Monthly Archives: October 2020

Kousokuya – Jutok Kaneko – Tori Kudo

Kousokuya CD “Ray night” Ray Night Music 2007

Mick, Jutok Kaneko & Ikuro Takahashi with liner notes by Tori Kudo

Tokyo-based underground psychedelic rock group. Formed in 1978 by guitarist Jutok Kaneko out of the ashes of an older group called Kokugaiso. The group was associated with the Minor scene in the late 70s and early 80s. Kaneko passed away in January 2007, the band played as a duo for a couple of more dates but for more than a decade the band hasn’t played since . Probably one of the most underrated band from the P.S.F records era, they have often been compared to Fushitsusha but they were definitively unique

$24

Jutok Kaneko + Tori Kudo CD “Duo live” Ray Night 2012

Comes in a 7′ inch jacket, dead stock, I don’t have many copies !

sold out

Kaneko Jutok CDR “Kaneko jutoko 1958-2007” Uramado 2020

Limited to 100, remastered, 4 solo tracks and a 10 minutes Kousokuya track

$25

Kaoru Abe 3CD Tohoku 1971

Kaoru Abe 3 CD Box “Complete Tohoku Sessions 1971 ” King International

Comes with a 40 pages booklet with some new pictures. These are complete versions with Kaoru’s voice & public applauding.

$78

Limited Disk Union copy with a 13 x 18 cm picture

Only a few $92

Toho Sara 2LP

Toho Sara 2LP Toho Sara 東方沙羅 – Black Editions

Deluxe double LP, gatefold edition featuring heavy tip-on jackets with spot color, spot gloss UV and soft touch coating. Full color, spot color and glossed inserts. Digital download is included.

A mystifying work of Japanese avant-garde shamanism, Toho Sara’s 1995 debut introduced a radical new sound from Asahito Nanjo (High Rise), Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and Hisashi Yasuda – playing an array of ancient  instruments including tabla, piri, harmonium, biwa, shakujo and hansho the group evokes an otherworldly ritual music, meditative and haunting. Originally released on CD by P.S.F. Japan, newly expanded, remastered and available for the first time ever on vinyl.

Asahito Nanjo – Cello, Recorder, Bass, China Gong,Temple Bells, Hansho, Eastern String, Electronics, Organ
Makoto Kawabata – Flute, Recorder, China gong, Tabla, Piri, Oboe, Harmonium, Viola, Violine
Hisashi Yasuda – Vibes, Kei, Biwa, Shakujo, Hansho, China Gong,Temple Bells, Cello

$36 only a very few, heavy !

Kazuo Imai LP

Kazuo Imai LP “Far and Wee” Black Editions

Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan’s early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970’s, his 2004 P.S.F. album “far and wee” was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations – Imai’s playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrument’s true masters and innovators.​

In 2004, Kazuo Imai (Marginal Consort, East Bionic Symphonia) recorded a series of nylon-string classical guitar improvisations at the request of P.S.F. founder Hideo Ikeezumi. “far and wee,” the resulting album, vibrates with the inherent duality of nylon: the strings stretch and snap back like rubber tautened and released, and paint the softest of caresses in silky washes. Imai was a student of two of the foundational artists of the Japanese Avant-garde: Masayuki Takayanagi, the pioneering free-impovising guitarist and Takehisa Kosugi, the visionary Fluxus composer also known for his work with  Group Ongaku and The Taj Mahal Travelers. A sense of inquisitiveness about how far he can push himself and every part of the guitar pervades these performances as Imai makes everything from the pegs to the bridge to the strap pin explode with resonate. 

Deluxe edition featuring heavy tip-on jackets with film laminate gloss coating, insert with artist’s notes. Digital download is included. Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI. Only a very few !

$25

Masayuki Takayanagi LPs

Masayuki Takayanagi / New Direction Unit LP Axis / Another Revolvable thing – Blank forms

Comprised of recordings of a September 5, 1975 concert by the New Direction Unit at Yasuda Seimei Hall in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, the two volumes showcase Takayanagi in deep pursuit of what he began calling “non-section music” after leaping beyond the confines of his prior descriptor “real jazz.” The quartet of Takayanagi (guitar), Kenji Mori (reeds), Nobuyoshi Ino (bass, cello), and Hiroshi Yamazaki (percussion) deftly explores the twin poles of Takayanagi’s spacious “gradually projection” and explosively virulent “mass projection” concepts across six pieces, titled Fragments I – VI. Originally issued in two individual LP volumes in rearranged order, this bundle LP edition presents in fact the Another Revolvable Thing concert in chronological sequence for the first time, with “gradually projection” pieces on the first disc and “mass projection” eruptions on the second.

