Notable new Japanese releases and reissues
In a recent review on The Quietus, Danijela Bočev recounted how she had recently developed a fear of boring music: the kind of grayscale, monotonous stuff that provided a weird kind of comfort food during the early days of the pandemic. I could relate, and not just because of the way she linked her argument in with her experience of grieving for departed family members. Sifting through PR emails and the recesses of Bandcamp, I find myself glazing over at the mere mention of ambient drone, field recordings, ASMR and minimal anything. That’s partly a reflection of quite how much music in this vein has been released over the last couple of years, the vast majority of it utterly disposable. But there’s also something in the air right now: with the live scene back in full swing (more or less), music is going back to being a communal activity. And, speaking for myself, I just wanna get loaded.
I could (and probably should) fill a whole column just with the music that’s being released during September, but in the meantime, here are some things you might have missed over the past few months.
¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U w/ friends – Midnight is Comin’
Midnight Sounds
The title of ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U’s engrossing mix album will mean different things if you’re a salaryman, Cinderella or a DJ. In clubs, the run-up to midnight is often when DJs can get most experimental, taking advantage of a full PA and a still-empty floor. That’s the vibe here, as Yukimatsu assembles a selection of exclusive tracks, mostly by Japanese artists, that tend towards the deep and droney. The first half is pure kosmiche, favouring slow transitions that let the tracks really seep into each other. ¥UK1MAT$U’s talent for curveballs is more obvious later on, when he swerves into what sounds like mid-1980s 4AD (actually French producer Coni) and then hits an ecstatic peak with Gabbus Modus Operandi’s ‘Kisah’. The release also includes unmixed versions of all the tracks, and there are some real gems, including the aqueous dub of Spinnuts’ ‘Zweimal schlafen atmosphäre’ and some Caterina Barbieri-grade modular synth hypnosis by Sapphire Slows on ‘Hinotori.’
Friends of Junzo – We Love You Junzo
Bandcamp
Underground rock fixture Junzo Suzuki suffered a brain haemorrhage after taking a tumble off the platform of Koenji station earlier this year, and this bumper benefit comp is intended as a “giant get well card” to aid his recovery. Featuring contributions from an international cast of friends and fellow travellers, it’s an epic dose of knuckle-dragging Sabbath riffage, acid folk, hurdy-gurdy drone and meandering psych-rock jams in the Ashtray Navigations vein (yup, they’re on here too). Suzuki pops up a few times, including on the nearly 48-minute closer by Haramindarangure, his duo with Scott Verrastro, though his molten shredding on Mienakunaru’s ‘Invisible Hammerblow’ is a personal fave. ¥1,300 well spent, in other words.
Wakana Ikeda – Repeat After Me (2018-2021)
Fresh Lettuce Records
This one’s pretty special. Flutist Wakana Ikeda leads a small group into the liminal zone, in a series of pieces that make even the threadbare songs on Ashley Paul’s recent I Am Fog album sound positively ornate. It opens with a theme stated on plaintive clarinet and then picked up by singer ? meytél (sic.), joined by softly groaning/droning strings. In parts B and C, the woodwinds become more hesitant, the structures less distinct, as if the song hazily delineated at the outset is slowly dissolving. In the liner notes, Ikeda explains that the piece was inspired by hearing her bedridden grandmother mumbling snatches of melody in her sleep, which casts this eerily intimate work in a whole new light.
Shintaro Sakamoto – Like a Fable
Zelone Records
Four albums into his post-Yura Yura Teikoku solo career, Shintaro Sakamoto hasn’t radically departed from the arch retro-pop of 2011’s How to Live With a Phantom, but he keeps finding ways to tweak the formula for the better. Opener ‘It Was Illegal’—which combines an atypically caustic lyric with a brittle, distortion-laced backing track—is the biggest departure on what might be his most straight-up fun record to date. While track titles like ‘You Have Time But I Don’t’ indicate that Sakamoto hasn’t lost his mordant sensibility, there’s a warmth to Like a Fable that wasn’t always evident in its predecessors. The lyrics speak to the banal and bewildering concerns of everyday life, as on the infectious, drum machine-driven ‘One Day’, while the title track is as wistful and winsome a love song as I’ve heard all summer.
