The first track on highly regarded Japanese electronicist Nobukazu Takemura's newest album harkens back to his first domestically-released record Scope. Its clicks and high end chatters are melodically arranged into an Oval-ish pleasant modern sound. The rest of the tracks on the record, however, are more difficult listening, consisting mostly of machine-generated atmospheric whooshes, seemingly-random (tho' I'm sure that to him they're logically ordered) digital squiggles and sonic exclamations that are about texture and nuance, not melody. Listen to both tracks before buying. Experimental yet accessible.
MPEG Download: "Conical Flask" [/audio/takemuraconical.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Conical Flask" [/audio/takemuraconical.m3u]
Most of us who already love powerbook maestro Nobukazu Takemura will be familiar with his other domestically-released album, Scope, a brilliant record that is all about austere sonic textures and half-melodic gestures. Another side to Takemura's talent is
Japanese electronicist who was responsible for one of the best tracks on the recent Steve Reich Remixed album. Making the most of very simple sounds (synth, static, skipping cds), Takemura constructs surprisingly melodic and appealing pieces. Oval fans will LOVE this...
This cd issue of The Sign 12" from last year might as well be considered a new album from Powerbook maestro Nobukazu Takemura, cos it's over an hour long. The title track is bubbly electronica / pop with attention to texture -- very reminiscent of Moebius' and
There's a second disc with a great animated video of "The Sign" by Japanese artist Moshino, who also did the cover to this record.
Tamaru is a Japanese minimalist, who's not terribly well known outside of Japan, as this is only his second cd in well over a decade of making music. Both on this record and in performance, he uses little more than his bass guitar, a volume pedal, and a delay pedal; and with this process, he restricts himself to an open tuning, using only those four notes as the basis for his harmonic and subharmonic overtones. His thrumbing drones are the results from a decade of refining his craft, discovering which tones he can master, and seamlessly layering sound on top of itself. The eight tracks on Figure are all essentially variations on this same theme for lugubrious undulations of sound that organically ripple, echo, and hypnotize as if they were the cyclical patterns from waves moving across a relatively calm body of water. The first couple of tracks are pretty heavy constructs of tonal interplay within thundering drones stretched upon elongated bowings from his bass guitar, somewhat not all that dissimilar to the longform works by Jonathan Coleclough or Yoshi Wada. On "Stream," Tamaru allows for more of a traditional means of playing the bass, as rounded clouds of tone billow forth like some of the amorphous material from Rothko. "Juju" is a wavering mirage for overlapping drones and slippery swells of bass timbre; and "Room" is downright playful exercise in delay driven phase patterns. Any number of these pieces could be rendered successfully as sustained duration compositions, but Tamaru's economy of scale renders everything as a precious, tightly encapsulated gem of low end frequencies. Nicely done!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Tamaru is a Japanese minimalist, who's not terribly well known outside of Japan, as this is only his second cd in well over a decade of making music. Both on this record and in performance, he uses little more than his bass guitar, a volume pedal, and a delay pedal; and with this process, he restricts himself to an open tuning, using only those four notes as the basis for his harmonic and subharmonic overtones. His thrumbing drones are the results from a decade of refining his craft, discovering which tones he can master, and seamlessly layering sound on top of itself. The eight tracks on Figure are all essentially variations on this same theme for lugubrious undulations of sound that organically ripple, echo, and hypnotize as if they were the cyclical patterns from waves moving across a relatively calm body of water. The first couple of tracks are pretty heavy constructs of tonal interplay within thundering drones stretched upon elongated bowings from his bass guitar, somewhat not all that dissimilar to the longform works by Jonathan Coleclough or Yoshi Wada. On "Stream," Tamaru allows for more of a traditional means of playing the bass, as rounded clouds of tone billow forth like some of the amorphous material from Rothko. "Juju" is a wavering mirage for overlapping drones and slippery swells of bass timbre; and "Room" is downright playful exercise in delay driven phase patterns. Any number of these pieces could be rendered successfully as sustained duration compositions, but Tamaru's economy of scale renders everything as a precious, tightly encapsulated gem of low end frequencies. Nicely done!
Another in Alchemy's new Inner Mind Music series of spacey delights -- "Live at Alpha Centauri" it says on the inside. The Tangerine Dream Syndicate wears its influences proudly -- the band is made up of Tommy Conrad (cello, violin), Johnny Conrad
Another release in Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies. We reviewed Kokotsu No Sekai from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko a few lists back, and now we have Modae No Heya from seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, who recorded and released this album in 1979 to commemorate her withdrawal (ahem) from the world of porn.
And what better way to commemorate that sort of life change than with a record of Iroke Kayoyoku, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, as if in the throes of EXTREME passion.
