Tag: Japan

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Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang

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 Japan, was just a bit before his transformation to a techno-don of the seminal Yellow Magic Orchestra.  Kubota is firmly in command here was mellow, slightly Beatlesque guitar playing and warm vocals befitting such music.  Yet another gem.  For a more in-depth review, we point you to a review published by The Vinyl Factory.

 

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Kiyoshi Yamaya, Toshiko Yonekawa, Kifu Mitsuhashi – Wamono Groove: Shakuhachi & Koto Jazz Funk ’76

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.

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Kawol Samarqandi and George Christian – Telegraph Paths

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 today.  Enjoyable, but I expect no less from either guitarist.

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Music

Celer – In Light Of Blues

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 something good.

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Ikuro Takahashi – しりえないものとずっと

An’archives, a French experimental music record label, has released しりえないものとずっと (Forever With The Incomprehensible) by legendary drummer and percussionist Ikuro Takahashi.  Takahashi has worked with the likes of Keiji Haino’s power-trio Fushitsusha, Seishokki, High Rise, Ché-Shizu, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Kousokuya, LSD March and Nagisa Ni Te.  This kind of pedigree is unmatched in the Japanese improvisational music scene.  The album is volcanic in its power, full of thundering percussion which would equal, and in some parts surpass, many percussion based free-jazz albums.

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Makoto Kawabata, Richard Pinhas, Manongo Mujica, Juan Luis Pereira, Hiroshi Higashi – Alturas

What we have here is an experimental music supergroup.  Makoto Kawabata and Hiroshi Higashi of acid-psych lords Acid Mothers Temple team up with the legendary guitarist Richard Pinhas (famed as the leader of the band Heldon, and still very much active under his own name).  Joining them are two musicians from Peru in Manongo Mujica and Juan Luis Pereira who fill out this psychedelic soundscape.

For some context regarding this release, read these notes for the band’s Bandcamp site:

When Acid Mothers Temple and Richard Pinhas visited Lima for the first time, in November 2017, to participate in the experimental music festival “Integraciones”, Luis Alvarado, the director of Buh Records and curator of the festival, summoned the Japanese and the French musicians to Manongo Mujica’s studio and invited Juan Luis Pereira (El Polen) to join them for a recording session. The result was this album which finally comes to light, and where a variety of instruments and sensibilities are combined. The guitar sound of Kawabata, the leader of Acid Mothers Temple, merged with that of Pinhas, the leader of Heldon, creates a dreamlike atmosphere, which is supplemented with Mujica’s Indian bells and drums, Pereira’s pututos, moceño, violin and charango, and the cosmic electronic sounds of the classic Roland synthesizer played by Higashi, from Acid Mothers Temple. Everything flows between quietness and abstraction, an atmospheric music that gives way to inspired melodic developments, which are fused with sounds coming from the Andean tradition, as well as with the classic textural and melodic explosions courtesy of Kawabata. All this is enhanced by the meticulous mixing and post production work done by the Peruvian artist Ale Hop. ALTURAS [Heights] is edited in vinyl format and is destined to become a milestone in the catalogue of Buh Records, a label that has also released albums by El Polen, Acid Mothers Temple and Manongo Mujica.

This release is, in every sense of the word, experimental.

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Music

Stijn Hüwels & Tomoyoshi Date – 遠き火、遠き雲’ ​(​A Distant Fire​,​ A Distant Cloud)

laaps Records is a French label releasing quality ambient music.  This one seems to be their latest, a calming wash of sounds composed by Belgian composer Stin Hüwels in collaboration with the Brazilian-Japanese composer and sound artist (and emergency room doctor!) Tomoyoshi Date.

The music is a mix of organic and electronic sounds, gentle plonking tones, and a very, very relaxed atmosphere.  This could be music to sleep to, and I mean this as a high compliment.

From their Bandcamp site:

遠き火、遠き雲 (Tōki Hi, Tōki Kumo / A Distant Fire, A Distant Cloud) is the second collaboration by Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels.
The album was commissioned by Laaps.

Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels met for the first time in 2015 in Tokyo, being introduced to each other by Chihei Hatakeyama. That same evening, they recorded what would later become Hochu-Ekki-Tou, their first album, released on Home Normal in 2019.
For “Tōki hi, tōki kumo”, they teamed up again to create a slow and bright album, using field recordings, processed guitar, piano and synth. The title refers to a poem by Tadahito Ichinoseko, recited by the poet on the album as well.

