Notable new Japanese releases and reissues
Maintaining the gig listings on here was a depressing experience for much of the past year, but it feels like things are finally picking up again on the Tokyo music scene. Promoters are starting to book international artists in earnest, while venues that were mothballed for much of the pandemic are getting their shit together. I’ve only just started to venture out to shows again myself, so my listening has been happening mostly at home, but here’s a selection of releases that have caught my attention recently. As usual, I’ve restricted things to artists who are actually active in Japan, which means I’ve had to pass up on some interesting releases by NAVU, Yama Warashi and Hinako Omori, among others. I also haven’t had a chance to investigate the releases being posted to the We Love Junzo Bandcamp page, which is raising money to help Junzo Suzuki, but don’t let that stop you.
And so, without any further ado...
Manisdron – Manisdronics
Cathodic Records
The Noup – Nexpansion
Self-released
A solid one-two punch from Okayama’s Takufumi Okada, also known as drummer for the mighty Goat. Whereas his debut EP under as Manisdron flaunted a strong EBM influence, this latest cassette combines shifting layers of polyrhythms with the kind of uneasy ambience that Phew goes in for. The B-side ditches the beats entirely, unleashing two 15-minute drone pieces so ominous, I wouldn’t recommend listening to them late at night. On The Noup’s sophomore album, Okada sounds like he’s trying to create the perfect man-machine hybrid. Across four lengthy exercises in brute rhythmic minimalism, it’s sometimes hard to tell which sounds are coming from a sequencer and which from the band’s guitar/bass/drum line-up. The limited dynamics across each track mean that nothing hits quite as hard as ‘Monochrome Dead’, the moshpit-stoking highlight of 2018’s Flaming Psychic Heads, but Nexpansion should be catnip to Nisennenmondai fans.
Carl Stone – War Dong Moon Lek
Unseen Worlds
This fresh selection of exquisitely mangled pop morsels from Carl Stone is a lot pithier than 2020’s brilliant/exhausting Stolen Car, and also the first of his albums to feature a track where I could ID the source material immediately (though I’m embarrassed to admit what it was). In a recent interview, Stone recalled how Morton Subotnick taught him that “play is often the best way to start the process of making art,” and that sense of fun is key to the charm of his music. While opener ‘Rikido’ is a good example of how sour his mash-ups can get, the title track is actually kind of beautiful, even if listening to it on headphones made me feel seasick. Best of all is ‘Mozell’s’, which sounds like Albert Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’ played by a lounge jazz band that’s been transformed into Haribo sweets.
Various – GORGE OUT “HERE” 2022
GORGE.IN
After a decade teetering on the threshold between meme and microgenre, gorge finally seems to be having its moment. This 45-track, pay-what-you-want compilation features contributions from an international cast of “bootists,” only some of whom definitely exist (per the release notes: “George Jukemura is deceased, and his sound files came to us by fax”). There’s some common ground with the Japanese juke/footwork scene, as well as an earlier strain of primitivist club music that flourished in dank corners of the Tokyo underground during the 2000s. In as much as there’s a gorge sound, it’s typified by tracks like Indus Bonze’s cavernous, percussion-heavy banger ‘Onibaba’, which would fit comfortably into a gqom set, or Karinga’s more techno-adjacent ‘Yamanma ga Kuru’. But this covers a lot of ground, and some of the highlights are wild cards, like the outsider pop of Mariiiii’s ‘SORANONE’ and JPN Kasai’s ‘Geshi’.
106 – 106 DTP01
Bandcamp
With Most on seemingly permanent hiatus, this sample-wrangling “desktop punk” duo with partner Hiroyuki Nagashima (aka Dowser) is the most abrasive thing that Phew has released in a good while. Given the virtual nature of its creation, the music on 106 DTP01 manages to sound impressively strung-out, full of convulsing synths, barbed-wire guitars and brittle, stop-start rhythms. At times, it’s almost like Phew has picked up where she left off with her late-80s/early-90s solo albums View and Our Likeness, though she’s got a whole arsenal of electronic tricks at her disposal now, which allows her to drag things in even stranger directions (check the fragmented no-wave of ‘I Can’t Do It’ for a prime example).
