Good music from a (mostly) bad year
I fell out of the habit of posting album reviews during 2024, partly because I simply wasn’t listening to as much Japanese music as I had done in the previous few years. Still, it felt remiss not to acknowledge a few of the highlights of a year that, by most objective measures, was pretty wretched. I’m grateful to the handful of people who gave me a much-needed nudge to write this, and also to my friend Ian F. Martin for showing how it should be done with his defiantly unpunctual zine, Last Year’s Music. (I’d post a link, but I’m afraid you’ll have to seek out a physical copy.)
As ever, I’ve limited this to artists who are based (or active) in Japan, meaning that a few worthy releases such as Miki Yui’s As If didn’t make the cut. Bandcamp links are included wherever available, and Spotify can get stuffed.
FUJI||||||||||TA
MMM
(Hallow Ground)
When I saw Yosuke Fujita perform at Mode Tokyo last summer, he’d stripped his signature organ down to just a couple of pipes that he was playing with an air brush, creating a flurry of staccato puffs and sibilants that occasionally verged on drum’n’bass. If MMM turns out to be his final album using a more conventional organ setup, it would be a hell of a way to go. By switching from a hand-operated air pump to an electric one, he’s able to create intricate, oscillating patterns that have the same hypnotic thrall as the best minimalist music. On the spectacular 21-minute opening track, he heightens the woozy, swirling effect by waving a gun microphone in front of his instrument. It’s the best thing he’s done since 2020’s iki, and while the other two tracks aren’t quite as overwhelming, they feature Fujita’s most convincing vocal excursions to date.
Wool & The Pants
Not Fun in the Summertime
(Self-released)
After getting a smidge of international attention with 2019’s Wool in the Pool, released by Washington DC funk/boogie specialists PPU, Tokyo’s Wool & The Pants seem to have hit the reset button. Not Fun in the Summertime is a solo effort by guitarist/vocalist Yu Tokumo, sounding very much like his generation’s answer to Shintaro Sakamoto. Working mostly with guitar and flimsy drum machines, he distils an eclectic range of influences (Jagatara, Can, ECD, etc.) into tracks so threadbare they might have been – and quite possibly were – cobbled together in the space of a lunch break. It’s still defiantly lo-fi, and Tokumo never raises his voice above a somnolent croon as he moves from lo-fi soul and funk to Fishmans-style dub-reggae (‘Nettaiya’). Available here.
Sayozoku
Childhood in the Cloud
(Tall Grass Records)
Well, this is a delightful racket. Sayozoku are the duo of married couple Yonju Miyaoka (also of Bunsuirei and Shuko No Omit) and Sayaka Tenjin, who together create an exquisite nonsense intelligible only to themselves. Childhood in the Cloud is the sound of uninhibited play, as the pair explore the possibilities of various toy/grown-up instruments while interjecting ebullient vocalisations. You could find antecedents in the work of groups like the Nihilist Spasm Band and Los Angeles Free Music Society (whose Rick Potts contributes liner notes, as do Tori Kudo and a host of others). In a 2021 interview, Miyaoka said the duo – whose name translates as ‘The Sayo People’ – “want to be an independent ethnic music group.” Job well done.
Masahiko Okura / Naoto Yamagishi / Fumi Endo
(Meenna)
Ftarri is a spiritual heir to the fabled Off Site: an intimate, no-frills venue that lends itself to music so hushed and intently focused, they have to turn off the air conditioner whenever people are playing. I struggle to keep up with the volume of music released on the venue’s three in-house labels, but this is one that I kept coming back to during the year. It has the restraint and focus on texture that characterised late-90s Onkyō improvisation: Endo’s piano doesn’t enter until near the 10-minute mark, prior to which Okura summons gentle feedback swells on contrabass clarinet and Yamagishi maintains a translucent shimmer of percussion. The trio maintain this exquisite poise across the rest of the recording, which brings me close to the headspace I enter when listening to Eliane Radigue.
NaMaSuKo onetwo
semniiii
(A NiCE FORM)
Few formats scream obscolescence more loudly than the mix CD – even Fabric has given up on the things – but maybe they’re due for a revival. This hour-long session by PPTV and Minami Ryohei (executed with four CDJs and a two-channel mixer, apparently) is more engrossing than most new releases I heard last year. It’s a glorious, loopy ride, full of unlikely juxtapositions and wild pitch-control abuse, but the duo manage to stop everything from dissolving into a formless technicolour slop. It’s one for the head more than the hips, though if you’re looking to bust some moves, listen out for the vintage radio calisthenics recording that pops up at around the 48-minute mark.