Tomoyoshi Date creates acoustic and organic sounds with a little touch of digital processing. He began to create electronic music in 1998. In 2003, he forms the group Opitope with Chihei Hatakeyama (released by SPEKK), in 2012 the group ILLUHA with Corey Fuller (released by 12k), and the group Melodia with Federico Durand (Home Normal). His solo albums were released from Flyrec (2009, Japan) and Own Records (2011, Luxembourg). Also he worked as emergency doctor until 2014, and started his ambient oriental medical clinic “Tsuyukusa Clinic” in Tokyo since 2014. Tomoyoshi currently resides in Narita, close to Tokyo.

Stijn Hüwels has a profound fascination for minimalism. He’s using mainly layers of processed guitar and field recordings. He released on Dauw, mAtter, Eilean Rec., Home Normal, White Paddy Mountain and Slowcraft/Lifelines. He released albums in collaboration with Chihei Hatakeyama, Norihito Suda, An Moku and Ian Hawgood. Together with James Murray he forms Silent Vigils. Stijn lives and works in Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. He’s also curating Slaapwel Records since 2014, a label dedicated to music to fall asleep with.

 

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Kawabata Makoto and Baisong Wu – Rivers And Mountains

Though there are heavy tensions at the moment between the governments of Japan and the People’s Republic of China (sic), this compilation proves that there is peace through psych.  Psychedelic music is the medium both the legendary guitarist of Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata Makoto and Chinese acid-folk musician Baisong Wu, and their collaboration bore the fruit of dulcet, meandering, gentle washes of lightly LSD-soaked bliss.  This is music for the cloudy day we’re currently enduring in the Greater Los Angeles area, and it fits perfectly with the clouds.  A stellar piece of work.

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Hideki Umezawa & Andrew Pekler – Two Views Of Amami Oshima

Electroacoustic music inspired by painting and field recordings done in the Ryuku Islands off the coast of the Japanese mainland.  This definitely caught my attention.  Edições CN out of Antwerp, Belgium released this album in 2020, and it features the works of Japanese composer Hideki Umezawa and the Samarkand, Uzbekistan born resident of Berlin, Andrew Pekler.

The back story of this release comes to us from their Bandcamp site:

In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka (°22 July 1908 – *11 September 1977) moved to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. There, in self-chosen isolation, he committed himself exclusively to his art until his sudden passing in 1977.

In 2018 Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa visited Amami Ōshima to create a video installation about Tanaka’s insular life. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s paintings in relation to the natural world of Amami Ōshima and its people. The video invites viewers to understand—poetically—the artist’s sensitivity to nature and the expressivity of his works.

During his stay on Amami Ōshima, Hideki Umezawa recorded a lot of natural sounds to recreate a sort of simulated ecology of Tanaka’s mind – or: of the painter’s mind. On this long playing record these recordings are blended with electronically generated sounds. Next, Andrew Pekler, who has never actually visited Amami Ōshima, upon hearing Umezawa’s field recordings creates – in the spirit of Isson Tanaka – a complementary dreamscape of the island’s phenomena. Of what could be.

This is a work that doubts between site specific and creative imagination. With sounds echoing between the anecdotic and the imaginary. It is a sensitive and highly stylized interpretation of a world that Isson Tanaka had also carefully studied. A painter at work; a way of seeing.

So, after Christophe Piette’s ‘Six Tableaux de Quelpaert’, released by Edições CN in 2019, we again moore an island in the nautical footsteps of a painter. While Piette drew a story through – among other things – recording dialogues at his island home, at the restaurant table, et al. Pekler and Umezawa paint their pictures in a more musical fashion. Where natural sounds evaporate into electronic clouds of imagination.

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Hozan Yamamoto 銀界 – Silver World (1971) (Full Album)

Though long out-of-print, this album screams for a proper reissue.  The album combines a fine jazz quartet with Yamamoto’s sublime shakuhachi playing.

The personnel on this album were:

Bass – Gary Peacock

Drums – Hiroshi Murakami

Piano – Masabumi Kikuchi

Shakuhachi [Bamboo-Flute] – Hōzan Yamamoto