Tani's take on Iroke Kayoyoku is similar to Reiko's (in fact it's not tough to imagine a sort of Eastern hit factory, churning out these discs, ready made for some sexy thing to croon and purr over...), a strange blend of easy listening soundtrack music and spaghetti Western themes, with lots of soaring strings and epic arrangements, sultry saxophones and twangy guitar, but unlike Reiko's disc, Modae No Heya is much more Asian sounding, with plenty of distinctly Asian instrumentation and Eastern melodies.
Anyone who has seen their fair share of Asian cinema and classic kung fu movies, will find the sound instantly recognizable. And for a record that is supposedly a vehicle for her sexy presence, Tani surprisingly spends a lot of time just hanging back and letting the music swoon and soar. But when she does take part, it's in a super intimate whisper in the ear, a playful purr with plenty of giggling and occasional bouts of passionate groaning.
Erotic and wild, moody and mysterious. And pretty darn bizarre. And of course, highly recommended for all fans of sounds both strange and sexy!
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, saucy nude photos of Tani on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Only 1300 copies pressed. Already almost sold out, so don't dawdle...
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We remember first getting a glimpse of the sweet charm of Japan's Tenniscoats a year or so ago when we heard their track on the children's comp Songs For Nao. We had only been able to get a copy or two of Live Wanderus, never enough to list until now. Before we had even heard the record, the dreamy cover art had us super curious as to what we might find inside.
We ended up loving Tenniscoats' take on naive pop. A LOT. A little more dreamy and meandering than some of their sonic brethren like Maher Shal Hash Baz and Nagisa Ni Ti, Saya's sweet hushed vocals and tasteful trumpets and sax, guitar, drums and piano help to create a nice dreamlike atmosphere, a perfect serving of daydream twee. These are live recordings from shows throughout Japan over the last few years, and the recordings sound great, nice and warm, like you were right there in the room while they were playing, sitting on a blanket in the dark with your head on the shoulder of a good friend. So nice!
We loooooooooove the spare and wistful dream pop of Tenniscoats (See, we can put as just as many "o's" in "love" as we do in 'doom'.). Although we must admit, it took us awhile to really get into Tan-Tan Therapy as this time around they collaborated with Swedish band Tape along with other Swedish musicians, resulting in a much broader and much more lush production but also with an even more somber and melancholy feel. The chamber pop instrumentation of horns, woodwinds, organ, cello, zither and glockenspiels along with some subtle electronic flourishes definitely provides richer textures, but we were kind of missing at first Saya and Takashi Ueno's more spare and naive side that comes closer to their Maher Shalal Hash Baz roots. But this release is definitely a grower, and one with each new listen we are loving it more and more.
This ain't that new of a release - it came out in 2011 - but we hadn't yet reviewed it, and when we got some copies back in the other day, wondered, why the heck not? Haven't been able to stop listening to it lately, it's so dang electrifying and infectious. What we have here is a killer collection some of the best tracks recorded by one Takeshi Terauchi, who in the mid-'60s was known as Japan's "King Of The Electric Guitar". In fact, he may still be.
We all know what instrumental surf music guitar sounds like, give it a Japanese twist and you have "Eleki" (what they called electric guitar music). The "Tsugaru" of the subtitle refers to traditional Japanese folk songs, which were also adapted to the '60s rock n' roll invasion. Badass guitarist Terauchi was a pioneer of the Eleki craze, building his own gear, playing to crowds of screaming young girls with his bands The Blue Jeans and The Bunnys. So just imagine a Japanese version of Link Wray and/or Dick Dale, all exciting, exotic surf twang and groovy fuzz. There's some achingly romantic, folk based melodic moments, and we like that, but the best parts are when Terauchi is ripping it up on his fretboard to surfy, psychedelic excess!
FYI, they fit 25 tracks on the cd, and 14 on the vinyl.
The latest batch from Utech is all excellent stuff (as usual), we're reviewing three this list, including the Locrian double disc (one of our Records Of The Week), the new Gog, and this, from Japan's Tetragrammaton.
The first thing one of the AQ Overlords here said when he heard this one is, if not entirely accurate, a good starting point for a description: "Sounds like a black metal Taj Mahal Travellers!" While it's NOT black metal, there's a menacing, mesmeric vibe here that some black metallers might appreciate. Possibly also some Buddhist monks, too. Part freeform psychedelic rock exploration, part dronological soundscapery, Tetragrammaton's Points Of Convergence is a beautiful and frightening trip into the void-dark expanses... that this trio is Tokyo-based is no surprise, seems like if Utech hadn't put this out, PSF should have. Band members TOMO, Cal Lyall, and Nobunaga Ken utilize a wide array of instruments to conjure up intense music that's both detailed and active, and droningly atmospheric: hurdy-gurdy, guitar, saxophone, crystal bowls, percussion, voices, Rhodes piano, hydrophone, gongs, drums, bells, bowls, taisho-koto...
