Notable new Japanese releases and reissues
This might be a return to regular programming, but no promises. Things have been quiet on the work front recently, which has given me more time to sift through my Bandcamp pile and ferret out the good stuff. Here are some of the releases and reissues from the first three months of the year (plus one straggler from 2024) that have grabbed me. I should note that some of these snuck up on me gradually, rather than revealing all their charms on first listen. An album as subtle and intelligently crafted as Eiko Ishibashi’s Antigone wasn’t designed for the streaming era, which is all the more reason to cherish it.
Eiko Ishibashi
Antigone
(Drag City)
Right at the start of the year, I headed to the depths of Yamanashi for the day to interview Eiko Ishibashi (at the udon shop featured in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, no less) for the promo materials for her entrancing new album. So, full disclosure: this isn’t an entirely objective judgment, but Antigone is a tour de force. It picks up the thread from her band-centric albums of the early 2010s, but is also clearly informed by the shifting, elusive electroacoustic work she released during the pandemic. These are songs with multiple twists and turns, which somehow manage to sound both weightless and burdened by the worries of the world. Contemporary horrors seep into the dreamscape: the lyrics contain references to graveyards and genocide, and ‘The Model’ drops a chunk of Foucault into the mix, in an uneasy meditation on how we all got to where we are now.
Tsuki No Wa
Moon Beams
(Mesh-Key)
While a lot of recent Japan reissues have tapped into existing trends, this one’s a bit of an outlier. Tsuki No Wa were active in the early 2000s, and are hard to place within any particular scene (the core line-up of acoustic guitar, double bass, saxophone and electronics was hardly what you’d call conventional). Their final album stretches out more than earlier efforts like the more Mark Hollis-adjacent Ninth Elegy (which is also well worth checking out; listen to it here). It’s acid folk swimming in the wake of Fishmans’ dub-dreampop excursions, but drawing on an even broader palette of influences. While not everything here is killer (‘I’m wandering cowboy’, in particular, outstays its welcome), when a ghostly gospel choir emerges from the haze halfway through ‘On Mother’s Day’, it’s clear that you’re in the presence of a rare talent – which is confirmed during the gorgeous, slowly cresting psychedelia of ‘Brown warm farm.’
Taro
Taro
(Self-released)
I’d had Moe Ishii (better known by lower-case alias mmm) pegged as one of those whisper-voiced acoustic songwriter types, which is unfair – she’s been playing with bands since the first mmm album back in 2009. That said, I’m not sure she’s ever rocked out like she does on ‘BOO!’, which brings this four-track EP to a punchy finish. With its spindly electric guitar riffs and furious drumming, it comes close to the feral sound of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Taro are a new trio that reunites Ishii with keyboardist Emerson Kitamura, her partner on 2019’s Chasing Giants, with drummer Yuta Suganuma rounding out the lineup. The latter also plays in Shintaro Sakamoto’s band, which is a good reference point for the kind of louche vibes that Taro summon on opener ‘Keshin no Taxi’.
Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura
What Happened There?
(Libra Records)
Keiji Haino’s live collaborations don’t normally get this goofy, but that’s to be expected when you’re sharing a stage with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. What Happened There? captures the musicians’ first ever encounter, recorded during a daylong festival at Pit Inn, and it’s a feisty one. Across 36 minutes (split into four tracks, though it seems to be a continuous performance), they seldom settle in one place for long, while leaving plenty of space for each other. Tamura responds to Haino’s ragged, dismembered blues with New Orleans swagger and Han Bennink-style absurdism; his contributions on percussion include a rubber ducky (why not?), while he seems to know just the right moment to drop some Muppets-grade gibberish vocals.