Yamash’ta & The Horizon – Sunrise from West Sea
Wewantsounds
Reissued for the first time since its original release in 1971, this captures a peak-form Stomu Yamash’ta in concert with Masahiko Satoh, Takehisa Kosugi and Hideakira Sakurai. Sunrise from West Sea was culled from an all-night performance, and sounds like a rather more antic version of the astral navigations that Kosugi was pursuing with Taj Mahal Travellers at around the same time. Yamash’ta intermittently lets rip with some astounding volleys of percussion, while Satoh’s keyboard work is a riot of garish colour—he even seems to be using a vocoder at points. Overall, though, the musicians leave each other plenty of (interstellar) space, and if there’s a complaint, it’s that both sides of the LP fade out just as things are starting to get properly hectic.
In The Sun – Metaphor
Discipline Production
These stalwarts of beloved Koiwa venue Bushbash have come a long way from the propulsive noise-rock of their earliest incarnation, which I remember chiefly for Naoki Takano’s heroic drumming. Since losing his original bandmates, Takano (now joined by Kenta Suzuki on guitar/electronics and Kim Pueru on sax) has become more ambitious in his compositions. Metaphor references deconstructed club music and gorge (see above), combining thunderous percussion with Vangelis synths in a way that’s making me think of Kuedo’s Assertion Of A Surrounding Presence. Kim’s saxophone sits low in the mix on a few tracks, giving them a drizzly-noir vibe, though the brutalist assault of ‘Bondage’ is the highlight. It closes with a pair of remixes, by T5UMUT5UMU and past tour buddies Matmos, which supply the sense of fun that’s been missing.
Metoronori – Evenings
Glossy Mistakes
This snuck under my radar when it came out on cassette in late 2020, but it’s been given a proper LP release by Spain’s Glossy Mistakes label. As Metoronori, Hikari Okuyama makes hushed, gently beguiling DIY pop that seldom sounds like it’s more than half awake. Evenings is the stuff of reveries: wispy, whispered melodies and synth burble, with traces of Tujiko Noriko, early Cuushe and Eiko Ishibashi’s song-based work. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the music feels even softer and gauzier than her earlier releases on Orange Milk and Virgin Babylon, like she’s getting the pillows ready for a proper nap.
Luby Sparks – Search + Destroy
AWDR/LR2
It’s been four years since Luby Sparks’ self-titled debut, and they’ve jumped forward a roughly equivalent amount of time in their 90s revivalism, moving from shoegaze to glossy alt. rock that recalls the era of Garbage, Placebo and Hole’s Celebrity Skin. It’s not a sound that I’ve been hankering to hear again, but they do it well. Natsuki Kato’s songwriting is sturdy enough to rise about the level of pastiche, and producer Andy Savours helps the band burnish their sound with a thick, synthetic sheen, even adding orchestral trimmings to the title track. Some of these songs wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Cruel Intentions soundtrack, and lead vocalist Erika Murphy gives them the oomph they need. Available here.
Katra Turana – Reboot
Telegraph
Katra Turana put out a couple of rather delightful, RIO-adjacent LPs in the 1980s, distinguished by a surfeit of theatricality and Atsushi Hiroike’s penchant for singing both the male and female parts. This comeback album isn’t nearly so essential, though at least the band sound like they’re having fun. It’s a mix of new and old material, including the epic (and unrecognisable) cover version of ‘The End’ that the group used to play live back in the day. Hiroike’s vocals aren’t quite so elastic now, and his effects-drenched Chapman stick playing is an acquired taste. When he leaves space for the strings and piano, there are glimpses of the old magic, but new initiates should investigate Katra Turana’s back catalogue first.