Ooyamada Daisanmyaku
Dyspepsia Original Sound Track
(Zouenkeikaku)
Despite being a fan of Ooyamada Daisanmyaku’s previous work, it took me a while to connect with this, perhaps because its creator had pitched it as the soundtrack to an imaginary videogame from 1998. That’s a very specific remit, and Dyspepsia is unlikely to fool anyone who came of age during the PS1 era. While the muddy audio quality is certainly period-appropriate, for the most part, the music doesn’t sound much like anything that was happening in the VGM world at the time – think early Plaid, rather than the Paradise Eve OST. There are a few tracks that have fun subjecting 8-bit melodies to Ooyamada’s signature sonic treatments, though things get really freaky when she adds vocals into the mix. The track titles (e.g. ‘I can’t put away the stomach that flies out the window’) are fantastic, too.
Reishu Fukushima + Satoshi Fukushima
Inter-Others
(Experimental Rooms)
This is a striking father-son collaboration. Reishu Fukushima has apparently been playing shakuhachi since the 1990s, which suggests he was a relatively late starter – and might also explain his willingness to let son Satoshi perform all manner of trickery on his instrument. Satoshi has been doing real-time computer processing for over 20 years now; Tokyo scenesters with long memories might recall his work in the band Mimiz. The opening track, ‘#33’, is the highlight, as swirling layers of shakuhachi are transformed into FM tones that coalesce into a chugging groove strangely reminiscent of Faust (or is that just me?). At other points, I’m reminded of Eiko Ishibashi’s work with flute and electronics. ‘“Theme and Variations” for solo shakuhachi and computer,’ the longest piece here, starts out pretty and then gets slowly enveloped by mist and shadows. (If you’re looking for a good chaser, I’d recommend Extopia by sibling duo Sanger and Sanger, another quality slab of shakuhachi-tronica.)
Glans
Slow Tree
(Jusangatsu)
Both times I saw Glans live last year, they played uninterrupted for about half an hour, negotiating gradual tempo shifts and more dramatic stylistic transitions with equal aplomb. Maybe this is what they mean when they describe themselves as making “groove music that crosses various genres” – their sets flow like a DJ mix. Like fellow Sapporo band (and labelmates) The Hatch, whose Midori Yamada is credited for “sound support” here, the group touch on some familiar hallmarks of 1990s post-hardcore/post-rock, but combine their influences in wholly unexpected ways. I’m not sure anyone hearing Slow Tree for the first time would anticipate the moment the languid guitar swells of the opening tracks give way to a hurtling rhythm worthy of Liquid Liquid on ‘NIN’.
Yuta Orisaka
Jumon
(Amuse Inc.)
You know someone’s on the level when they bring their son to a scheduled interview, as Yuta Orisaka did when I met him last summer. Jumon seems slight on first inspection: just nine songs, recorded with the same core group of musicians featured on 2021’s State of Mind. The latter album was longer and more stylistically diverse, but the compactness of Jumon turns out to be an asset. Orisaka flaunts his influences even more clearly than he has in the past (yes, that’s a Marvin Gaye hat-tip during closing track ‘Lotus’), but this never comes across as the retro pastiche favoured by some of his contemporaries. It’s music out of time, and consistently elevated by the performances: Kota Yamauchi’s Fripp/Eno-descended guitar work is a constant marvel, while Atsuko Hatano contributes some shiver-inducing string arrangements.
Endon
Fall of Spring
(Thrill Jockey)
It’s hard to talk about Endon’s devastating fourth album without mentioning the death of band member Etsuo Nagura in 2020 – and that’s before you get to the track titled ‘Time Does Not Heal’. The group have gone through a number of transformations over the years, but their latest is the most radical to date, ditching any traces of their grindcore origins in favour of a fully electronic lineup. With guitarist Koki Miyabe now on electronics alongside Taro Aiko, the group’s sound has become stadium-sized, with vocalist Taichi Nagura screaming from the heart of the inferno; when they perform live, they point their projectors directly at the audience, meaning that it’s dazzling in a literal sense too. Listening at home, it’s easier to appreciate the sophistication of the production: the way they thread ghostly samples into the mix, or gird their noise onslaughts with techno-style sound design.