Keiji Haino & The Hardy Rocks – You're Either Standing Facing Me Or Next To Me
P-Vine Records
In his mammoth discography, this intermittently hilarious studio recording may be the closest Keiji Haino has come to a novelty album. Leaving the guitar playing to someone else for a change, he acts as frontman for a frayed garage-rock covers band who stumble, hurtle and stutter through renditions of canonical classics including ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Born to Be Wild’, plus a few anglicised interpretations of (uncredited) Japanese MOR ditties. It’s hard to tell how seriously to take the whole thing, especially when Haino delivers most of his vocals in an exaggerated Cookie Monster voice. The old guy turned 70 earlier this year, and you can’t blame him for wanting to have some fun, though this is a rare Haino record that’s likely to appeal more to new initiates than longtime fans. Available here.
Yuji Dogane & Mamoru Fujieda – Ecological Plantron
EM Records
Osaka’s EM Records continues to unearth some fascinating gems from the forgotten byways of Japanese electronic music. Following on from last year’s ace Henry Kawahara comp, this 1990s collaboration between composer Mamoru Fujieda and botanist Yuji Dogane uses the latter’s bioelectric interface to make sui generis generative music from plants. It’s an intoxicating and slightly bewildering sound world: ‘Night’, one of four temporally themed tracks on the CD release, sounds like ring-modulated dial tones floating over a free jazz freakout by an 8-bit jegog orchestra. ‘Evening’, the least hectic of the pieces, could almost pass for ambient. Weirdest of all is ‘Pianola Plantron’, which hooks the plants up to a self-playing piano—though good luck getting through all 35 minutes of it.
Otomoni – Super U
Outlines
Poland’s Outlines label serves up footwork-inspired music that’s “less burdened by formal requirements,” which sounds like a recipe for a Foodman album. Tokyo-based producer Otomoni marshalls some unlikely sound sources for these rhythmic extrapolations, from pellucid synth chimes to warped samples of cicada song and what sounds like an argument in an izakaya. Playful and teeming with detail, it can fleetingly recall the mellower moments of mid-90s Aphex Twin (a good thing), but even at its most abstract and nonlinear, Super U never loses a sense of groove.
Marty Holoubek – Trio III
Apollo Sounds
Australian bassist Marty Holoubek has become an indispensable part of the Tokyo music scene since moving here a few years back. His third album as leader—each recorded with a different trio—is a deftly executed suite of electro-acoustic trickery that plays to the strengths (and ECM predilections) of his collaborators, Eiko Ishibashi and Tatsushisa Yamamoto. During the opening stretch, they paint the subtlest of watercolour backdrops for Holoubek’s melodic statements, before heading into the kind of Necks-adjacent dream realm they’ve explored in Kafka Ibiki. During the second half, the electronic interventions become more prominent, as the album’s placid mood gives way to something more sinister. Available here.
Til Yawuh – Nani mo nai desu
Local Visions
Fans of Wool in the Pants and Issaya Wuddha’s mumbled cool should appreciate this pithy, pay-what-you-like EP. Working mostly with electric guitar and Garageband-grade beats, Tokyo bedroom producer Till Yawuh crafts four tracks whose tossed-off quality is integral to their charm. The slacker-soul ‘Ghosts in a Room,’ featuring understated contributions by saxophonist Hikaru Yamada, is the standout.
Napalm Death Is Dead – Hou-Kai-Kei
Dada Drumming
Tokyo’s best named noise-grind band have been giving unsuspecting punters tinnitus since 2004, so it’s a surprise to discover that this is their first solo CD. Hou-Kai-Kei give a good approximation of what it feels like to be at an uncomfortably crowded studio gig. On opening track ‘Meat’ and closer ‘Slave’, the bass/drum duo deliver a sustained assault of blast-beats and feedback, pushed so far into the red they make Lightning Bolt sound like fucking Steely Dan. The album’s nearly 11-minute centrepiece, ‘Fuckin’,’ shows they know a thing or two about negative space, alternating between spurts of violence and uneasy lulls in a way that Keiji Haino might appreciate. (This seems to have vanished from Bandcamp, but you can find it here.)
