Notable releases I’ve finally got around to writing about
We’re deep into Album of the Year review season – The Wire and The Quietus both just dropped theirs – so what better time to publish an article I started working on back in, er, August? No idea why this took so long to come together, though the usual feeble excuses (work, travel, inertia) apply. Over the past week, I’ve found a bunch more releases I want to write about, so there may be more to come before the year is out.
DOGO
The Graffiti Market
(Self-released)
Dogo snagged a spot on Fuji Rock’s Rookie A Go-Go stage only eight months after they formed, and were the opening act at this year’s Festival de Frue, so it’s fair to say that the band are on the up. Not that you’d know it from debut album The Graffiti Market, which is the sound of a group who really couldn’t give a toss. They leap from lopsided Beefheart rhythms to deconstructed blues rock and JBs funk, with frontman Takemaro Yokoyama’s disinterested sprechgesang vocals forever sounding like he’s wondering if it was a mistake to get out of bed in the morning. Unlike compatriots Triple Fire – an obvious point of reference – the insouciance never comes across as smug, and it’s grounded in some serious musicianship (Yokoyama honed his jazz chops in Chicago, while drummer Umi Ogimi is the son of renowned Latin percussionist Gen, who guests on opening track ‘CQCQ’). If this tickles you, also check the demo collection TV, Dramatic (released digitally earlier this year), which hews a bit closer to the lo-fi sonics of Wool & The Pants.
Ayami Suzuki
Rebirth/Omen
(Cloudchamber Recordings)
Ayami Suzuki’s effects-heavy vocal improvisations can sometimes drift off into diaphanous ambience à la Julianna Barwick, but she brings a bit of fire here. These two live recordings, each just over half an hour long, show an impressive command of form and dynamics as she loops and layers her voice into eerie chorales and formant-shifts it to extremes worthy of Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer. In the accompanying notes, Suzuki describes how performing on an over-specced sound system at Chitei in Tokyo created the swells of feedback that sometimes threaten to engulf ‘Rebirth’. She sounds more in control on ‘Omen’, recorded at Hako Gallery at the start of the year, which is cathedral-like in its immensity.
KASAI
〽
(Chinabot)
Daisuke Iijima has gone from sampling minyo folk songs off YouTube to making his own. His latest album also recaptures the rickety quality of his earlier work, which was missing from 2023’s overly busy J/P/N. The songs draw on his experiences of fatherhood and working-class life, and non-Japanese speakers will be at a disadvantage. (It doesn’t seem like Chinabot included a translation of the lyrics, which is unfortunate.) One of Iijima’s non-musical vocations is as a binman, and closing track ‘Gomoku Tsumi Una’ (‘Piling-up Garbage Song’) enlists some of his fellow garbage collectors to provide a boisterous chorus. ‘Shin Jiyu-bushi’ (‘Truly Free Chant’), featuring Clark Naito, is a neoliberalism takedown that sounds like a party anthem in the making.
KUUNATIC
Wheels of Ömon
(Glitterbeat)
If you like the conceptual ambition of prog but find the technical virtuosity a turn-off, Kuunatic are the band for you. Second album Wheels of Ömon dials up the world-building of the group’s 2021 debut – returning once more to the imaginary planet of Kuurandia – without the risk of it turning into an ELP wankfest. They make fuller use of traditional Japanese instrumentation this time around (sho, taiko, chappa cymbals, etc.) and the more atmospheric tracks are putting me in mind of Geinoh Yamashirogumi. When Ainu singer Rekpo makes a guest appearance on ‘Kuuminyo’, it fits with the omnivorous, boundary-blurring spirit of the project. On a side note, my better half insists that opening track ‘Yew’s Path’ sounds like the final boss music from one of the early Final Fantasy games, and I’m not going to argue.