Gods of Something – Saigo no Hi to Saigo no Yoru
Bandcamp
Despite ingesting unhealthy quantities of downtempo music back in the 1990s, it took a few tracks for me to figure out what was going on here. A parenthetical note in Okinawa-based producer Gods Of Something’s Bandcamp bio cautions: “Please keep in mind that nothing here is entirely original.” Saigo no Hi to Saigo no Yoru alternates between spacey, pitched-down guitar instrumentals and slurred renditions of well-known chill-out room staples (see how many you can recognise!). The Blue Jam vibes are strong even before they insert a straight-up quote during the final track. It makes for surprisingly good headphone music on late nights when you can’t seem to drag yourself away from your laptop, and probably violates Bandcamp’s updated terms of use, so grab it while it’s fresh.
Les Rallizes Dénudés – The OZ Tapes
Temporal Drift
It’s tempting to imagine that the mythos surrounding these Japanese psych-rock innovators might be less potent if they’d left a proper recorded legacy, rather than the cruddy bootlegs that have served as most listeners’ entry point for the past half century. Billed as the group’s first-ever official international LP release, The OZ Tapes collects material recorded live in 1973, over an hour of it previously unreleased. Stripped of the sonic murk that engulfed classic bootlegs like Heavier Than a Death in the Family, the band reveal themselves as a group much more in step with the prevailing sounds of their times than I’d previously imagined. Their shambling, post-Velvets rock dirge mostly sounds a bit ordinary here, though Mizutani’s galvanic guitar solos—best heard on the album’s two versions of signature tune ‘The Last One’—still have the ability to startle.
Masayo Koketsu – Fukiya
Relative Pitch Records
Like a lot of contemporary jazz musicians in Japan, saxophonist Masayo Koketsu has suffered from lousy international distribution, meaning that this release on New York’s Relative Pitch Records may be the first many overseas listeners have heard of her. It’s an intensely focused, single 46-minute solo alto excursion that covers a huge range of ground and equally wide dynamic range, from piercing squeals to spittle-drenched susurrations. When Koketsu dips to a strangulated whimper, you can hear the ghost of Kaoru Abe, while her serrated harmonics remind me of Eiichi Hayashi’s Oto no Tsubu. The violent eruptions are kept in check by a ragged lyricism, but make no doubt about it: this is strong stuff.
H.Takahashi – Paleozoic
Dauw
Architect and ambient don H.Takahashi has had a busy couple of years, gigging with supergroup Unknown Me and opening his own record shop, Kankyo Records, in Sangenjaya. His first solo release since 2019’s Sonne und Wasser is more in the vein of earlier albums like Escapism, each track a slowly rotating kaleidoscope of glistening synth chimes. There’s a bit more development than in some of Takahashi’s other work, as layers steadily accumulate and refract light, and the overall sound is discernibly more polished, on account of him ditching his usual method of composing on an iPhone. As the name suggests, Paleozic turns to geology for inspiration, and while it’s tailor-made for yoga classes and zazen sessions, I hope to hear it playing in a science museum some day.
Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Joe Talia – PATRICK
Bandcamp
This was one of the last gigs held at the irreplaceable SuperDeluxe, by a trio of musicians who approach improvisation like a vast impressionist canvas, shifting almost imperceptibly between electronics and conventional instrumentation. The opening section is a barely-there glow of sibilant buzz and synthesisers that seem to hover just on the horizon, but by the 20-minute mark they’ve morphed into a Necks-style combo, with Ishibashi on piano, Talia on drums and O’Rourke on double bass. Things get properly eerie later on, as they retreat into the gloaming, then arrive at a coda of cymbal taps, sighs of bowed bass, and an organ nearly as gorgeous as the one on Talk Talk’s ‘Wealth’. Even by the usual standards of these three, it’s an exceptional set.
