Japan'archives mailorderKazuki Tomokawa CD Muzan No Bi – Modest Launch
Essential reissue of 1986 album and later firstly reissued on PSF records and started a long collaboration between Tomokawa and Ikeezumi’s label. Known as “Beauty without mercy”, this album was mainly dedicated to Tomokawa’s brother and spleen. Just essential !
Comes in a lovely gatefold jacket with obi
18€
24€ signed copy by Tomokawa
Minazuki (Andrew Chalk + Jonathan Coleclough + Hitoshi Kojo) CD + book (16 x 22 cm) From dust to stars – Omninemento
From Dust to Stars centres on a shared time of music-making in June 2006 at Andrew Chalk’s studio in Hull, northern England—a time that later formed the core of a work shaped over the ensuing years through Kojo’s editing.
In Chalk’s wooden studio—its atmosphere shaped by soft humidity and gentle resonance—the three musicians let the music emerge at the pace of their breathing. What unfolded shared qualities with none of their solo works, yet carried traces of each: Chalk’s strings carried a warm wavering that embraced the resonance of the wood; Coleclough subtly altered the density of the air; Kojo, centring his interplay with Chalk’s strings, folded in overtones and found-object sounds that responded to the flow of the session.
British and Japanese sensibilities surface in equal measure. Pieces shaped by an East Asian sense of time-interval contain a wavering that could not have arisen from British musicians alone, while sustained tones conveying the subtle blending of grey skies and light carry a colouration distinct from Japanese performers. When melodies appear, the two elements blend into an unplaceable, mythical folk music.
Each track bears a name associated with rain—echoing the nuanced vocabularies that both Japan and northern England possess for describing rainfall. Through additional recording in Switzerland (2009) and final editing and mastering in Belgium (2025) by Kojo, the influences of three places and many years are gently interwoven into the music.
From the twenty images included in the photobook, eight were selected and printed by Kojo,
using hand-applied sensitiser, exposure, bleaching, and catechin toning.
Ltd to 100
25€
Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi : sensitive – An’archives
LP ltd to 300, black vinyl, 2 color silkscreened jacket with obi (Dark green, dark red & green)
Printed by Alan Sherry
Release date : Dec 12th, 2025
Notes by Jon Dale
Digital on Sakaguchi Bandcamp : https://enjyaqu.bandcamp.com/
You can stream one track there : https://soundcloud.com/user-250085008/metatoxic
An’archives is proud to present [sensitive], a new album, and the first solo vinyl release, by Japanese keyboardist and synth player, Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi. A deftly assembled suite of glistening electronic tonalities, [sensitive] is the latest in a lengthy run of excellent, idiosyncratic albums by Sakaguchi. A low-key yet productive artist, Sakaguchi has released banks of solo titles via his own Bandcamp page, and is also an in-demand improvisor for electronics: see, for example, recent collaborations with Yoshiki Ichihara (TO(R)RI INFRANTA, Ftarri, 2025), Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (non equal mad, self-released, 2020), and the [-] trio with Yamamoto and Uchihashi Kazuhisa (self-titled, Modern Obscure, 2023).
[sensitive] is a startling album for many reasons, not least its rich attention to detail. Sakaguchi’s ear is sensitized to the complexity of electronic sonority, something he’s developed through decades of performance and improvisation, though he’s not limited to that language. “I mainly use multiple synthesizers and process the sounds with effects,” he clarifies, detailing his approach to his music. “I also use a lot of acoustic sounds such as field recordings and percussion; sometimes I also use sounds such as prepared piano.”
Indeed, you can hear this see-sawing balance between the electronic and acoustic written across [sensitive] – see the activated cymbals that twist and stutter through the first half of “metatoxic”, which are soon replaced by a similar stream of burbling synth-flow. The opening “sensitive rot” folds field recordings into Sakaguchi’s electronic kit to such a degree that the differing forms dissolve into each other; on “green shrine”, the field recordings are more present, yet still poetically framed, taken as they are “from the mountains of my hometown, Yawata City, Kyoto,” Sakaguchi explains.
The tender balance achieved by Sakaguchi as he moves between practices, tonalities and temporalities helps manifest the guiding conceptual force behind [sensitive], where Sakaguchi explores a cleansing reverie. “What I wanted to portray with this album was to create an album of sounds that shattered and reassembled my current ‘sense’ and ‘toxins’,” he nods, “along with the ‘nature’ around me. Electronic sounds, our bodies, the environment around us, and nature all blend.”