Daborabo
Dream Lesson
(Kirigirisu Recordings)
There’s a nice story behind this one. Miho Yamazaki was a regular at the “nami to kami” concert series that Asuna used to co-organise at a hair salon in Matsumoto, though she always kept herself to herself, so it took him a while to find out that she was a talented visual artist going by the name Daborabo. When he discovered that the music accompanying the videos she posted online was also her own work, he invited her to perform at the event and then asked her to make an album. Apparently it took nearly a decade for Yamazaki to deliver the goods, but Dream Lesson shows the value of encouraging people to share their work. It’s a beguiling collection of smeary miniatures, made with toy instruments and obsolete phone music apps, that – perhaps because of all the wheezy organ sounds – reminds me of the dusty nostalgia of Susumu Yokota’s Image 1983-1998.
Ken Ikeda
Sacred Offering
(Room40)
The latest gift from the ever-wonderful Ken Ikeda swallows you up like a TV feedback loop, which makes sense. In the accompanying notes, he describes how he made it through a process of writing graphic scores while watching a video of a traditional Ainu ceremony, Iomante, then using his recordings from those (also captured on video) as the basis for further iterations. In both sound and spirit, it reminds me of Philip Jeck in the way it seems to collapse time while retaining a sense of familiarity – which in this case comes via Ikeda’s guileless synthesisers, whooping and whistling like tropical birds as they drift through infinite (memory) space.
Goat
Without References / Cindy Van Acker
(Latency)
A parenthetical release from Japan’s foremost rhythm scientists, filling in the gaps between their 2010s era and the band heard on 2023’s formidable Joy in Fear. The six tracks were composed for a dance piece by Van Acker, which looks like it was quite something. Played by a stripped-down trio lineup in which all the members double on percussion, the music is even more austere than Goat’s regular schtick, closer to the ultra-minimal approach of fellow Osaka act Nanaentai. These exercises in pointillist polymeter have the hypnotic quality of an intricate mechanism in motion. Most of them don’t feature any real progression, but they feel like could keep whirring for eternity.
Rai Tateishi
Presence
(Nakid)
Speaking of Goat, one of the group’s newer recruits has delivered a fierce solo album for bandleader Koshiro Hino’s Nakid label. If it weren’t for the cover image, you might not guess that these intensely focused improvisations – a whirlwind of rapid puffs, insectoid harmonics and percussive fingering – were played on flutes. Tateishi shucks melody in favour of exploring the rhythmic possibilities of the instrument in a way that reminds of Michaela Turcerová’s fantastic alene et album, which took a similar approach to saxophone, and also ‘Vigor’ by Valentina Goncharova. Aside from a piece featuring khene mouth organ, there’s little variation in tonal colour across the album, which is something else that the artwork gets right. Available via Boomkat.
Ooyamada Daisanmyaku and Yo
Ajuga Decumbens (Remix Album)
(Zouenkeikaku)
The fairground haunted-house vibes are strong in this one. Label mates Ooyamada Daisanmyaku and Yo take turns remixing each other – and if I wasn’t looking at the titles, I wouldn’t have guessed who was at the controls at any given time. Ooyamada Daisanmyaku’s remixes hone in on the rickety dubstep vibe of her counterpart’s work, allowing her to go harder and more percussive than she does usually, while Yo returns the favour by leaning into the lysergic feel of her productions, with their eldritch vocals and pitchbent keyboard melodies like molten wax. They join forces on the eponymous closing track but, really, the whole thing is a creative mind-meld.
Ichiko Aoba
Luminescent Creatures
(Hermine)
It’s ironic that Ichiko Aoba waited until she’d gone independent before delivering the record that her old major label was probably hoping for when they signed her. Named after the final track from that album, Luminescent Creatures literally picks up where its predecessor left off. Songs like ‘Luciférine’, which waltzes through a twinkling hall of mirrors, have the same intoxicating lushness as the highlights from Windswept Adan – although it feels like Aoba and collaborator Taro Umebayashi have struck a better balance between orchestral opulence and the whisper-in-your-ear intimacy of her earlier work. I’m most intrigued by the electronic element that’s started to creep into the compositions, most audibly on ‘pirsomnia’, a wordless deep-sea reverie that’s not so far from Tujiko Noriko or Sawako.