Track one, "Disjecta Membra", begins as if recorded inside of a giant cauldron; echoing, haunting, with mysterious scrapings and billowing distortion, it builds up and up, over the course of 14+ minutes, spiralling into dense hypnotic drones, before a climax that takes the form of a free improv freakout, an electric tangle of guitar, sax, percussion... As quick as that erupts, it subsides, and track two, "Portrait Of Turab (Part I)" starts in with sustained bell tones, shimmering in the cauldron-blackness. Later still, the textural drones of "Sol de Paula" evoke all the awe of the 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith! And elsewhere watery textures and strange pipe-fighting percussion take center stage.
This unit's previous release, a double disc, was one of Julian Cope's Records Of The Month some time ago (btw, whatever happened to his Record Of The Month? the Head Heritage site hasn't been updated with one since the summer). If there's enough interest in this (which there should be!), perhaps we can import some of those, too.
The usual Utech packaging, nicely designed, slim sleeve, oversized. Lots of black.
First in a planned trilogy of live recordings from this turntablist duo's Europe 2003 tour. Grrr 'cause it's noisy.
More turntable strangulation from two masters of that very avant-garde (even today!) art form. Quebec's Martin Tetreault and Japan's Otomo Yoshihide (the latter of which, at least, should need no introduction to most AQ customers, known as he is far and wee for various projects, among them his famed Ground Zero band) have tangled before, and right away get down to business here, in a selection of live duo performances recorded on their tour of Europe in the Spring of 2003. Together they manifest an intriguing sound-world, liberating from old LPs variously sandpaper textures, helicoptering drone, and spluttering screams. Volume 2 of a planned trilogy, 2. Tok concentrates on their most "fragmented" improvs of the tour. We didn't review it, but we do also have the first volume, 1. Grr, so-named as it's devoted to what the duo deemed their noisiest material.
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From the same Japanese label that brought us Bathtub Shitter (still the best band name ever!) comes Tetsuo, a band that has way more in common with Corrupted or Boris than their bathtub shitting labelmates. Sludgy and repetitive, heavy and crushing with lots of solid state feedback a la Eyehategod and loads of midtempo wall of guitar pummel a la Neurosis. One epic twenty minute track that goes from slow motion sludge to furious almost-death-metal to crusty grind to stoner groove and back again. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands definitely need this.
Billy Childish has had quite a prolific career, and one that shows no signs of slowing. He is a writer and an artist, but perhaps he is most known for his music. Much of his musical output was written and recorded with his main band Thee Headcoats (although he also fronted such garage wonders as Thee Milkshakes). This is an impressive double disk collection of fifty (!) singles released by Thee Headcoats and friends between 1990 and 1999. Never bowing to trends or technology, the garage rockin' rawness of Billy, Johnny and Bruce's music continues to shine and inspire their fans and other bands. Comes with a very very thorough discography. All hail Thee Headcoats!
We're excited to finally be able to get hold of this second release by this Tokyo drums and electronics duo! Former Melt-Banana drummer Toshiaki Sudoh and Gaji guitarist Yui Kimijima, together known as Thermo, have been fixtures on Tokyo's avant improvisational underground for quite some time now. Having both been featured in separate improvisational settings on the excellent document "The Improvisation Meeting At Bar Aoyama", as well as numerous performances within their native country, these guys have been unstoppable. In Thermo, Kimijima sets aside his guitar in favor of an assortment of electronic devices and effects, through which he filters the unrelenting fiery force of Sudoh's unstoppable percussive attack. The result isn't as repetitive as one would think -- certainly most appealing to drummers and those into breakbeat culture and instrumental rhythmic jams, the duo's mechanical distorto beats, crunching funktronix and ballistic breakbeats also cough up rhythms and sonics reminiscent of ESG and This Heat. Very cool -- although, be warned, the casual listener (like your housemates, say) may be driven insane by this.
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1st album.
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It's sad to say, but it's gotten to the point that a new Acid Mothers Temple release or AMT-related record is met with a yawn instead of a shiver of excitement. Hard to avoid when releasing a record every month or two. But there is one Acid Mothers Temple related project that always has everyone here at AQ all a quiver in anticipation, and that's Toho Sara, the experimental shamanistic musical ritual of AMT's Makoto Kawabata and High Rise / Musica Transonic / Mainliner's Asahito Nanjo. This is exactly the sort of stuff we here at AQ can never get enough of: buzzing reverberating drones over muted tribal drumming and simple spare scraping and rattling percussive ambience. Totally transcendental, dreamy and mesmerising. Sunroof!, Skullflower, Lamonte Young, John Cale, Tony Conrad, No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man sort of otherworldly, higher conciousness, rambling, primal tribal free form abstract divine drone. So goddamn good!