As part of his liner notes for Part 1 (newly translated for this edition), noted Japanese free jazz critic Teruto Soejima wrote: “New Direction Unit performances always emit the smell of blood. Fresh blood, never blood that is old or crusted. This is not the desiccated shell of music, it’s sound through which pumps the blood of living human beings. Blood that seethes, that flows and counterflows, that blazes, runs, rises and congeals, blood that vomits and spurts. Vivid, scarlet blood. The ultimate beauty that Takayanagi aims at, is it not the color of this blood? Blood calls out to blood. For these four musicians, playing together means feasting on each other’s blood. It is also a summon- ing to a secret blood oath, to the creation of solidarity with the audience. In the moment, truly, the situation and beauty are instanta- neously unified. To borrow the title of a movie by Kōji Wakamatsu: blood is redder than the sun.”

$31 or 26 €

Masayuki Takayanagi / New Direction Unit LP Axis / Another Revolvable thing – Vol 2 Blank forms

$31 or 26 €

Special price for both volumes = 50 €

Keiji Haino / The Observatory LP

Keiji Haino / The Observatory LP Authority is alive Ujikaji

Ltd to 200, only a few copies

ecorded live at the Playfreely Festival in Singapore, November 2019, Authority is Alive is a potent performance mixed from an intoxicating brew of poetry, philosophy and sonic alchemy. Bearing the theme “The Transparency of Turbulence”, the festival featured a strong line-up of East Asian and Southeast Asian artists and bore the ambition to be “an alternative to how we coalesce and navigate a region that is continuously torn apart by words, egos, greed and ideologies.”

“Everything… living… breathe…”

In an unannounced coupling, Japan’s psychedelic and avant-garde legend Haino Keiji teamed up with Singapore’s art rock veterans The Observatory to deliver a visceral performance. Both have a history of using collaboration as method and it is evident that this meeting pushed all musicians to their creative and emotional limits. Haino, alternating between voice and guitar, was sonic shaman, channelling the raw forces of nature through his entire body. Ad libbing from a self-penned poem, his expressionistic vocals spanned tortured shrieks and falsetto whispers on ideas such as the nature of power, the dissolution of the self and the notion of mu-i 無為 (wu wei, or effortless action). Elsewhere, his guitar workouts were wild and unhinged, pure propulsions of energy.

The Observatory, pared down to a three-piece since 2019, showed off their new predilection for thrilling improvisation influenced by their Southeast Asian roots. Dharma’s use of a mallet to strike his guitar, prepared with metallic sheets and rods between its strings, created moving, gamelan-like melodies. At certain points, in call-and-response fashion, percussive polyrhythms would be exchanged with Cheryl Ong on drum kit; Ong’s background in traditional Chinese percussion brings a fresh take to an instrument typically employed in western rock and jazz idioms. Meanwhile, Yuen Chee Wai sat his guitar on a knife’s edge between control and excess, introducing beautifully resonant tone clusters and harsh, crunchy noise.

$32

Acid Mothers Temple LP

Acid Mothers Temple, The Melting Paradaiso U.F.O – The Obversatory LP Trails to the Cosmic Vibrations – Ujikaji

Edition of 300, comes in a nice jacket. Comes with custom-made foil which transforms the special cover art by acclaimed artist Takashiro Kurashima into a kaleidoscopic trail of electric vibrations.* 1 continent, 2 bands, 42 musicians! Trails to the Cosmic Vibrations is a split LP that brings together two bands from Asia with outwardly contrasting dispositions, while sharing sympathetic resonances.

On Side A, hailing from Osaka, Japan, we have the ever exuberant postmodern psychrock legends, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.! With “Flatwoods Monster A Go Go ~ Cometary Orbital Drive 00∞00“, the band presents an immersive and electrifying B-movie experience of extraterrestrial abduction and interstellar travel, a song that is quickly emerging as a standout on their 2018 tour setlists.

This is the ultimate Hawkwind tribute, an exhilarating 20-minute ride in a silver machine, zipping across dimensions marked by shifts in tempo. Blasting off from the get-go, the band heads for an early climax before bringing the pace down into a funky skiffle at the eight-minute mark. Five minutes later, things just accelerate, and accelerate, and accelerate into hyperdrive – we’re talking upwards and spacewards until we’re some 360 beats per minute, or 6 beats per second… towards infinity!

The 23-year-old band sounds fresher than it has in years, a large part due to its sensational new rhythm section of throbbing bassist, Wolf, and acrobatic drummer, Satoshima Nani. Third new member, vocalist and “midnight whistler”, Jyonson Tsu, brings on board a whacked and outlandish appeal, singing in reckless tongues. We are proud to put this “instant classic” on wax, an epic number even by the stratospheric standards of the Acid Mothers Temple!