Yasuaki Shimizu – Kiren
Palto Flats
This was quite a find: an unreleased 1984 album by Shimizu, at the height of his fourth-world phase, which completes a trilogy that started with Kakashi and Mariah’s Utakata no Hibi. There are tracks here that sound like a direct continuation of the latter album, with their insistent rhythms and intersecting woodwind lines, but the overall sound is heavier on the electronics—joining the dots with the more synthetic mode of Music for Commercials. Album centrepiece ‘Peruvian Pink’ combines a groove straight out of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with a ripping bass clarinet solo, while ‘Asate’ and ‘Shiasate’ should please DJs who’ve worn out the grooves on their copies of Mariah’s ‘Shinzo No Tobira’. If you’ve enjoyed Shimizu’s other work from the period, it’s essential.
Awich – Queendom
Yentown/Universal Music
I’d been worried that moving to a major label might cramp Awich’s style, but Queendom features some of her punchiest material to date, while positioning her as a rapper first, singer second. It’s front-loaded with a lot of the heaviest stuff, including the emotive title track and last year’s swaggering ‘Gila Gila’, though stick around for the anthemic ‘Link Up’, which is like a big hug for the whole Japanese hip-hop scene. Even when she goes reggaeton on ‘Dore ni Shiyou Kana’—a no-fucks-given empowerment anthem likely to be heard playing from every beach hut on the Shonan coast this summer—she owns it. Save for a couple of indifferent attempts at Chanmina-style crossover pop during the closing stretch, there isn’t a false note here. It’s the sound of an artist who knows exactly who she is. Available here.
Keiko Higuchi – Vertical Language
Black Editions
Keiko Higuchi makes the kind of lullabies you’d sing if you wanted to give a child deeply peculiar dreams. She’s working in the tradition of Meredith Monk and, especially, Diamanda Galas, with whom she shares an almost shamanistic quality. On the opening side of this hair-raising set for Black Editions, she delivers a series of improvised incantations, with spirited accompaniment on a piano that sounds like it hasn’t been tuned for a while. Although she can soar when she wants to, Higuchi generally stays in a lower, raspier register, using effect pedals to generate swarms of doppelgangers. The heavy/heady atmosphere dissipates a little on the flip, on which she eviscerates a few standards (and, most intriguingly, an Ainu folk song), with added jazz squiggles by bassist Louis Inage.
Kobeta Piano – dubasik
Softribe
This one surprised me. Kyoto’s Kobeta Piano make lysergic, jazz-tinged beat music using an unlikely combination of keyboards, drums and modular electronics. Watz Uematsu’s Mark Guiliana-style drumming manages to find grooves within the rigid structures of KND’s modular rig, while Shoichi Murakami plays with shape-shifting elan. It’s music where the constituent parts seem to be constantly bending around each other, in a way that’s reminding me of Bisk’s keyboard-laced electronica.
Sakanaction – Adapt
Victor Entertainment
Don’t be put off by the “concept album” tag: Sakanaction’s latest release is much snappier than their bloated 2019 double album, 834.194. From what I can deduce, the only “concept” here is that the group have abandoned the traditional album cycle. Adapt compiles material first heard during the online/offline tours they’ve been playing since last autumn, and ranges from Gen Hoshino-style earnestness to slick disco, enlivened by Emi Okazaki’s prominent synths. There’s some insanely detailed production work (‘Eurynome’, in particular), and inventive arrangements manage to make even a generic J-rock anthem like ‘Plateau’ sound kinda interesting. The biggest departure is ‘Shock!’, which features a full horn section and an almost Fela Kuti groove. Available here.