Masahiro Sugaya
Overflowing Signs
(Ato.archives)
Ato.archives is a new-ish label which, in their own words, is “dedicated to the collection of acoustic experiments and music practices.” Many of their releases to date (all of which are worth your time) have blurred the distinction between background and foreground, music and non-music. This collection by Masahiro Sugaya (a veteran of the 1980s kankyō ongaku scene) is a good example, alternating between dainty musical miniatures, sound collages and some bracingly up-close recordings of everyday objects. What I took for some very freaky bass clarinet playing on the opening track turns out to be a winnowing machine, which should teach me to pay more attention to the track titles. It’s animated by a spirit of curiosity that’s downright infectious: try listening to ‘Sellotape’ without breaking into a grin.
marucoporoporo
Conceive the Sea
(FLAU)
The Flau label has always been defined more by a sensibility than a signature sound, but I still can’t help associating it with the ethereal, shimmering dream-pop of early releases like Cokiyu’s Your Thorn and Cuushe’s Butterfly Case. Marucoporoporo’s debut full-length inhabits a similar zone. The Aichi-based artist layers reverb-doused vocals, acoustic guitar and synthesisers into swirling eddies that remind me of both Grouper and, if I’m honest, Enya. It’s flat-out gorgeous, though I like the way a few of the tracks – ‘Double Helix’ in particular – also sound like they might swallow you up at any moment.
Manami Kakudo
Contact
(Universal Music)
I’ll admit that the cover art for this did such an effective job of scaring me off, I didn’t give it a proper listen until it placed second in ele-king’s albums-of-the-year list. A conservatory-educated percussionist who’s equally comfortable performing in pop or free improv contexts (she was a longterm member of Cero’s live band), Kakudo here crafts an expansive suite of finely wrought chamber pop, supported by a terrific band including guitarist Baku Furukawa and cellist Yumiko Iwao. As with her 2020 debut, Oar, it’s a lot to take in. There are songs that make me think of UA’s JaPo or a less goofy Shugo Tokumaru, but others that bring to mind Midori Takada (blame it on the marimba), Joanna Newsom and even Andean folk music. While I wouldn’t mind just a little more unruliness, it’s brilliantly done. Available here.
TOMO
vielle-electronica
(Knotwilg)
Tomo was one of the first musicians I got to know after I moved to Tokyo in the 2000s. Back then, he could be seen playing everything from 12-string guitar to soprano saxophone, so it’s been fascinating to see him zero in on the hurdy-gurdy as his instrument of choice. Whereas 2023’s sprawling ta panta rhei / works for hurdy gurdy felt like a bit too much of a good thing, this 6-track set for Belgium’s Knotwilg label is a brilliant introduction to his work. Breton folk melodies merge with the ur-drone of Tony Conrad, while the liquid melodies that snake around each other on closing track ‘echoes’ sound like Tomo is channeling Terry Riley circa A Rainbow in Curved Air.
Kafka’s Ibiki
Shiminkai
(Newhere Music)
This snuck out just before Christmas, which might explain why it didn’t get more attention. It’s a welcome addition to the discography of this excellent but under-documented trio. Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto play with each other in countless other projects, but as Kafka’s Ibiki they still seem to be finding new ways to surprise each other. On the A side of Shiminkai – a “re-edited” live recording captured by Joe Talia at the appropriately named Adrift in Tokyo – a mist of electronics and treated flute gives way to an unexpectedly rocking groove, anchored by some muscular bass riffage by O’Rourke. The flip side seems like it’s going to stick in a more ambient mode, only to become increasingly restive as it goes along.
Shuta Hiraki
Lyrisme Météorologique
(Tokinogake)
Music for late nights and looming deadlines. The eight tracks on Lyrisme Météorologique are made through what Shuta Hiraki describes as a call and response between shruti box and synthesisers, where the sounds of the former are used to generate MIDI notes that toggle and modulate the latter. It’s an entrancing effect that I think would be hard to create through purely electronic means. The shruti box is synonymous with drone, but this music is too changeable to qualify for that tag. It’s more like when your mind starts wandering while you’re trying to meditate: the sound of shifting sands. Hiraki’s use of different tuning systems and harmonic sequences keeps things varied.
BBBBBBB
SHINPI
(Bandcamp)
On this follow-up to 2023’s POSITIVE VIOLENCE album, BBBBBBB rein in the distortion and ramp up the queasiness: pitch-shifted vocals, fart sounds, an unlikely interpolation of ‘Hotel California.’ The happy hardcore version of ‘Sakura Sakura’ might be BBBBBBB’s version of the way YMO skewered Orientalist tropes, but who knows? While they’ve been frequently (and justifiedly) compared to early Boredoms, here they’re drawing inspiration from scum, a Japanese micro-genre that had its heyday at Osaka venue Bears in the mid-90s. Given that many of the acts associated with scum were one-off Boredoms side projects, I guess this all makes sense. Kind of.