Justice – Justice
Dotsmark
Not sure this lot were deliberately condemning themselves to obscurity by picking the same name as a certain French electro duo, but if so: job well done. Justice pairs the vocal talents of Endon frontman Taichi Nagura with molten synth spurts and guitar frazzle by Gojiro Sakamoto. Compared to Endon, it’s pretty mellow stuff—but we’re talking in strictly relative terms here. Without a band behind him, Nagura has more space to demonstrate his formidable range, from guttural belches to inhuman shrieks and whinnies. Sakamoto alternates between harsh abstraction and bursts of melody, dipping into late-night jazz on ‘Secret Garden’ and unleashing an Envy-style finale on ‘The Last Crusade on Earth’.
UA – Are U Romantic?
Victor Entertainment
Enlisting a varied cast of songwriters, this six-track EP is like a mixtape that touches on various points in UA’s career. Opening track ‘Binetsu’, penned by Gezan’s Mahito The People, deliberately evokes the languid dub-pop of 1996 breakout single ‘Jonetsu’, while ‘Honesty’ (co-written with Kaho Nakamura) is more in keeping with the baroque fantasias of 2016’s JaPo album. At other points, she suggests avenues she might have explored: ‘Ocha’ (with Takashi “Hanaregumi” Nagazumi) imagines if UA had pivoted to Sophie Ellis-Bextor disco around the turn of the millennium, while Kj from Dragon Ash (!) crafts her a gloriously cheesy R&B slow jam on closer ‘Okay’. Available here.
Akaihirume – Aka
Self-released
I only really knew Akaihirume from her work with Carl Stone, but this solo cassette shows that she’s a commanding presence on her own. It’s about as far from Stone’s topsy-turvy MAX/MSP world as you can get: recorded al fresco at a park and mountain shrine on Kanagawa’s Hanazuru peninsula, Aka finds Akaihirume stretching out over two extended pieces. The second, ‘Hensoukyoku’, is particularly good, full of animal growls and vocalisations that bring to mind Ainu singers like Marewrew. At points, her voice drops out altogether, letting the sounds of her surroundings—crow caws, distant voices of children at play—take centre stage.
Tetsu Umehara – Handwritten
Métron Records
The spirit of the 1980s kankyō ongaku movement is alive and well on Tetsu Umehara’s debut album. Described as a paean to his various architectural influences, Handwritten sits somewhere between ambient IDM and the more intensive sound design of contemporaries such as Sugai Ken and Hideki Umezawa. It’s often lovely to listen to, but Umehara doesn’t settle for mere prettiness: his tracks tend to evolve in unpredictable fashion, and he’s not averse to introducing the odd jarring note, like the jagged power chords and stuttering beat on ‘Zye Huw.’ Meanwhile, ‘Blank 4 Me’ could be Fennesz covering Yasuaki Shimizu’s Music for Commercials.
Satoko Shibata – Bochi Bochi Galaxy
AWDR/LR2
You don’t look to Satoko Shibata’s music for radical sonic innovation, but there are a few surprises lurking within the pop-tinged comfort food of her latest album. Chief among them is the title track, which hits a strain of psychedelic dub-pop that’s making me think of Yeasayer circa Odd Blood (not a reference I was expecting to drop here). ‘Silent Holy Madness Allnight’ is enlivened by the odd dub tape effect, while the wheezy horn arrangements on ‘Tropical Carpet’ are a delight. Throughout, Shibata delivers her vocals with the breeziness and take-no-prisoners gusto of a young Akiko Yano. Available here.
Mountain/Full Edition – Summer Demonstration
Bandcamp
Surfing distractedly through Bandcamp recently, the latest offering from Kyoto’s Mountain/Full Edition clicked somehow. It’s a typically colourful patchwork of naive melodies, early-90s dance beats and sunny psychedelic squelch, somewhere on the spectrum between KLF and Yoshimio’s solo work (I guess?). Like a lot of the group’s music, the tracks meander without ever really going anywhere, and the prevailing cutsiness may grate with some people. But, eh, it worked for me.
