Japan'archives mailorder

Elodie LP “Enteha” A colourful storm

Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk embody a bold, free-spirited approach to music making whose improvisational processes can be traced to a distinct period of Europe’s post-industrial landscape: the former’s Ferial Confine project finding a home on Broken Flag (Ramleh, Kleistwahr) while the latter co-founded Noise-Maker’s Fifes, a Belgian audiovisual project employing unusual homemade instruments. 

More than two decades of ambitious solo and collaborative work would solidify both Chalk and van Luijk as masterful craftsmen exploring (and exposing) the tension between composition and free play. Their individual lists of collaborators boasts a certain fin-de-siècle faction of the avant-garde: Christoph Heemann, Giancarlo Toniutti, David Jackman and Colin Potter, to name but a few, have recorded with Chalk while van Luijk has also welcomed Heemann as well as a guard of other artists including Raymond Dijkstra, Kris Vanderstraeten and Frederik Croene.

Elodie’s first documented recording, 2011’s Echos Pastoraux, betrayed a musical interplay of extremely accomplished standards, Chalk and van Luijk’s pastoral mise-en-scène daubed with Daisuke Suzuki’s Asiatic elements creating a sound world at once mystical and eerie. A figment of two imaginations, Elodie materialised almost fully formed with each subsequent recording patiently revealing glimpses into a world concerned with time dilation, the phantasmagoric and spirits of the everyday.

Enteha is one of the duo’s more subdued and melancholic pieces and can be seen as a human response to seasonal transition, foretold by the concluding passages of 2020’s Le Nid d’Ivoire. It’s one of their uniquely longform explorations of mood and atmosphere as an air of romance drifts deftly into mystery and despair. The delicate hues of autumnal haze. The deceptive optimism of morning light. A work of supremely understated beauty, Enteha develops at an hypnagogic, if not unconscious, level and will appeal to anyone who finds solace in Harmonia, Gas, Joanna Brouk, Roberto Musci, Zoviet France and other investigators of pastoral arcana. 

So nice to have a new and beautiful album from this lovely duo

$22

Release date : July 1st

Gu-N LP

ltd to 385 copies -Silkscrened jacket with obi (tan, orange or black) & inserts, liner notes by Michel Henritzi

Formed in 1994 by Hidenobu Kaneda (Yuragi), alongside Fumio Kosakai (Incapacitants, Hijokaidan, C.C.C.C.) , Ikuro Takahashi (Fushitsusha, Kousokuya, LSD March), Ryuichi Nagakubo (C.C.C.C., Yuragi), and Morihide Sawada (Yura Yura Teikoku, Marble Sheep), Gu-N played regularly at Plan-B in Tokyo, but released little during their relatively short time together. Hazy and hypnotic, their laminar improvisations, four of which appear on this untitled album, are compelling, oneiric visions for the ear.

In his liner notes for the album, Michel Henritzi writes that these Gu-N recordings situate the group within a broader trajectory of free improvisation and collective sound within Japan – Taj Mahal Travellers, East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort, each of whom sprung, in many ways, from the radical vision and creativity of Takehisa Kosugi. But there’s a unique spirit here that aligns Gu-N with these predecessors, while also marking out singular territory.

Kosakai’s background in noise, via his participation in Hijokaidan and Incapacitants, can be heard in the unrelenting oscillations and heavyweight drones that purr throughout each of these four tracks. Both Kosakai and Nagakubo were members of C.C.C.C., perhaps the clearest precursors to Gu-N in their psychedelic density, though Gu-N trade in C.C.C.C.’s volcanic energy for a more tempered, sensuous exploration of tone and time.

There’s also a brutish element to Gu-N’s improvisations – see the saturated spectrum, rumbling and phasing throughout the album, and the crushing, almost Amon Düül-esque drum tattoos that Takahashi pounds out on the second track (recorded in 1998), punctuating the music from deep inside its hallucinatory murk. Elsewhere, as on the third track (one of three recorded in 1994), Kosakai’s cello scrapes out armfuls of buzz-tone as Sawada’s bouzouki trills out, elastic and vibrant, across spindrift electronics and lung-spun winds.

What’s most impressive here, though, is the way each player, formidable musicians in their own right, defers to the might of the communal and the collective. The quintet broke up in 1998, leaving behind scant recorded evidence – just one, self-titled CD, on Pataphysique, released in 1995. This LP is a most welcome addition to the small but blissful body of recorded work made public by this mysterious quintet of spirit channelers.

24€

Camp One LP “Revengeful is the mask of darkness” Zaius Tapes

Some 40 years after it’s release, Camp One’s sole album from ’81 remains as mysterious as ever, the quartet of D Jones, I Good, L Williams & P Sage still hiding in plain sight. Ask any deep digger you might know, it seems none of them can shed any light on this stunning, enigmatic lp. There are those who’ve never seen a copy, let alone heard it. Speculation here, an educated guess there, not exactly Captain Kidd’s treasure map. ‘Revengeful’ doesn’t fit neatly into any niched genre; its almost a Baroque-like, outsider take on Prog Rock & Postpunk at once, eccentricity crackling off it’s grooves. Imagine if you will, the fattier bits of A Moore’s oeuvre, the suet of L Voag + the gristle of Mark Perry, all baked into a most succulent Yorkshire pudding for the ears. After a recent Negative Reaction reissue, this one is a nice addition to some obscure and hard to categorize stuff

$24

Tori Kudo / Maher Shalal Hash Baz LP “maher goes to the worldly frequency”

Ltd to 205, each copy comes in a pasted Deutsch Grammophon recycled jacket, so they are all different

comes with a risograph booklet.

We don’ t have many !

$48

Marteau Rouge & Haino Keiji CD “Concert à Luz 2009” Fou Records

Jean-Marc Foussat, Jean-François Pauvros, Makoto Sato & Haino Keiji

$17

Katra Turana CD ” Reboot” Telegraph Records

Formed in 1980 by Atsushi Hiroike, vocalist, composer and arranger. After their early performance group activities, they released their first album “Katra Turana” on Telegraph Records in 1982. This album was also released in Europe through RECOMMENDED RECORDS in the UK. After a major line-up change, they released the 30cm single “The End – The Gradient of the Skin” (Switch Label, 1985) and their second album “KIMERA” (Telegraph Records, 1986). At the time of their first album, Atsushi Hiroike, who was dressed in women’s clothes and sang in a mysterious way, was often focused on, and the band was described as a “bizarre antique decadent music box” or “deformed chamber rock. However, they gradually started to aim for minimalistic and psychedelic avant-pop, and this trend became more pronounced when bassist Teko Kitajima joined the band. In any case, they were an outlier in the 80’s, when the New Wave was sweeping the scene. The band went on hiatus around 1990, but in December 2015, they held their first live revival in over 20 years at the Kichijoji Star Pines Cafe.The performance, which further promoted the musicality of the band’s later years, fascinated the packed audience with Atsushi Hiroike’s neutral and mysterious performance. This album also includes new songs.

$25 gatefold with obi