Posuposu Otani
Posuposu Otani
(33-33)
Posuposu Otani has an unusual skill set, combining lo-fi back porch psychedelia with throat singing and kohkin jaw harp. His guitar playing makes liberal use of slide and open tunings, and occasionally verges on Loren Connors-style impressionism, although he spends more time operating in the whimsical singer-songwriter mode of someone like Tavito Nanao. Whenever the mix threatens to become cloying, Otani’s formidable vocal techniques save the day. Even a hippieish campfire singalong like ‘About freedom’ is considerably improved by the whistling overtones he unleashes during the song’s outro.
jon no son
CUPHOLDER
(Self-released)
This came out right at the end of 2024, and I would have missed it altogether had it not been for an effusive recommendation by Sarah Hennies. The composer is a well known Maher Shalal Hash Baz fan (check this illuminating conversation she had with Tori Kudo last year), so it’s not surprising that she’d also appreciate Jon No Son. The long-running Nagoya ensemble – still revolving around the same quartet of school friends who formed the group back in 2002 – find beauty in imperfection as they pursue unmistakably pop ends. Most of the songs on Cupholder clock in at under three minutes, and are full of beautifully maladroit moments and unexpected left turns. I particularly like the use of overlapping voices, both sung and spoken, on tracks like ‘Fake Suffer’ and ‘Rai’ – like they got each member to record their own vocal line and then played them all back at once to create a peculiar kind of polyphony.
Esperkick.com
Big Dick, Thank You.
(Self-released)
Here’s another one that snuck out right at the end of 2024 (and then spent most of the year lurking, unplayed, in my Bandcamp wishlist). Esperkick.com is the solo project of PSP Social bassist Abara, who recruits bandmate Yudai Seishi and a couple of other pals for these excursions into improv tomfoolery and vocal gibberish. There’s sax skronk, primitive noise, shrieking galore and, on the final track, what sounds like an alt-rock song having a nervous breakdown. Meredith Monk and Demetrio Stratos are cited as inspirations, but the myriad Boredoms side projects that proliferated during the brief 1990s heyday of the Kansai scum scene might be a better point of reference. As the (presumably AI-translated) blurb puts it, this is “a celebration of the musical mystery and liberation that ‘messiness’ and ‘appropriateness’ can bring.” Perhaps “half-arsedness” would have been a better translation of the latter.
KOM_I & Foodman
FANI MANI
(Self-released)
A collaboration so obvious, I’m almost surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Former Wednesday Campanella vocalist Kom_I enlisted Foodman to create a soundtrack for an event organised by Hype Free Water, her project with visual artist Minori Murata, that playfully interrogated the tenets of capitalist society. “Funny money,” geddit? Kom_I’s voice gets sliced and scattered across some of the more propulsive productions I’ve heard from Foodman recently, culminating in a couple of maddeningly repetitive ravers. (According to a Japan Times interview, his only instructions were to keep it danceable and make something you might hear at Don Quijote.) The tempo reaches singeli speeds on ‘What you crave’, while opener ‘Money is Paper’ is like Marina Herlop’s Pripyat retooled for a kids TV show.
Honjo Ushimatsu
Paradise Village ~ Computerized Japanese Minyo
(YAV Records)
Just when I thought Kasai would be the most curious minyo mutation I heard all year, I stumbled across this beauty. Shakuhachi player Honjo Ushimatsu apparently had an epiphany listening to the Enka rhythm preset on the Roland CR-78 Compurhythm, the drum machine popularised by Blondie and Phil Collins, which inspired him to give minyo a retro synth makeover. The digital exotica instrumentals of Paradise Village suggest an alternative timeline in which the first YMO album was in thrall to Japanese folk music rather than Martin Denny, though it’s also reminiscent of Yann Tomita in places. Best of all is closing track ‘Hinohara-oiwake,’ an unlikely interpolation of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Chameleon’ that I imagine I’ll be sneaking into my next DJ set.