Takuro Okada – Betsu No Jikan
Newhere Music
Takuro Okada seems equally at home playing indie, ambient and free improv, but for this ambitious solo album he hews closer to Floating Points and The Cinematic Orchestra. It’s a meticulously (some might say fussily) crafted assemblage that features some big-name contributors, including Nels Cline, Sam Gendel and Haruomi Hosono—though good luck spotting most of them. Shun Ishiwaka binds the whole thing together, his rippling, expansive drumming and percussion work suggestive of Masahiko Togashi’s Spiritual Nature. Although the press notes pose the question “What is pop?”, the album’s pleasures are textural more than melodic. It’s very easy on the ears, though not terribly memorable.
Jigen – Stone Drum Avantgardism
Double Circumflex
If (like me) you had your mind blown by the reissue of Christoph de Babalon’s If You're Into It, I'm Out of It a few years back, this more-or-less contemporaneous album by Taro Nijikama’s Jigen alias is well worth checking. Originally released in 1998, Stone Drum Avantgardism suggests a more freeform alternative to the stylistic cul de sac in which D&B would soon find itself. We’re a long way from the dancefloor here: Jigen’s breakbeats get tangled up in productions that owe more to musique concrète and free jazz, with a vibe that’s closer to illbient than the industrial/dark ambient tone of de Babalon’s work.
Kaho Nakamura – NIA
Space Shower Music
For the first few tracks of NIA, I could’ve sworn that Kaho Nakamura had made the finest Japanese pop album of 2022. Opener ‘KAPO’ is a joyous burst of soukous rhythms, lazer synths and Nakamura’s disarmingly chatty vocals, while the frantic, futurist prog-pop of ‘Good bye Claire’ is like if Thundercat had penned a song for the soundtrack of The Fifth Element. It’s not an album to chill out to: there are songs here that sound like a kids TV presenter trying to make hyperpop or UA after chugging a few too many cans of Monster Energy, and the arrangements are crammed with fidgety details. It’s mostly great, but sags a bit towards the end, when Nakamura indulges in the kind of rote modes—piano balladry, acoustic whisper-pop—I thought she was supposed to be saving us from. Available here.
Noah – Noire
Flau
Compiled from unreleased tracks that Noah produced between 2015 and 2020, this impressively cohesive set is peak Flau: diaphonous and dreamy, like the sound of something half-remembered. Whereas label mate Cuushe has embraced club sonics, Noah prefers to let a patina of dust settle over the surfaces of her music. Her vocals drift weightlessly over trip-hop rhythms and distressed piano loops that might have been pinched from William Basinski’s tape collection. Even the house beat powering ‘gemini – mysterious lot’ sounds like it’s about to doze off.
The Ratel – Scan
Fresh Lettuce Records
When the core members of a band are a flutist and a bassoon player, you know you can expect something a bit different. Bassoonist/singer Aya Naito’s affectless vocals bring a Stereolab quality to The Ratel’s music, which at its best (like on ‘The Area of Boredom’) suggests a happy middle ground between Henry Cow and 1990s Chicago post-rock. Not everything is quite so arresting—there’s a little too much indie-rock plodding for my tastes—though when the tension sags, you can generally rely on guitarist Kenji Hatakeyama to liven things up with some Fripp-tastic fretwork.
Midori Takada – You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana / Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter
WRWTFWW Records
One of the YouTube algorithm’s undisputed breakout stars, Midori Takada makes good on her newfound international popularity with her first new solo albums in over two decades. These two releases focus on different sides of her practice, and conjure the hushed reverence that comes from being in the presence of a true master. On You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana, she collaborates with a chorus of Shingon Buddhist monks, adding gossamer layers of percussion and marimba to recordings of liturgical chants. Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter continues her lifelong exploration of traditional African music, with two renditions of the Zimbabwean mbira song ‘Nhemamusasa’. It’s a piece with no fixed beginning or end, and Takada’s performance evokes a similar spirit of boundlessness.