From there, Sakaguchi attempts a transformation, or transmutation – an alchemical process of exchange. “I am attempting to explore whether it might be possible for the sounds to come closer to each other,” he concludes, “or perhaps even to interchange places.” On the five pieces that comprise [sensitive], you can hear this fusing and exchange. Inhabiting similar spaces as the music of Nuno Canavarro, Asmus Tietchens, Omit, and other like-minded visionaries, [sensitive] traverses curious, quixotic terrain between electronic composition, electro-acoustics, and improvisation.
25€
Taj Mahal Travellers CD July15, 1972 – Showboat
Formed in 1969 by “six meta-music creators & one electronic engineer”, this group leaded by Takehisa Kosugi created stunning cosmic music which was always entirely improvised.
What a great and still stunning album, time flies as I’ve been playing this one for almost 3 decades.
Only a few copies available, comes in a nice and heavy gatefold paperjacket
25€
Meiteimahi CD Sumika – Kaku tsuki
5th album and newly recorded by this duo from Tokyo. Vocals, guitar, drums, electronics for 10 varied songs, some pop, alternative rock, shoegaze. I must say, it’s a surprising album, some would say it’s lacking of coherence as some tracks can be noisy and some other songs are “just” well produced pop songs. Maybe this time there’s 1-2 folk incursions more and the duo has turned into being a project which sounds just as they’re now living between, despair, anger, tenderness. That’s not a perfect album despite it’s produced (and maybe too much ?) with care but life isn’t always a straight line and here we just perfectly love people who just feel free and are generous. Tokyo is a city of lights, between overexposures and dark corners.
16€
Les Rallizes Denudes book + CD Poésie : Les Rallizes Dénudés – Slogan
super heavy (1,4KG), comes in a slipcase, all songs are in Japanese, English, French
CD is stunning 20 minutes track with some saturated flute, very like Mizutani’s album
Lastt copy 80€ SOLD OUT
NICOLAE BRîNDUS LP ‘Match / Soliloque 1&4 / Antifonia’ – Metaphon
Romanian avant-garde composer, Nicolae Brînduş (1935-2023), studied piano and composition at the National University of Music in Bucharest.
From 1969 to 1980 he attended the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt and later he also worked at the IRCAM in Paris and GMEB in Bourges.
His compositions have been performed worldwide.
This album originally released on Electrecord’s RCM (Romanian Contemporary Music) series in 1986 provides a selection of works which belong to his cycle PHTORA (1968-1972). The cycle comprises five pieces which are five degrees of structuring collective improvisation, leaning towards the spectralist tradition.
It’s probably the most eccentric record in the whole RCM series, offering a mesmerizing collage of organized cacophony, as a massive but subtly layered whirlwind of abstract orchestral improvisations, Romanian picturesque folklore and free jazz with extensive use of tape manipulation and reverberation.
This reissue comes with the beautiful original sleeve artwork by Ana Golici who designed many sleeves for Electrecord.
Ltd to 350 – 25€
Peter Beyls LP Peter Beyls – Metaphon
Second instalment in the ‘Signature Series’
Regular edition of 270 copies
Peter Beyls (1950) works on the intersection of computer science and the arts. He develops generative systems in music, the visual arts and hybrid formats. Beyls studied music and computer science at EMS, Stockholm, the Royal Music Conservatory, Brussels and the Slade School of Art, UC London. Initially he was active in electronic music, as a composer of tape music. Later on, he developed various analog live electronic music systems. In close partnership with Michel Waisvisz, he designed and built the early prototypes of the crackle box synthesizer at STEIM, Amsterdam (1973-1975). Around the same time, Belgian composers Karel Goeyvaerts and Lucien Goethals were his mentors at the IPEM Studio. Over the years, Beyls’ work has primarily centred on generative systems, including an extensive series of machine drawings, human-machine interactive music systems using machine-learning and interactive audiovisual installations on which he has also given worldwide lectures. His work has been widely performed and exhibited at various universities and art institutions.
The four previously unreleased tracks on this LP are amongst his first electronic music compositions using the Crackle Box, the Synthi 100 and the VCS3, a combination of live improvised electronics with precise tape editing and effects.