On Side O, hailing from the impossible city-island-nation-state of Singapore, we have The Observatory, giants of Southeast Asian art rock. “Vibrational” begins with an upbeat euphoria that gradually turns into a melancholia that sinks deeper and deeper into utter despondence. The song is a natural follow-up from their last full-length, the ambitious and penetrating masterwork, August is the cruellest (2016). This expansive, nine-minute threnody was recorded at The Observatory’s last major concert in 2017, where members past and present came together, alongside an ensemble of 30 young guitarists, layering tiny tremoloes to create emotional earthquakes. Led by the morose tenor of Leslie Low, “Vibrational” is thematically bleak and anti-social, finding escape only in the “legal high” of the bottle – to hell with society and sobriety, it seems.

Featuring 30 guitarists from National University of Singapore (NUS) & NUS Guitar Ensemble

Aw Mei Yu, Chua Pei Ling, Jeslynn Teo, Lee Chun Yat, Lim Sze Hui, Michael Ho, Rebecca Tan, Tan Zu YIn, Tang Ying Chong, Xu Mufangzi, Celestine Kau, Darren Yeo, Gong Zhiqian, Leong Man Qing, Lo Sheng Hong, Ram Janarthan, Sean Ong, Tay Pei Xin, Xie Yang Yang, Yong Teck Hui, Chen Qingyiu, Darrell Tay, Koh Zhengyong, Mochamad Raditya Pradana, Vincent Zillianstetra, Choo Xingyu, Ivan Eng, Louis Wong, Sim Wen Wei, Joshua Tan.

$35

FEN – Otomo Yoshihide LP

FEN LP Imagined Commonities: Live At La Cave 12, Genève Ujikaji

Edition of 200

 FEN is an improvised music quartet. Comprising Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Yuen Chee Wai (Singapore), Yan Jun (China) and Ryu Hankil (Korea), it was formed in 2008 in Marseille.

The initial intent of forming FEN was not based on a particular pursuit of any specific form of musical aesthetic, but rather to develop and deepen the improvised music networks of Asia. This desire was furthered by these 4 individuals, each with their individual endeavours to organise music-related activities and bridge communication, using a kind of improvisational music vernacular to connect one another. Within the quartet, and beyond, FEN strives for a collaboration that is direct and non-dominant based, while achieving a musical flow that is fluid and symbiotic.

Concurrently, the 4 members are active contributors in the fields of experimental, improvised, computer and electronic music, visual art, performance, literary, curatorial and publication fields. Their creative work is strongly reinforced within the idea of networks and genealogy.

The music of FEN has been described as a combination of noise, random occurrences, rock, free jazz and the likes, in an improvisational rigour without any prior communicated agreement. Each member is free to change and choose their musical instrument and methodology of performance.

$32

Maki Asakawa CD

Maki Asakawa CD ‎– 浅川マキの世界 (Asakawa Maki No Sekai) – Toshiba

Originally released in 1970 with lyrics written by Shuji Terayama, her first album is a brilliant mix of jazz, blues with some environmental sounds. Great classic by a legendary singer

$18 only a few

Takayanagi / New Direction CD

Masayuki Takayanagi CD “Gin Paris session, June 26 1963” Craftman records

$16

takayanagi ginparis

New Direction / Masayuki Takayanagi – Hiroshi Yamazaki CD “Live at freedom” Jinya

Recorded live 25 April 1981 at Takasaki.

Regular edition : $30

takayanagi freedom bonus001

New Direction  / Masayuki Takayanagi – Kaoru Abe – Hiroshi Yamazaki CD “Live at Jazzbed” Jinya

Recorded at Jazzbed, Tokyo on September 27, 1970.

Regular  Edition $30

SOLD OUT

Takaynagi abe Jazz bed promo001

Masayuki Takayanagi – Kaoru Abe CD “Station ’70” Jinya

Track 1: Recorded on June 18,1970 at Tokyo.
Track 2: Recorded on May or June,1970 at Tokyo.

Regular  Edition $30

Takaynagi abe station 70

Masayuki Takayanagi / New Direction for The Arts CD “Free form Suite” Craftman Records

One of my long time favorite !

$18

Takayanagi free for suite

Masayuki Takayanagi Angry Wave CD “850113” Octave Lab

$24

DSCN0329

Sakan & Senju LP

Sakan & Senju LP Sakan & Senju – Les Editions Japonais

Limited to 300 on Japan Blues sublabel, comes in a silkscreened jacket

Senju is a collaborative album between experimental musician Iku Sakan and former Boredoms and Urichipangoon drummer Muneomi Senju

‘Green Journey’ – voice, kalimba, cardboard box, shakers build a hypnotic anxiety, ‘Santoor’ – a cathedral raga leads us into a frenetic freak out,.

‘Senpuuki’ – a meditative Spaghetti Western, down Dusseldorf way.

$24 only a few