7FO, Ran – Bouten
Conatala
7FO – Music for Himitsu
Métron Records
Ran-Bouten recently got subjected to a group pile-on by the Tone Glow writers panel, which felt a bit unfair, though it’s far from 7FO’s best work. Although the release notes emphasise the use of Kawai K1 and K4 synths—giving the music a limpid feel that’s very 90s new age—his move to a hardware setup seems more significant. The tracks are all locked into stiff sequencer patterns that leave little space for, well, the spaciousness of earlier releases like the wonderful Ryu no Nukegara. Music for Himitsu revisits a piece that 7FO created for an art show in 2014, and it makes for a pleasant drift: a slow-motion cascade of chiming guitar loops and gentle synth swells, interlaced with burbling textures and field recordings that occasionally jolt you back to reality. The fact that it’s supposed to be background music ends up working in its favour.
Jailbird Y – Duality
Call & Response
If you’d told me this had come out on Hoppy Kamiyama’s God Mountain label in the mid-90s, I might have believed you, although Jailbird Y’s maximalist noise-rock has a certain kinship with Rocket Recordings acts like Gnod. As the title suggests, this one’s a game of two halves: the A side was recorded remotely during the pandemic, whereas the flip was captured while the band was touring Taiwan in 2019. The former is a joyous sonic overload, bathed in technicolour vomit, while the latter is let down by a rather shapeless live track, from a gig with vocalist Kazehito Seki that was probably more fun to watch than it is to listen to. Bonus points for some of the most eye-catching artwork I’ve seen all year.
JunyaWatabooIshii – Strange Bedroom Tape <3
Bandcamp
Lo-fi beats to get slurry to. JunyaWatabooIshii’s productions are far too warped and woozy to land on a Spotify playlist, but his past history as a b-boy means that he never quite loses sight of the rhythm. After cranking out 10 albums in as many months last year, he allows himself to sprawl on this cassette release, inspired by the dreams that his wife relates to him each morning. It’s a neat concept, and the best tracks—featuring swathes of surface noise and pitch-bent Fender Rhodes that oozes like molten wax—have the hazy, degraded quality I’d associate with the Ghost Box label.
Mars89 – Visions
Bedouin Records
Like Goth-Trad before him, Mars89 has taken the hardcore continuum to a very desolate place, seething with political discontent. This formidable set for Bedouin Records is dedicated to “the city dwellers who live with the rats and crows in the gaps of the city where the giant capital tries to control everything,” and it sounds like something you might hear reverberating around an empty warehouse after the riot police have been called in. (Is that vinyl crackle, or the sound of something burning?) Even on straight-up bangers like the Lost Highway-referencing ‘Dick Laurent is Dead’, the oppressive atmosphere never lifts, while the blasted-out footwork of ‘Flatliner’ pushes so far into the red, I thought my speakers were melting.
DJ Sniff – Parallel Traces of the Jewel Voice
Discrepant
A remarkable bit of sound art from sometime Japan resident DJ Sniff, inspired by the “Jewel Voice” radio broadcast that announced the country’s surrender at the end of WWII. Unbeknownst to many, this historic occasion involved an early example of turntablism, using two lathe-cut discs of Emperor Hirohito’s voice. Sniff responds with a pair of montages, weaving together samples of phonograph discs, interviews, field recordings, percussion-heavy improv, and a re-recording of Hirohito’s speech in Chinese. These are contained in parallel grooves on the vinyl edition, which comes with detailed liner notes, and is probably the best way to experience the piece. The digital version assigns the two tracks to the left and right channels (yes, they sync up nicely), and it makes for an immersive bit of sonic time travel—albeit one that spits you back into the present after a mere 8 minutes.
Butasaku – Forms
Self-released
I’ve never really clicked with Butaji’s solo work, but this collaboration with producer Yusaku Arai hits the mark. As Butasaku, they make R&B so weightless it’s practically incorporeal, evoking memories of Spacek’s Curvatia, early James Blake and (if you must) Bon Iver. Even if he always sounds just a little too earnest, Butaji has some serious pipes, stacking his vocals into seraphic harmonies that float through the amniotic fluid of Arai’s productions. Naturally, they spoil the effect by busting out an acoustic guitar halfway through, but otherwise this is rather beguiling.