25€
Bart de Paepe LP Zürahümnah – La Scie Dorée
For 20 years Bart De Paepe has carved a distinctive trace in the realm of psychedelic underground and counterculture. With several outstanding solo albums on a.o. Astres d’Or, Ultra Eczema, No Basement Is Deep Enough and with many studio and concert ventures with Sylvester Anfang’s funeral folks, Louise Landes Levi, Timo van Luijk, Raymond Dijkstra to name a few, Bart De Paepe developed a wide and sharp spirit within the orbit of psychedelic improvisation. Since 2007 Bart also curates the Sloow Tapes and Sloowax labels with an impressive catalog of music and poetry by a wide range of resonating artists. Bart’s visual work (drawing and painting), parallel to his musical universe, has been used on many of these releases. He is a genuinely curious traveler, always discovering new dimensions, which is clearly to be heard on the four tracks of this album.
Zürahümnah is an immediate and immersive dive into solitary inner and outer worlds of light and darkness. Zürahümnah is a floating vibration of flickering twilight. Zürahümnah is a mysterious journey through detached time and space.
Equipped with Hawaiian guitar, piano, organ and cymbal, Bart De Paepe sets the controls for the heart of the sun.
Ltd to 300, 25€
Kazuki Tomokawa LP Hanabi – An’archives
LP ltd to 550, black vinyl, 3 color (green, red & black) silkscreened jacket with obi (black, tan, clear blue or linen ivory), inserts and envelope with 10 lyrics cards
Liner notes by Michel Henritzi
Printed by Alan Sherry
Release date : October 10th, 2025
No digital, no Bandcamp
An’archives is proud to present Hanabi, a selection of material from legendary Japanese folk singer, actor and writer, Kazuki Tomokawa. Hanabi draws from Tomokawa’s three most recent albums, Vengeance Bourbon (2014), Gleaming Crayon (2016) and Going To Buy Squid (2024), all released in Japan only on the Modest Launch imprint. Pulling together highlights from these three extraordinary albums, Hanabi collects ten songs of shattering intensity, with Tomokawa performing at an ecstatic peak, a mere six decades into his musical career.
Tomokawa’s life story is one of change, risk and dedication. He appeared on the Japanese folk music circuit in the early 1970s, performing at such significant events as the legendary 1971 Folk Music Jamboree. Over the second half of the decade, he released five stunning albums that cemented his reputation as an expansive, lyrical singer-songwriter and performer whose music jack-knifed between pensive melancholy and righteous fury. His recorded output slowed in the 1980s as he became immersed in theatre, acting and painting, but his connection with the sainted Japanese label P.S.F. led to a prodigious burst of albums across the 1990s and 2000s.
Some of those albums had Tomokawa playing alongside free jazz musicians, such as his long-standing collaborator Toshiaki Ishizuka (Brain Police, Vajra, Cinorama), and late double-bass improviser Motoharu Yoshizawa. Some of that spirit can be found amidst the songs on Hanabi, leavened by a more romantic sensibility on a song like “Night Play”, where Tomokawa’s impassioned vocals and guitar swim and bob amongst a drifting string arrangement. The ferocity of “To The Dead Man” is reinforced by a guest appearance, on saxophone, by upcoming free jazz player Harutaka Mochizuki; the two spar with each other while Hiromichi Sakamoto’s cello and electronics swarm under the surface.
For those who’ve missed the three albums that Tomokawa has released across the past fifteen years – understandably so, given the relative impossibility of finding them outside of Japan – Hanabi is a welcome re-introduction to one of Japan’s most significant, poetic and quixotic folk singers and songwriters. As Michel Henritzi notes in his typically perceptive liner notes, capturing the oneiric and unique spirit of Tomokawa’s song, he is nothing less than “a poet who cries out, opening the darkness and shadows with his song, throwing handfuls of ashes from lives that have fled into the wind, to us, his fellow human beings.”
28€
Yonju Miyaoka CDR 石を拾った – Tall grass
ltd to 100, hurdy gurdy, guitar, vocal by Yonju Miyaoka
10€ comes in a colored xeroxed paper sheet
Bunsuirei CDR 2024.10.13 – Tall Grass
Haruki Sakurai – piano, vocal
Morio Tagami – bass
Yonju Miyaoka – guitar, vocal, cymbal
Sayaka Tenjin – drums, bells, etc
10€ ltd to 100, comes in a xeroxed paper sheet
Dai Sayozoku CDR イ向佐沼サヨ族 At Bears – Tall Grass
Dai Sayozoku (大サヨ族) is Sayozoku Septet avant-garde, free music, improvisational ensemble. live at Namba BEARS ,Osaka on 2021 August19th.