Nana Horisaki
Scoppi
(Kirigirisu Recordings)
This actually first came out last year, but Kirigirisu’s cassette edition is cheaper, which makes it as good as new in my book. For about 30 seconds, Nana Horisaki sounds like a singer-songwriter in the Ai Aso mould, but then her guitar lines start to shoot off in unexpected directions, like a rose bush in need of a trim. That guitar is the driving force on most of the songs here, offering an unruly, jazz-inflected counterpoint to Horisaki’s softly-softly vocals. Members of Jon No Son add whimsical shadings to a few of the tracks, though I think Horisaki might have scuppered the project by including a song from her 2023 album with trio Nana Horisaki on the Ridge, ‘Perfect Communication’, that’s the best thing here.
Akaihirume
AkaAka
(Self-released)
Akaihirume is an extremely engaging performer. As she channels a babel of voices (not all of them human), she’ll often gasp and grin as if even she can’t believe the sounds that are coming out of her. It’s hard for a recording to capture that, but there’s a palpable joy coursing through AkaAka that places it close to Meredith Monk in the experimental vocalist spectrum. The first two tracks run to 35-odd minutes in total and capture the thrilling peaks of Akaihirume’s extended techniques, with occasional piano accompaniment (also rather M. Monk-esque) that roots it tentatively in the world of song. This comes to the forefront during the two pieces that close the album: plaintive, ballad-like numbers that I could almost imagine Saya from Tenniscoats playing while nobody was around.
Friday Night Plans
Blue Hour
(Self-released)
Another quiet stunner from Friday Night Plans and co-producer Ena. The title track is built around bright, open tuning guitar chords à la Jules Reidy and a noncommittal trip-hop rhythm, while Masumi sounds like she’s trying to vanish into the ether. On the flip, we get what seems to be the same piece played in reverse, turning it into an oneiric doppelgänger of the original. Yet no matter how many times I listen to this, I still can’t tell which direction the vocals are heading in, on either version. Listen to the whole thing here.
Takahiro Mukai
Point!
(Fallen Metropolis)
Where the hell do you start with an artist like Takahiro Mukai? The Osaka-based producer seems to put out a dozen releases each year, each featuring a series of numbered tracks that offer a snapshot of his latest voyages in modular synthesis. While Cloudy Glass (for US cassette label Wheelers) is a deep dive into Schnitzer-ish kosmische, Even Toned (for France’s Astra Solaria) has the piss and vinegar of Ike Yard or other industrial progenitors whose names I can’t be bothered to look up right now. I was particularly tickled by Point!, which captures Mukai in peak time mode, occasionally verging towards the swirling vortexes of Jeff Mills at his most intergalactic.
Torso
Faces
(Ozato Record)
Torso are the husband-and-wife duo of wind player Kenji and cellist Orie. Their 2019 debut, Set Out, came on like a pocket-sized Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but this time they go deeper, using electronic treatments to usher their music into dreamier realms. I’m not sure how much to credit this to the involvement of dub veteran Naoyuki Uchida, who mixed the album, though I suspect a lot of it is just the product of good, old-fashioned experimentation. I can hear hints of Arthur Russell and Chicago post-rock, while the dronier tracks (‘SAND’, for instance) remind me of the instrumentals from Caroline’s self-titled LP.
Karavi Roushi & Aquadab
Blade N
(EM Records)
It’s been a while since we last heard from this duo, whose 2019 debut brought back fond memories of the short-lived cloud rap movement. Blade N doesn’t sound quite as gauzy, but the haze has cleared to reveal something even more peculiar. I like the way Roushi’s vocals merge with the productions rather than just riding over the top of them; at a few points, his voice is so heavily effected it sounds like a chewed-up cassette played at double speed. The duo have clearly been keeping up with Playboi, Chief Keef and co. but they also doff their caps to Sophie’s hyperpop and millennial R&B (seriously, I can imagine Mariah soaring over the dulcet keyboards of ‘Eternal’).
