First-ever vinyl release of criminally unknown early ’80s Japanese punk band. Fully remastered from the band’s original early ’80s cassette releases, and housed in a sturdy tip-on sleeve. Includes a double-sided, illustrated insert. Includes digital download card.
Singer-songwriter Shoichi Miyazawa’s tale is a confounding one. He grew up in a small town in Yamagata Prefecture (in northern Japan), loved Dylan and The Beatles, and had very little exposure to, or interest in, underground music. And yet, shortly after 24-year-old Miyazawa arrived in Tokyo in 1978, he began performing solo shows at tiny clubs in the city, singing and playing guitar. His performances quicky devolved from brisk acoustic jaunts to lengthy, heavy dirges sung in a snot-nosed wail over a blown-out electric guitar detuned to produce a kind of sonic sludge.
At one of his earliest gigs, a mutual friend introduced him to Endo Michiro, who would soon become the legendary front man of Japanese punk icons The Stalin. It turned out Miyazawa and Endo had attended Yamagata University at the same time just a few years earlier, but hadn’t known each other at school. In Tokyo, they became fast friends, moved into the same apartment building, and for years were inseparable. Endo played guitar and drums on Miyazawa’s debut release, the “Christ Was Born in a Stable” flexi disc. But while Endo was social and outgoing, Miyazawa preferred to be alone, avoiding concerts unless he was performing.
Famous for her early 70s exploitation movies (‘Lady Snowblood’, the ‘Female Prisoner Scorpion’ and ‘Stray Cat Rock’ series) revered by Tarantino, Meiko Kaji was also a singer releasing albums to tie in with her movie career. These albums are a fascinating mix of Japanese Pop and Groove with superb funky cinematic orchestrations as displayed in “Hajiki Uta”. Urami Bishi is probably her most famous song as it was used in Kill Bill 2.
12″LP black vinyl, comes in a 2 colors silkscreened jacket with obi (black, red, green tea), inserts and a postcard. Edition of 285
Printed by Alan Sherry & liner notes by Jon Dale
HUH are the wild, freeform duo of Kyosuke Terada and Takuma Mori. Based in Tokyo, and playing together since 2007, HUH have released a clutch of cassettes, CD-Rs, and digital albums; they’ve toured Europe (in 2017) and Australia (2019); and they count amongst their collaborators the likes of T Mikawa of Incapacitants, ASTRO, and Government Alpha. You may know Terada from his duo with Shizuo Uchida, MAI MAO, who recently released an LP on An’archives, but he’s super prolific, performing solo and in groups like The Obey Unit, Bay City Rolaz, Praymate, Terror Shit, Death After Death, and more. Takuma Mori also records solo and is one half of duos Cosmetic i and Don’t Let Me Fantastic.
So, they’re busy, energetic musicians – but even that doesn’t quite explain the bustling energy and furious dislocation of the music they make together as HUH. It’s incredible, brain-blatting stuff, moving at a fierce clip between ideas, instruments, and styles – on a track like “Jewels in blue pee”, for example, a plunking banjo riff is repeatedly effaced by stumble-drunk drums, rumbling bass, and incongruous, high-wire blasts of electronics. There are voices in here, but they’re often mangled and distorted; rarely comprehensible, they melt into the unpredictable structures Terada and Mori build out of their junk kit.
HUH call themselves ‘free-form freak-out / noise improvisation’, and there’s a touch of the Familiar Ugly in the collective stammer and stutter central to their music. They’re remarkably untroubled by anyone’s expectations, resulting in a music that’s as confusing as it is compelling, full of clamour and vigour, but never for the sake of it: these seven improvisations, sometimes song-like, sometimes careening and hyperactive, sometimes smeared and abstract, all make their own kind of perfect un-sense. Line them up next to similarly puzzling yet enthralling gutterpunk improv units: Smegma, Bone Cure, Nihilist Spasm Band, Crayon Skidder.
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