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2nd album. [/cat/japan33.html]
Shugo Tokumaru crafts some of the most endearing, clever and catchy pop we've heard in a long time! Carrying on a great tradition of Japanese pop that is nuanced yet so damn playful and impossible not to fall in love with. What makes him and this record so special is how easy and effortless he makes it all seem. Whether using toy instruments to joyous perfection or using his soothing voice to swing the melody of a song back and forth, this is someone who is both a skilled songsmith and a wide eyed daydreamer. The songs and spirit of Exit make us think of some amazing creative pop combination of Haruomi Hosono, Rob Crow, Gruff Rhyss, Cornelius and Vetiver. The range on Exit is astounding, from short caffeine fueled recess anthems to more introspective daydream blissed out gems. That's why the more we listen we really keep thinking of how Shugo Tokumaru seems so much like a Japanese version of Rob Crow, as so many songs on this record could totally fit in sound and style on Heavy Vegetable, Thingy or Pinback records. It's rare that someone is able to be both so playful and thoughtful with the songs they create, but Tokumaru proves with this batch of playful delights that he's in that upper class of truly great pop songsmiths, every song a hook filled gem with an undeniable heart of pop gold. Highly recommended!
A grey area reissue of the impossible to find Tolerance debut, which emerged to a befuddled and baffled Japanese audience in 1979 on the now highly collectible avant-synth-noise imprint Vanity Records. The dedication on the album was made "to the quiet men from a tiny girl" - which in 1980 was cribbed by Nurse With Wound as an album title of their own. Tolerance is certainly less well known than Nurse With Wound, but it shouldn't surprise anybody that this album falls not too far from the early experiments with freeform noise, devolved structures, and stark productions of Stapleton and co. Tolerance presented a thoroughly cryptic album that managed to channel the nocturnal blurt of Mars and the lysergic transcendental musique concrete of Taj Mahal Travellers through these strange anti-songs of Japanese monologues and spluttered guitar, electronics, and very-proto proto-techno, while being VERY prescient of the freak-flag esoterica of No Neck Blues Band, Kemialliset Ystavat, etc. Anomym was the first and much better of the two Tolerance albums, with neither known members of Tolerance doing anything since 1981 - if anyone knows more about them, the Internet would appreciate some information. This re-issue doesn't help at all, with only a pasted print of the artwork on a generic white sleeve, without any tracklistings or liner notes whatsoever.
Now, if you read our list regularly, or look at the tags on the cds in the store, you know that we at AQ tend to use the word "ridiculous" (in a good way) quite a lot. And we're also partial to the, again positively-meant, term "fucked". We use these words
Yann Tomita's "An Adventure Of Inevitable Chance" is either a genius work of audio pastiche or a complete put on (or both). To begin with, the album opens with an academic-sounding lecture telling us that Tomita's music is a completely synthetic re-creation of a number of established genres. Yet the musical examples illustrating these genres do not match up. For example, their idea of "Acid Rock" is a banal karaoke lounge tune, and "Country" is represented by what seems to be an excerpt from Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place"! Also, this is supposed to be a live concert from 1993 (with no overdubs, we're told), but...is it? Certainly it would be an amazing, disorienting one, as this disc moves track-by-track through propulsive early-Kraftwerk electronics, simple violin plucking augmented by analog delays, Carl Stalling / Martin Denny exotica, Cornelius-esque whimsy-rock, Barney Miller / Night Court TV show theme style jazzfunk, radio tunings and sputterings, and late '80s cheesy electric dub! Oh, two of the tracks are John Cage pieces, including a not-quite silent version of 4'33"... It's all so unexpected and unfathomable, while often being amazingly quirky and catchy. Tomita claims that his work has influenced countless musicians, DJs, journalists, and fans alike. Some of you may recognize his name from his remix on the Boredoms' Super Roots 8! For those of us who have just encounted his work for the first time here, he claims that he has "influenced you subliminally as well." In the booklets (there's two) you'll find much more to puzzle over (like the catalog of other Tomita releases, including a 7" record with a doughnut on top of it, and a 12" with an ashtray in the shape of a miniature steel drum...there are photos). Oh, in possibly the most brilliantly ridiculously fucked move EVER, this disc is actually packaged as a double cd -- but one of the discs (entitled "Heart Beat") is made of cardboard! (Thus making it unplayable for those of us with *normal* cd players). Odd is an understatement. We're thinking now that if we've judged our customers right, odds are we'll have to try and order more of these pronto...
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Comp of new and old material from Japanese dramatic folk troubadour Kazuki Tomokawa. Very intense and beautiful stuff, some of it previously unreleased. A good place to start.
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Another amazing album from Japanese avant-folk troubadour and sometime film star (he looks the part!) Kazuki Tomokawa, veteran of many previous PSF releases. Perhaps you saw the DVD we reviewed last year, entitled Pistol - Shibuya Apia Live...like that, this is emotionalyl and musically dazzling.
This is a tough one...it's hard to imagine that we're gonna convince anyone who isn't already a fan of Japanese avant-folk troubadour Tomokawa Kazuki to purchase this live DVD of his. Yet, it just might be the best way to get into his music. Wish we could include streaming *video* samples on our website! Rarely would I freak out about a live DVD... but this one's really great. It features 18 songs drawn from four 2003 performances recorded at Tokyo's Apia folk club, Tomokawa's stomping grounds for the past three decades.