Hakushi Hasegawa
Mahõgakkõ
(Brainfeeder)
I was expecting 2024 to be a bigger year internationally for Hakushi Hasegawa after their very apposite signing to Brainfeeder, but the response to Mahõgakkõ outside Japan was surprisingly muted. Too bad: this is both some of the most emotionally affecting and lunatic music they’ve released to date. It’s chaotic, kaleidoscopic pop where everything is happening all at once, generally at speeds that make it hard to parse on first listen (check 232 BPM opening track ‘Departed’, which Hasegawa told me was the fastest tempo they find it physically possible to play). Hasegawa’s fascination with pushing everything to the brink of comprehensibility extends to the disorientating sound design, which makes music that could have been merely impressive feel wonderfully knobbly and strange.
Dos Monos
Dos Atomos
(Dos Monos/Deathbomb Arc)
Dos Monos’ debut was the kind of hip-hop album you (or at least I) thought they didn’t make any more, with its audacious sample choices and relentless lyrical one-upmanship – the sound of three MCs trying to see who could come up with the most ludicrous verse. This belated sequel is even more dense, both conceptually and musically. The lyrics riff on Amaterasu and atomic energy, while the production tends towards the gargantuan. “Too many heads / More than King Geedorah / Even more than Yamata no Orochi,” Zo Zhit declares, in one of the rare English-language lyrics. He also proves himself to be an accomplished guitarist, though the abundance of power-chord riffing, especially during the album’s front half, is a bit too Judgment Night OST for my tastes. Stick around for an unlikely cameo by Otomo Yoshihide in turntablist mode on ‘QUE GI.’
K. Yoshimatsu
Fossil Cocoon: The Music of K. Yoshimatsu
(Phantom Limb)
The folks at Phantom Limb took the “quality over quantity” principle to extremes with this selection of work from the brief but prolific recording career of Koshiro Yoshimatsu. The Hiroshima-based musician (now a filmmaker) was a lynchpin of Tadashi Kamada’s cassette label DD. Records, releasing dozens of albums in the space of a few years. Many of them are available in their entirety on Yoshimatsu’s YouTube channel, which makes the six tracks compiled here feel a bit meagre. Still, these are some choice cuts, ranging from hiss-drenched vocal pop to eldritch ambient excursions infected by the spirit of 1970s Eno and Vini Reilly. And if you can listen to ‘Jerusalem’ without getting the vocal hook stuck in your head for days afterwards, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am.
Suzumeno Tears
Sparrow's Arrows Fly so High
(DOYASA! Records)
I managed to catch Suzumeno Tears twice in the space of a few weeks last year without planning to, first at the Kinshicho Kawachi Ondo and then again with Remon Nakanishi at the amazing Soul Beat Asia festival in Toyota. The duo’s Miyuki Sato and Agatha have a deceptively simple trick – mixing Japanese minyo with the vocal techniques and close harmonies of Balkan folk music – but it works every time. As with Nakanishi’s Hinanoiezuto, released on the same label, the songs are presented in band arrangements that can be a bit anaemic. On album highlight ‘Polyphony Goshu Ondo’, all the duo need is an insistent drumbeat to spur them along as they move seamlessly from Bon odori into Bulgarian folk and – just for good measure – a snippet of ‘Dangyna’ by Huun-Huur-Tu.
Melt-Banana
3+5
(A-Zap Records)
When I interviewed Melt-Banana last summer for an Invisible Jukebox feature in The Wire, I neglected to ask them the most obvious questions: Why had it taken them 11 years to release a successor to 2013’s Fetch? And why was it only 24 minutes long? But such lines of inquiry feel trifling after listening to 3+5, on which the duo’s maximalist cyber-hardcore is buffed to a chrome sheen so dazzlingly bright, it makes its predecessor sound like a GarageBand demo in comparison. The music here is no longer haunted by the (muscle) memory of the group’s original incarnation as a four-piece: they’re free to bust the kinds of gravity-defying moves you’d expect from a Vocaloid artist, while Agata’s guitar has never sounded less bound by the laws of physics. Available via Midheaven.
Sensational and Unbuilt
poiesis
(throughout records)
“That’s that freak shit…” I’ve no idea what the circumstances were behind this collaboration between Kyoto-based producer Unbuilt (aka Masafumi Sawamura) and Brooklyn’s finest. Judging from his Instagram feed, Sensational is in a rough place at the moment, but the onetime Wordsound wunderkind summons some of the old bleary magic here. Sawamura – whose solo work has suggested he’s more of an Autechre guy – sounds like he spent a few weeks listening to Loaded With Power on repeat before starting work on this one. It’s cellar-dank and strung out, with only the occasional punchdrunk beat to latch on to, and the whole thing seems to have been mastered by playing it through a pillow.
