeles, pressed by RTI, packaged in heavy Stoughton tip-on jackets with insert featuring textured paper, gold foil stamping and metallic inks.

Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances Haino has staked out a ground all his own creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over.

Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision – stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark si-
lences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot – Haino’s vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920’s blues and medieval music- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging featuring the now iconic cover photographs by legendary photographer Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement.

Few artists have left behind a legacy as enigmatic and captivating as Shizuka Miura. Amidst the Tokyo underground, she was a spectral figure, creating ghostly, childlike dolls and writing haunting, other-worldly songs. She formed Shizuka in 1992 with Maki Miura, known for his staggering guitar work in legendary groups Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Dénudés. Their music bloomed with a fragile, yet explosive mystical power; an atmospheric alchemy of psychedelic rock, folk and noise with Shizuka’s ethereal vocals invoking loneliness, yearning and dark providence. Since her passing in 2010, the group has steadily gathered a cult following. Black Editions presents their sole studio album, 1994’s Heavenly Persona, a monumental, transcendent work originally issued by P.S.F. Japan on CD in 1994; Now newly remastered and in its first ever vinyl edition on double LP with a laser etched fourth side. Presented in a deluxe tip-on tri-fold jacket with ink pigment foil stamping, gloss film laminate finish and printed inner sleeves and mounted booklet. It includes her extensive, heart wrenching final interview, translated for the first time to English alongside high-resolution archival images.