Tomokawa (who has the looks of a Japanese movie star, and apparently has been on the big screen) strums rhythmic acoustic guitar and belts out his angst in emotive Japanese, backed by a drummer and a piano/mandolin/accordion player. The drummer, who really is incredible, plays in a free jazz, yet discernably rhythmic style, and serves to underscore Tomokawa's outbursts. The two of them share a certain wild energy. Meanwhile, the trio's third, multi-instrumental musician fills in the more melodic side of the music, which (in large part due to his contributions) has a sort of European chamber music or cafe vibe. The combination of the beautiful music, intense emotion, and dazzling musicianship makes this an essential live document for fans and other curious, adventurous music lovers (who don't mind *feeling* the songs without actually understanding the lyrics, assuming you don't speak Japanese).
One of my former housemates and I watched it over and over, skipping back to watch certain portions repeatedly. That's how much we liked it. We were obsessed.
This actually came out at the beginning of the year, and I've been meaning to review it forever, but it seemed difficult to do it justice and it sorta fell by the wayside... but then while making my year-end "best of" list, I realized that this was truly one of 2005's best music-dvds and had to be in our catalog!!
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With roots going all the way back to the Japanese Fluxus movement in the early '60s, Yasunao Tone remains one of Japan's more adventurous new music composers. Beginning in the early '80s when commercially available digital technology was hitting the market, Tone began experimenting with overriding the error-correction systems on consumer CD players in order to generate complex streams of digital errata. Tone furthers the process with a self-decribed method of 'wounding' the discs themselves with transparent tape, physical abrastions, and pinhole punctures. Despite his numerous grants, fellowships, installations, and awards, Tone has only a handful of recordings, including this new eponymous release through Asphodel. The resultant album of skipping CDs and noxious digital skittering certainly recalls the work of Oval, Disc, and most things on Mego.
MPEG Download: "Track 02" [/audio/yasunaotone02.mp3]
Even if this wasn't some terminally obscure project out of Japan circa 1988 (we're guessing on the date and PSF isn't telling), we would still be freaking out over this mind blowing drone-plus-noise album. But as it stands, Toukaseibunshi is a project that's about as mysterious as they come, and that intrigues us all the more. Toukaseibunshi was the pseudonym for one Hironari Iwata, who used to run a cassette label in the late '80s called Angakok. Through that imprint he curated a compilation that featured HNAS, Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow, Conrad Schnitzler, SBOTHI, Human Flesh, and a bunch of other artists we're not all that familiar with. As Toukaseibunshi, Iwata fluctuates between all of these aesthetic poles, pulling a blistering (if more restrained) use of squalid noise from Merzbow, the sustained electronic clusters from Tietchens and Schnitzler, and an unsettled weirdness from HNAS. Yet the same time, Iwata's distorted drone pieces foreshadow the same types of digital overblown pieces from Fennesz or Belong some 20 years later.
The album begins with a sprawling twenty minute piece "Glace" whose arches of softened feedback take on the hue of a post-MBV glide guitar grafted onto a static field of electricity and billowing ambient swathes that sort of have a Stars Of The Lid vibe, but with a lot more teeth in the mix. Mesmerizingly beautiful stuff. The rest of the album is split between five other tracks of variable length but are considerably nastier than the opening number. Iwata's crunched tape loops, actionist metal bashing thrust into the background, and squawking electronics have the feeling of the sounds of a construction site being tossed around the high rises of Tokyo. The reverb dislocated the sound amidst the din of the city; and despite the turmoil, Iwata seems intent on making these industrialized sounds meditative. That doesn't imply a lack of noise, cuz these tracks got plenty of bloodcurdling white noise buzzing about.
This album has been released in PSF's Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. So, we can only assume this came out on cassette sometime in the late '80s and early '90s when Iwata was active; however, there's no information whatsoever. It's great to have this available, even as it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
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It appears to always be springtime in the world of Japanese musician Takeo Toyama, who makes mellow and melodic mostly-instrumental tunes (using piano, samples, electronics, trumpet, la la las, guitar strum, etc.). Jazz-inflected soft pop for
This is the third entry from the exceptional, if self-explanatory archives of Japanese field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda, concentrating here on "solid vibrations" as the follow up to the second volume which dealt with the microphonic properties of air within hollow objects. In his liner notes, Tsunoda explains that most of the interesting properties of solid vibrations are too faint to be heard under normal listening circumstances; yet with the aid of a piezo-ceramic contact microphone (a simple device which translates immediate vibrations into electrical currents), these vibrations can be made audible. Tsunoda concentrates his recordings around distinctly urban environments -- construction sites, wharfs, highways, wire net fences, metal plate fences, and industrial detritus -- due to the presence of large motors and engines which can activate the vibrations he seeks out. These tend to be very-low frequency rumbles and drones dappled with fluctuations from any number of environmental changes and human interactions. As in all of his other recordings, Tsunoda studiously documents all of the details from each recording, providing interesting tidbits about the sources for these vibrations (i.e. that a swinging element from one his recordings is the sway of an anchor deep in the ocean). Tsunoda is careful to point out that his recordings are "for the purpose of being heard. It is for improving the occurrence which one encounters every day. Therefore, pure scientific detection is not being carried out here." This is a really wonderful document, and may be the best yet from Tsunoda!