Zamboa
Mirai
(Jolt! Recordings)
You may remember these guys as Klan Aileen, a decent post-punk combo who seemed like they might morph into the next Downy if they weren’t careful. Thankfully, they’ve chosen a higher path. Perhaps sensing a gap in the market now that Kikagaku Moyo aren’t around any more, Ryo Shibuya and Takahiro Takeyama have adopted a new moniker and given themselves a rustic makeover. Though the blurb for their debut album as Zamboa cites This Heat’s collagist recording approach as an inspiration, I’m not really hearing it in the end results, which sound closer to 1970s psych forebears like Far East Family Band. And that’s not a bad thing. Klan Aileen never really set my pulse racing, but this kinda rocks.
Virtual Dreams II (Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993–1999)
(Music From Memory)
As they showed with their Heisei No Oto compilation, Music From Memory really know their way around the lesser byways of 1990s Japanese electronica. This sequel to a 2021 comp of mostly European acts reveals what a fertile environment the chill-out room was for contemporaneous producers in Japan. Although most of the featured artists seem to have come from the club world, it’s interesting to listen in the context of the ambient music that came out of Japan the previous decade. I feel like I can hear traces of Mkwaju Ensemble in the spiralling glockenspiels of Yukihiro Fukutomi’s ‘5 Blind Boys’, while Palomatic’s ‘Flutter’ has the aqueous, crystalline quality I associate with Hiroshi Yoshimura’s work.
sawako
Sounds
(12k)
This is a welcome addition to the small but endlessly rewarding discography left behind by Sawako Kato when she passed last spring. It’s a compilation that she sent on CD-R to future labelmate Kenneth Kirschner in 2003, in response to a call for sound files that he could use for a piece. But rather than a few files, Sawako gave him a whole world: bewitching fragments of daily life, distant melodies, resonances and oscillations. There’s a lot more of this kind of stuff around now than there was two decades ago, but Sawako’s sensibility (and sensitivity) is undeniable, while the muted, fogged-glass fidelity of the tracks only heightens their allure. It’s best enjoyed while reading Kirschner’s accompanying text, a heartfelt tribute that concludes with the words: “Let us remember her for her sounds, and let us remember her for her silences. But most of all, let us remember her.”
Aaaaand if you’ve bothered to read this far, here are a few of the non-Japanese releases I enjoyed most during 2024...
Rafael Toral Spectral Evolution (Moikai)
[Ahmed] Giant Beauty (Fönstret)
Still House Plants If I don’t make it, I love u (Bison)
Broadcast Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009 (Warp)
Caxtrinho QUEDA LIVRE (QTV Selo)
The Necks Bleed (Northern Spy Records)
Saint Abdullah & Eomac Light meteors crashing around you will not confuse you (Drowned By Locals)
DJ Anderson do Paraíso Queridão (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
ØKSE ØKSE (Backwoodz Studioz)
Sisso & Maiko Singeli Ya Maajabu (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Jessica Pratt Here in the Pitch (City Slang)
Various Artists We Will Stay Here - Music for Palestine (Love Boat Records)
Ghost Dubs Damaged (Pressure)
Beth Gibbons Lives Outgrown (Domino)
Oï les Ox Ai les Axes (Constructive)
Christer Bothén Featuring Bolon Bata Trancedance (Black Truffle)
Sarah Hennies Motor Tapes (New World Records)
1127 ض (Nashazphone)
Michaela Turcerová Alene Et (Mappa)
[Ahmed] Giant Beauty (Fönstret)
Still House Plants If I don’t make it, I love u (Bison)
Broadcast Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009 (Warp)
Caxtrinho QUEDA LIVRE (QTV Selo)
The Necks Bleed (Northern Spy Records)
Saint Abdullah & Eomac Light meteors crashing around you will not confuse you (Drowned By Locals)
DJ Anderson do Paraíso Queridão (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
ØKSE ØKSE (Backwoodz Studioz)
Sisso & Maiko Singeli Ya Maajabu (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Jessica Pratt Here in the Pitch (City Slang)
Various Artists We Will Stay Here - Music for Palestine (Love Boat Records)
Ghost Dubs Damaged (Pressure)
Beth Gibbons Lives Outgrown (Domino)
Oï les Ox Ai les Axes (Constructive)
Christer Bothén Featuring Bolon Bata Trancedance (Black Truffle)
Sarah Hennies Motor Tapes (New World Records)
1127 ض (Nashazphone)
Michaela Turcerová Alene Et (Mappa)
