I had the pleasure of watching Otomo Yoshihide perform live about 30 years ago in Los Angeles, and his turntable wizardry made me a lifelong fan. It pleases me to see that labels are still carefully releasing his body of work, and this album is among my favorites. The album is full of short snippets, records mixed together, sound samples layer one on top of the other, blended, stirred and shaken to make one of the best experimental music albums of the late 1990s. A must for turntablists.
Kawabata Makoto is the leader of Acid Mother’s Temple, Japan’s greatest modern psychedelic rock group. He’s also a wildly experimental composer, with this album being influenced by musique concrète and drone as well as the usual psych one expects from him.
Ajate are a Japanese band who have the Afrobeat sound down. They’re one of the best bands working in this style while seamlessly blending Japanese percussion, funk and soul into their milieu.
Some very happy news today, as Japanese acid-folk-psych band Kikagaku Moyo have given us a fresh album. From their Bandcamp website: “In many ways ‘Kumoyo Island’ represents the culmination of a journey for Kikagaku Moyo. While their decade-long career can be summarized as a series of kaleidoscopic explorations through lands and dimensions far and near, there’s a strong intention in each of their works to take the listener to a particular place, however real or abstract they may be. In that sense, the title and cover art for the band’s fifth and final album draws you into a magical mass…
According to Midori Hirano’s Bandcamp site, “this album was initially released on staaltape by Rinus Van Alebeek in 2015 as a very limited edition of cassette tape.” It’s a gem of experimental music because Hirano’s background blends a classical music, a commercial music background, and what would end up being termed as “Japanoise,” the beautifully violent experimental music which exploded in Japan and worldwide throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Hirano crafts 24 sound vignettes on this album, and the end result is something akin to John Cage going mushroom hunting with Aki Takahashi while listening to Hijokaidan on…
One of the most remarkable things about the series of compilations released by our friends at Unexplained Sounds Group is the great number of new artists they come into contact with, and serve as a launching board for. Of all the artists on this compilation, only Ryo Murakami’s work rings a bell. Masayuku Imanishi’s work sounds like a newsroom printing press staffed by Throbbing Gristle and Hélène Sage. USG continue to release the finest in post-Industrial music.
We Want Sounds! is on a roll! They started off the year with a stunning collection of funk which I had the absolute joy of reviewing a coupe of weeks ago, and now this! Dixie Fever is a collaborative effort from guitarist Makoto Kubota, along with Takashi Onzo on bass, Yosuke Fujita on guitar/mandolin, Keni Inoue on lead guitar, Hiroki Komazawa on pedal steel guitar, and Kubota himself on guitar. The secret sauce in this album comes from co-producer Haruomi “Harry” Hosono, and this work, mixing American swamp funk, blues, music from the Hawaiian islands and their own local influences from…
Traditional Japanese instruments meet rare groove?? Yes, please! From Wamono’s Bandcamp site: Following the already classic Wamono A to Z trilogy, we are delighted to present an exceptional collection of jazz funk / rare groove tunes recorded in the mid-seventies at the Nippon Columbia studios by three giants of Japanese music: arranger Kiyoshi Yamaya, koto legend Toshiko Yonekawa and shakuhachi master Kifu Mitsuhashi. The album is slated for release on January 28, 2022.
The Internet, for all the garbage one finds on it, amazes me some days. This album, a collaboration of a friend of the blog, George Christian (out of Brazil), collaborates with Kawol Samarqandi (based in Japan) and release this collection on a Spanish record label, Bestiar and an Australian label, Ramble Records. The world becomes smaller everyday. The is a pure guitar album. George performs on acoustic-electric flat-top guitar, electric guitar, while Kawol performs on electric oil can guitar. The plucks and twangs blend into each other seamlessly, and the music suits the day rather well, as it is rainy in Brno…
Will Long is Celer, an ambient music composer living in Japan and therefore, a relatively close expatriate neighbor of mine. He releases a lot of music, as is the fashion with some highly competent composers these days, but his work feels like a cut above. Though this album has 12 tracks, they are rather short compared to some of his other albums, where one track can clock in at over an hour. The material is dark, but not claustrophobic, and quite easy on the ears if you’re listening on headphones. Really, consider following his Bandcamp site. He’s constantly putting out…