For several years now, Frans De Waard has been commissioning artists to recycle the sounds of his own recycling sound project Kapotte Muziek. Up until now, the series had been exclusively based upon the live recordings of Kapotte Muziek; but Japanese field recording expert Toshiya Tsunoda took hold of the studio works found on the 1992 cassette Vier Stukken. Given the terminal obscurity of much of the original source material, how much or how little any of the remixing artists put into the recordings is up for debate. Probably Frans, Tsunoda, and maybe ten other people in the world will know the answer to that riddle; but for the rest of us, it ultimately doesn't matter, as this is a great recording. It appears that Tsunoda took that Kapotte Muziek cassette to the Nagaura Bay in Yokosuka City, Japan (mentioned as the recording location on the sleeve) and played that cassette back in a number of contexts on that beach. Sometimes, playing the sounds through a bottle which acts as a rudimentary frequency filter, other times quietly situating the cassette sounds against the distant wash of the surf and birds, and others blasting the source material quite loudly. While these actions are readily discernable, others are not so easy to figure out, such as the suggestive crackling on the first track. Yeah, the detective work can be quite compelling; but fortunately, Tsunoda gives us plenty of reasons to keep on listening.
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We got this sometime last year, but our supplier ran out before we had a chance to list it. Now we've gotten some in again direct from the label, so any Tsunoda fans who missed this have another chance to grab a copy now. It's another installment of his amazing field recordings, microscopic sonic examinations of everyday vibrations -- everything from a signboard creaking in the wind to the rumble of a fishing pier and the tide. (And yes, if you've never heard Tsunoda before, it's good listening, opening up a whole new world that your ears aren't normally focussed enough to hear). The booklet provides information on each track, like notes on location, technical details of microphone placement and such. In addition, there's some more general words from Tsunoda about how he catagorizes the sounds he's documenting here: events on "boundary lines", spacial context, and "observation and object"... giving some conceptual insight into Tsunoda's interest in the meticulous recordings of the seemingly mundane with which he's made his career.
Lucky Kitchen -- those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed purveyors of anthropologically minded, but nevertheless cutiepie electronica -- has commissioned Japanese field recording minimalist Toshiya Tsunoda to do an album for their "Sparkling Composer" series (though he's not exactly a composer, more of a conceptual recordist). Tsunoda's previous releases "Extracts From Field Recording Archive Vol. 1" and "Vol. 2" were incredibly stoic offerings of amplifications of very quiet resonant frequencies, and stand as some of the most challenging, unprocessed field recordings we've ever heard here at Aquarius. Some of us here prefer those discs to this new recording but others really like this new album too. We all agree that this album has all of the prerequisites to be interesting, with Tsunoda's elaborate explanations of the technical set-up and circumstances of his recordings (such as the reflection of prepared test signals of very specific frequencies against a wall, or the placement of microphones in bottles or pipes, exposed to radio broadcasts or the sea). The liner notes certainly make for interesting reading, we'll not try to paraphrase them here. We were touched, though, by this comment: "Track 14 exceeded the input level at the time of recording and thus needed the technical help of my best friend and engineer Yukiharu Higashioji."
And the results of these recordings are fascinating and indeed beautiful listening. Much of "Pieces of Air", though proclaimed by Lucky Kitchen as an example of Tsunoda's sense of "child-like wonder", might actually make for a great horror movie soundtrack. Vaguely sinister thumps, humms, splashes, and drones abound. One of the best tracks is the last, recorded in Istanbul during the noontime call to prayer. Half-audible chants, drifting throught the air from across the city, mingle and merge in an ambient haze.
Toshiya Tsunoda has always impressed us with his impeccable recordings that undermine whatever preconceptions you might have about what a field recording is, or what sound art is, or what constitutes minimalism. For well over a decade now, Toshiya has been trawling around the world (but mostly in his native Japan) with a couple of ceramic contact microphones collecting various vibrations from incredibly simple sources that yield unbelievably dynamic sounds. Ridge Of Undulation is no different, with Toshiya again providing the pithy descriptions as to the contexts of each of the recordings as the track titles. Hence, "Sine waves mixed with the sound of a vibrating surface" is really what it says it is; but Toshiya's prowess is in how he situates those two sounds in the stereo field that instantly makes the hair stand up on anybody's neck all the while rippling into a sublime dronework. Throughout Ridge Of Undulation, Toshiya alternates between studio situations such as the aforementioned track with pieces like the unedited field recordings of a distant cargo ship's motors idling in Tokyo Bay. Toshiya's work is so simple in its phenomenological purity that words really do fail to describe it. As always recommended.