K. Yoshimatsu
Zenkai: The Collected Works of K. Yoshimatsu
(Phantom Limb)
Last year’s Fossil Cocoon was a tantalisingly brief introduction to early-80s lo-fi innovator K. Yoshimatsu, who released 40 albums over the course of a five-year period before turning his back on music altogether. When I wrote at the time that it felt a bit meagre, I wasn’t expecting Phantom Limb to return with a trio of double CD releases, each collecting three albums in their entirety. At six hours in total, it’s a lot to digest, and not everything stands up to repeat listens – though it’s amazing to think that all of this came from the same source. Volume I covers Yoshimatsu’s dalliances in warped New Age and Mike Oldfield-style instrumental epics, while Volume III showcases his scuzzier, more experimental work, including some deliciously sour, Bowie-style saxophone. The one I’ve gone back to the most is Volume II, on which we hear him in singer-songwriter mode, delivering radiant, rhythmbox-assisted guitar pop that isn’t so far removed from what Haruo Chikada was doing at the time, just without any of the studio polish.
Takashi Masubuchi, Wakana Ikeda, Tom Soloveitzik, Yoko Ikeda
Microcanonical Ensemble
(Tombed Visions)
Even before I realised that parts of it were recorded there, everything about this screamed “Ftarri.” The artists involved – guitarist Takashi Masabuchi, flutist Wakana Ikeda (also playing harmonica), saxophonist Tom Soloveitzik and string player Yoko Ikeda – are all regulars at the venue, and lean in to the kind of focused listening that it encourages. (Seriously, this is a place where they turn off the air conditioner during sets because it might drown out the music otherwise.) Two lengthy improvisations bookend a composition by Yoko Ikeda, though the pieces all speak a similar language: an atomised chamber music of sparse gestures and infinitely slow transitions, recorded so close you can hear every creak and rustle. I can imagine my attention drifting if I watched this in a live setting, but listened to on headphones it has a hypnotic, almost ASMR-ish quality.
AKBK
JIKKAI
(Self-released)
It’s been over a decade now since Kelly Churko left us, so I wasn’t expecting his old grindcore compadres to make a comeback. AKBK’s follow-up to their 2010 debut sees Endon’s Koki Miyabe take over on guitar, and he does a pretty credible job of following in Kelly’s wake. I couldn’t tell you how this compares to the current state of the grindcore scene, but it’s a bracing listen, with a few stylistic U-turns that might get a chuckle from Mike Patton fans (check the bursts of rockabilly guitar in ‘Gisho sasho ote no mono’). Frontman Naoto Araki’s rough-and-ready production suggests that it was an oversight not to release this on cassette, though the CD at least allows you to appreciate the psychedelic artwork by 2UP’s Tetsunori Tawaraya.
Masaaki Takano
Shizukutachi
(Art into Life)
I’m not being funny when I say that this reissue of a 1978 album of the sound of dripping water is one of the most engrossing things I’ve heard all year. Masaaki Takano was a sound effects specialist who made these recordings using a self-built suikinkutsu, the musical device found in traditional Zen gardens. Beautifully recorded (listen on headphones to appreciate the full stereo effect), it’s something I can imagine appealing to frazzled techno heads and Autechre fans as much as the non-music crowd. The A and B sides (slooooow and zippy) are like the adagio and allegro movements of a piece that might stretch on into infinity.
yoichi kamimura
ryūhyō
(forms of minutiae)
Also in a watery (though rather less minimal) vein, this captures the soundscape of the ryũhyõ drift ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, off the northern coast of Hokkaido. Like the other releases in Forms of Minutiae’s “ice series,” it’s a portrait of a rapidly changing – and degrading – environment. Kamimura had heard stories from locals about how the ice used to emit whistles and breath-like sounds, but discovered that the thinning floes have taken on a different sonic character. There are low intestinal rumbles and eerie warbles, mingling with dripping meltwater and sounds captured above the surface: wind, seagull cries, the quietly chugging motor of a sightseeing boat. It’s both transportive and a vital document of what’s being lost.