イエレキルピネン Jere Kilpinen ..Shakuhachi, Drums
向井千惠 Chie Mukai …Voice, Recorder, Percussions
佐藤史 Fumi Sato …El-guitar
沼 タカハシシカロ Shicaro Takahashi …Recorder, Toys, Percussions, Voice
染谷藍 Ai Sometani … Recorder, Toys, Percussions
サ 天神さやか Sayaka Tenjin …Gopichand, Recorder, Percussion, Voice
ヨ 宮岡永樹 Yonju Miyaoka ….Recorder, El-guitar, Hichiriki
10€ comes in a xeroxed paper sheet
(Kansai) Ché SHIZU CDR Live at Nambaya – Tall Grass
MUKAI Chie /// er-hu, piano, vocal
MIYAOKA Yonju /// guitar, vocal
Harry TERUKINA ///drums, chorus
Recorded in Sept. 2025
10€ we only have a very few, comes in a cheap xeroxed paper sheet
Delphine Dora & Ayami Suzuki LP Kagome Kagome – An’archives
LP ltd to 300, black vinyl, 3 color silkscreened jacket with obi (black dark & blue)
Printed by Alan Sherry
Release date : October 10th, 2025
Digital on Ayami Suzuki Bandcamp : https://ayamisuzuki.bandcamp.com/
You can stream one track here : https://soundcloud.com/user-250085008/loiseau-dans-la-cage-taken-from-kagome-kagome-album-on-anarchives
An’archives is proud to present Kagome Kagome, the first collaboration between France’s Delphine Dora and Japan’s Ayami Suzuki. Curious listeners might know Dora from the string of lovely, idiosyncratic albums she’s released over the past two decades, most recently for labels like Modern Love, Morc and Recital; she’s also worked with the likes of Michel Henritzi and Sophie Cooper. Suzuki’s performances, predominantly for voice, place her within a tradition of Japanese improvised music – see the music she’s made with artists such as Takashi Masubuchi, TOMO and Leo Okagawa – but her approach also takes in folk song, ambience and claustrophobic drone.
On Kagome Kagome, Dora and Suzuki play to their many strengths: a gentle, free-willed folksiness; long, aerated drone constructs; ghostly, time-warping explorations for voice. They met on Dora’s May 2024 tour of Japan, though they’d been in touch beforehand, with Dora proposing the collaboration to Suzuki, developed around “concepts of ‘otherworldliness’ and ‘impermanence’,” the latter says, “and explored the relationship between ‘the invisible’ and sound in Japanese culture – a common interest we share.”
They recorded across several days that month, with the sessions for Kagome Kagome taking place in Kanumi, in Tochigi prefecture, at a space named Center. “I was particularly looking forward to seeing Delphine encounter the vintage 104-year-old harmonium from Nippon Gakki Seizo Co. that had just been repaired at Center,” Suzuki recalls. “It was as if the harmonium had been waiting for Delphine to draw sound from it. I felt it was a beautiful relationship where they could guide each other.”
Indeed, there’s something channelled about the music that Dora and Suzuki made together in the session that constitutes Kagome Kagome. Dora’s harmonium might be the spine of the album, but Suzuki’s free-floating voice, and gaseous, muddied banks of electronics, wrap around the wheezing, ancient tonality of the harmonium beautifully – they, too, sound as though they were just waiting to be willed out of the daytime air. Their voices nestle together beautifully – “when we sang together in a tunnel,” Suzuki says, “there were times when we sang the exact same melody without planning. It happened so naturally that the boundaries between us became blurred.”
And that title? It’s drawn from a Japanese children’s song, and the song titles themselves constitute the song’s lyrics, in alternating Japanese (Romanized) and French language. Urban legend connects the song “Kagome Kagome” to the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, nearby Center, that Suzuki and Dora visited while they were in Kanumi. “The mysterious lyrics of ‘Kagome Kagome’ and its puzzle-like connection to Nikko Toshogu were a perfect fit for this mysterious album,” Suzuki reflects, “which I think has its own kind of puzzle-like elements.”
A deep album of prayer and magic, of divination and ritual, Kagome Kagome’s sense of serious play, its rich beauty, feels somehow dislocated from our time. If you’ve ever enjoyed the music of Nico, Kendra Smith, Charalambides, or other channelers of ghostly mystery, its eerie otherness will, somehow, feel oddly familiar.
26€
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