Toshiya Tsunoda never ceases to amaze with his extrordinary field recordings that document a very fine delineation between man-made and natural phenomena. He gives most of his recordings very dry, self-explanatory titles, like Extract From Field Recording Archive #3: Solid Vibrations for instance. As of late, the Japanese sound artist has been choosing rather baroque titles for his recordings (i.e. O Respirar Da Paisagem) and thus presenting an additional layer of meaning to his always incredible work. The word Decalcomania in this disc's title is the highly specialized artisan process of transfering an image onto china, marble, or glass. While the etymology of this term is the same as decal, Tsunoda infers a meaning far more precious and delicate than something you would slap on your skateboard!
On Scenery of Decalcomania, Tsunoda presents several of modes of operation. There are the raw field recordings such as the dynamic whistlings from the wind whipping across a small corroded opening on a handrail, and the unnerving doppler phasing from the resonant frequencies of two passenger ferries reflecting their sounds throughout the Kisarazu Bay. Along with these field recordings, Tsunoda also sets up situations which document the physical vibrations of glass bottles and copper foil. As in all of his records, Tsunoda provides an incredible amount of detail into the specifics of his recordings. And like all of his recordings, this comes highly recommended.
With this, the release of their third-or-so widely available album, the Japanese psych-rock-trance-improv trio Tsurubami start to creep up the path of prolificity that characterizes guitarist/guru Kawabata Makoto's Acid Mothers Temple project. Yep, it's Kawabata again. We wonder if he just didn't put his name on these things we'd be able to approach 'em with fresh excitement? Yet he rarely lets us down -- the issue with Kawabata isn't of quality, only quantity. How much do you need? Well if you haven't reached your personal limit yet, we can't help but recommend this disc. Its main ingredient is a shimmering wash of freeform guitar, the sounds of which almost seem like they're trying to *crawl back into* Kawabata's amplifier, not meekly but because they're already part of the aether and some cosmic balance needs to be addressed. Backing him up there's splashes of drumming, and a gentle bass presence. Real nice, eyelid fluttering, dizzymaking trance-out drone stuff. Sure, Kawabata & co. can by now pretty much do this in their sleep, and hey maybe that's what they're doing 'cause sleep is a state of hypnosis not far from what this music conjures. There's two long tracks that get louder and more active as they progress, but maintain that uneasy yet beautiful soothing shimmer throughout, even when the heavy-duty distortion storms kick in and it starts to sound more like Fushitsusha!
Yet another entry into the exponentially increasing catalogue from Kawabata Makoto comes outside of the realms of The Acid Mother's Temple. Tsurubami has supposedly had a couple of releases, but this super lo-tech CD-R from Last Visible Dog is the only one that we've been able to track down so far. Fellow Acid Mother's Templar Higashi Hiroshi brings his bass to Kawabata's guitar, alongside the newcomer Emi Nobuko on drums. The album opens in similar fashion to Kawabata's "Father Moo & The Black Sheep" album, with a synthetic wash of pitch-shifting / multiverb guitar tones. Slowly these ambient tonalities develop into shimmering fragments of melody half appearing, then dissolving into kosmische haziness. Emi rattles out quiet tinklings across his ride cymbals, which starts off somewhat subdued, but gradually approaches the Fushitsusha arena of freenoise percussion tumble once the full drum kit is employed. Kawabata and Higashi maintain the dronescape mentality for about 25 minutes, before kicking the distortion pedals into overdrive and unleash a dense wall of sound to accompany the percussive squallor. Where the first track is delicate and gradual, the second is immediate and brutal. Cantankerous distortion from overblown bass and guitar join the continuous splutter from Emi. This is a really, really good Acid Mother's Temple related project... it really deserves more than just cd-r status.
Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Ok, this isn't precisely the Acid Mothers Temple, but it is almost: Tsurubami is a trio featuring two Acid Mothers Temple members -- shaggy guitar guru Makoto Kawabata and equally hairy bassist Higashi Hiroshi, plus drummer Emi Nobuko (not so shaggy, but real cute if we may say so). And this disc was recorded *at* the Acid Mothers Temple, it says. So, to resume: Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple...You are, once again, falling into a trance. Don't focus, just let go. The wash of Tsurubami's overpowering psychedelic guitar intensity contributes to your state of utter noise-lovin' bliss. The corresponding quiet passages of pretty, melancholic shimmer and shiver pull you deeper and deeper into what brain scientists call the AMT-zone. At 66 minutes in length (four tracks -- they're stretching out and so can you) this band's krautrock-inspired, avant-hippie psychedelic improv ought to be a sufficent AMT-fix for the week, we'd think. And "Tsukuyomi Ni" arrives with appetites for their particular brand of guitar-freakout mayhem and droned-out improv pre-whetted by the recent proper cd release of their second (?) album "Kaina", reviewed here just about a month ago (and previously, last year when it was but a cd-r). This brand new document of their live, no-overdubs sound is equally transcendent. It's released by Riot Season, the same label that just brought us that Mainliner reissue, so you know they know what's good.