Rob Noyes
Tracasseries
(Sound Holes)
This is a change of pace for Tokyo-based 12-string maestro Rob Noyes, whose Arc Minutes was a formidable – and forceful – display of advanced American Primitive technique. The “recorded at home” tag is the giveaway: these low-key etudes are pieces you can play in a typical Japanese apartment without the neighbours kicking up a fuss. The prevailing mood is a tense hush, full of sustained notes and harmonics that constantly flirt with dissonance. While his last album was a good morning record, Tracasseries feels better suited for late nights spent staring into the void.
Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke
Pareidolia
(Drag City Records)
I had to look up the meaning of the title, which refers to the phenomenon of perceiving a pattern or meaning in random stimuli. It’s a droll description for the wonderfully nebulous music these two make: shifting sands in which recognisable images seem to emerge fleetingly and then fade away. Pareidolia is collaged from material recorded during a 2023 Europe tour, which the pair subsequently edited and remixed, Frank Zappa style. If you’ve caught them live over the past few years, you’ll probably recognise some of the constituent elements: granular synth clouds, heavily treated flute and harmonica, snatches of Foley sounds, and a mood that oscillates between serene and uneasy. I was particularly tickled by the inclusion of a 3-minute ‘Single Edit’, which to my ears sounds like a hugely accelerated version of the album’s glacial chord movements, though who the hell knows? On a side note, they also recently upped four live recordings to Bandcamp.
VERBXIABRIXO
Yokanpan
(Self-released)
Plenty of Japanese DJs have embraced the frenetic rhythms of Tanzanian singeli, but homegrown producers are harder to find. Step forward Verbxiabrixo, a duo comprising Sapporo scene veterans Kohei Makita (also of the rather less hectic Nessie) and Bob Tawaraya (of Ololop, Mizutama Sagashi, etc.). These two side-long tracks keep the tempos cranked at 220BPM, with live drumming, squiggly 8-bit melodies and the odd distorted J-pop fragment. Not sure devoted students of the Nyege Nyege Tapes roster will find anything new here, but it’s a lot of fun, and the second track – recorded live at 161 Soko – is pure madness.
SAB
Crystallization
(EM Records)
Even within the eclectic catalogue of Yuzuru Agi’s Vanity Records, SAB’s lone album was a wild outlier, with an even wilder backstory. Crystallization was recorded by a 19-year-old prodigy who then moved to the US to hook up with the Osho Rajneesh cult and, apparently, was never heard from again. Musically, this sits somewhere between kosmische and New Age, with some unlikely combinations of electronics, acoustic instrumentation (including piano and sitar) and field recordings. While the synths are straight out of Phaedra-era Tangerine Dream, the eruptions of piano are making me think of Boredoms’ Seadrum. It’s more of a curio than a lost classic, but I’ve found myself going back to it a lot over the course of the year.
MERMAID
DUBMAID
(Beer & Records)
On a similar wavelength to the Honjo Ushimatsu album mentioned earlier, this gives jaunty digidub makeovers to some unlikely source material, from Chopin’s ‘Polonaise in A-flat minor, Op. 53’ to Wonder Girls’ ‘Why So Lonely’. (There’s also some minyo lurking in there, though don’t ask me to ID it.) Mermaid is part of the Dangerous Dance Music collective linked with Koenji record emporium Los Apson, which is as surefire a guarantee of weirdness as you could ask for. I have to admit that this struck me as retro pastiche the first time I heard it, but repeat listens have revealed a cannier hand at play. Fans of 7FO or Gavsborg’s goofier moments should definitely apply.
MINZOKU-M / DOBUTSU
noumenon
(A Nice Form)
A split-personality release, if you will. The two sides of this cassette contain different aliases of A Nice Form label boss Ryohei Minami. As Minzoku-M, he speak-raps and sings in a creepy child-catcher voice over chunky, sample-splattered beats in the vein of Kopy or Tentenko. Rhythm takes a backseat on the Dobutsu side, on which Minami takes an approach closer to Taro Nijikama’s sound collages. He seems to be vomiting up his myriad musical influences and then doodling in the puke. And I apologise if that just put you off your lunch.