Takuro Okada
The Near End, The Dark Night, The County Line
(Temporal Drift)
Temporal Drift did well to get Takuro Okada to rustle together a collection of his home recordings for his first international release, rather than ask him to provide a sequel to 2022’s Betsu No Jikan (an overwrought ambient-jazz opus that was a little too desperate to be Talk Talk circa Laughing Stock). The pieces here have an off-the-cuff feel that makes them a better showcase for Okada’s talents, especially his guitar playing. It’s a good morning album, bathed in lambent light, though Okada covers a lot of ground stylistically, from Hakobune-esque watercolours like ‘Mirror’ to the echo-drenched exotica of ‘Taco Beach’, via some down-home Americana. If you enjoyed Jeff Parker’s Forfolks or Steve Gunn’s more ambient work, you’ll probably dig this.
Akkogorilla
Chimera
(Kamikaze Records)
Sooner or later, a lot of people catch the matsuri bug. The sounds of Japanese folk and traditional festivals lifted Akkogorilla out of a creative slump, which she channels into the taiko-heavy party music of Chimera. Her first full-length since going independent in 2020, it’s a concept album of sorts, providing the soundtrack to an all-night Bon Odori-style jamboree. The title track (featuring Foodman and Taigen Kawabe) sounds like Kala-era M.I.A. if she’d swapped Tollywood for Tokushima, while Gimgigam’s contributions recall the playfulness of WaqWaq Kingdom’s Edo-fied club music. Other standouts, like the Zo Zhit-assisted ‘Warau Norainu no Boken’, keep things firmly in the present. Available here.
Tatsuhisa Yamamoto
Branches
(Self-released)
Just a quick mention for this one, as I think you’ll have to go to one of Tatsuhisa Yamamoto’s shows to grab a copy (assuming he hasn’t sold them all). It’s in the vein of the releases he put out on Bandcamp during the pandemic: an invigorating brand of electroacoustic trickery that retains the immediacy of an improvised live performance. Yamamoto’s writhing electronics and scuttling percussion are complemented by some inventive use of melodica, which on opening track ‘Hana’ starts to sound like Stars of the Lid with ants in their pants.
Gnu Boys
Daichou! / Shinanai!
(Super Taiyo Records)
I’m pretty sure both of the guys behind this self-described electro punk duo are old enough to know better, which is part of what makes it so much fun. On Dauchou! – the first of two albums they’ve released this year – Gnu Boys can sometimes sound like they’re taking the piss out of po-faced synth wave revivalists like Soloist Anti Pop Totalization. (Check the refrain from ‘Ore dake ga ka in sasareru’, which translates as: “I’m the only one who gets bitten by mosquitoes / I can’t see any future ahead of me”) Shinanai! is even more hyper, flipping between hip-hop and singeli tempos while the Boys holler over the top. Crazy annoying, in a good way.
Spoilman
Oblivion Tracks
(LongLegsLongArms Records)
I’m guessing this lot have already bought their tickets for The Jesus Lizard’s Japan tour this autumn. Spoilman show a dedication to the sounds of early-90s grunge and post-hardcore that makes them immediately appealing to my ears, though probably guarantees they’ll never become remotely fashionable on the home front. Oblivion Tracks is billed as Spoilman’s “pop” album, which is to say that it contains a few brief moments where you could almost be listening to Foo Fighters, before the band revert to gnarlier, knuckle-dragging type. Haven’t had a chance to catch these guys live, but I’m guessing it’s a blast.
Kenji Ikegami
Kannon
(Crosspoint)
Shakuhachi player Kenji Ikegami’s approach to the instrument is no less radical than Rai Tateishi (see above), though a lot less hectic. On the title track of Kannon (which passed me by when it was released last November), he plays long, overlapping tones with a crystalline purity, devoid of any of the inflections typical of the instrument, while Kohji Setoh adds layers of shivering cello harmonics in the vein of early Richard Skelton. ‘Raven’, recorded live at an outdoor party in 2020, is punctuated by the twang of Ukae’s mukkuri – an Ainu mouth harp – making it feel a little more earthbound though no less transporting. Produced by Chee Shimizu, this is deep in the Deep Listening Band sense: an album that seems to make time slow down.