Fans of Ms Tujiko, it's time to rejoice. One of her early releases has been reissued with extras!
Perhaps you're wonderin' what happened to the original? Well, a short time ago (12/2005) the fine Austria experimental electronic music label Mego sadly bit the dust. Fortunately an even shorter time ago (1/2006!) Electronic artist Pita (aka Peter Rehberg) brought the label and select titles back from the edge of oblivion under the new moniker Editions Mego. Hurrah!
Back in 2001 when we carried the original release we briefly summed it up in this way: Temperate electronica, pretty ditties rest on cyclic heaving -- some dismantled soul and some traditional-ish Japanese vocals.
Allow us to elaborate a bit more this time around: Each track gently drifts to and fro with layer upon layer of chiming musicbox style melodies, more beefy sturdy thud-pulse rhythms, and gauzily effected breathy vocals that waver between curious child, coltish girl and soulful woman. This album predates Tujiko's very Bjork period (2002's Make Me Hard and 2003's From Tokyo To Niagara), but ties in well with her more distinct recent recordings (the spacious Blurred In my Mirror and the lovely 28). Richly textured in pastel watercolors. FYI: The first fourteen tracks are from the original release, and tracks 11 through 15 were previously pressed into vinyl for her "I Forgot The Title" 12".
Moving further away from those 'Japanese Bjork' comparisons which have (not unjustly) followed her through her past releases, Ms Tujiko's latest album presents her fresh, new, increasingly vaporous, softly glitchy electronic tracks for our enjoyment. Indeed, Blurred In My Mirror is considerably more spacious and less 'concrete' but no less finely crafted than her past releases. Perhaps it's the influence of collaborator Lawrence English who composed and performed most of the electronic tracks this time around, while she focussed more on lyrics. Her vocals verge on stream-of-consciousness, surfacing here and there sung or spoken in her native tongue. Fluttery, airborne loveliness.
After three albums for Mego on which her vocal delivery drew progressively (and eerily) closer and closer to that of Bjork, Tujiko Noriko gracefully hops over to the Tomlab label and subtly shifted her overall sound. For one thing, the vocal resemblance to Ms Gudmundsdottir is much less pronounced. Singing in both Japanese and English, her lilting murmurs and sighs are backed by glistening shards of minimal pulses and veils of softly muted drones. Check out the dreamy almost-ceremonial procession of "Mugen Kyuukou". Sheer prettiness.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
SORRY.
It would be very easy and all too dismissive to simply say: Tujiko, Noriko is like a craftily fragmented Japanese Bjork. Granted that is what immediately springs to mind when hearing the first track of her fourth release (her third for Mego), but delve a little further and you'll be rewarded with a more defined idea of her own sparkling magical loveliness. If you're not familiar with Ms Tujiko, that initial description does give you a basic sense of her sound - an endless building up and stripping away of layer upon layer of swooping childlike vocals, swirling dreamy washes and delicate melody fragments. Her singing also brings to mind Kate Bush as well as the criminally undersung Canadian art pop singer Jane Siberry (check out the seventh song! apologies, I couldn't locate its title). Alternately soft'n'breathy, often almost birdlike, and considerably more robust. Furthermore, the title (in Japanese: Hard Ni Sasete) certainly doesn't evoke visions of her fantastic electronic dream pop world. Make Me Hard. Huh? Puzzling! The packaging consists of nine loose individual square panels of photography, collages, liner notes and lyrics, but be sure to bring your Japanese translator along for the ride 'cause it's all in Japanese.
As the title states, this is a new album by Ms Noriko Tujiko on her own. Following recent fine collaborations with the likes of Lawrence English and Aoki Takamasa, Solo offers up more unstructured gossamer wisps of Japanese electronica coupled with her Bjork-esque cooed vocals. Her albums are like flipping through old photo albums or alternately like looking out the window of a train, catching glimpses of faces and passing scenery. So nice.
Finally, now you can not only proclaim your love for Andee's record label and all the killer bands who have released records on tUMULt: Weakling, Leviathan, Iran, Hammers Of Misfortune, Harvey Milk, Bathtub Shitter, Souled American, but also your disdain for all other bands! Or maybe just ALL bands...
This two button set features one button with the ubiquitous tUMULt upside down cross logo, a logo so heavy it seems to have slid down the button, to settle near the bottom, the other featuring the ever popular "I hate your band" legend printed all by its lonesome. Perfect as a non verbal response to the age old query "So, what did you think of my band" or even "How did you like the cd I gave you". Just point, and problem solved! So c'mon, represent!!
Both buttons are extra big too, not tiny band button sized, but also not huge weird soccer mom button size either, just a little bit bigger than your typical 1" button (they're 1.5" just so you know), so they're small enough to decorate your favorite denim vest or trucker hat or tube top, but big enough to make the rest of your buttons cower in terror! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
