Japan'archives mailorder

Timo van Luijk – Frederik Croene LP Ipnopedion – La Scie Dorée

second, numbered edition of 45 copies on ‘smoke vinyl’ with silkscreened sleeve, insert and download code. One of the most intriguing album I’ve heard in years !

$38 SOLD OUT

Nicole Lachartre 3LP box Metphon

Second and “cheaper” edition, vinyls come in a regular slipcase

First ever release of French composer, musicologist and writer Nicole Lachartre (1934-1991). This 3LP set comprises most of her electronic music and musique concrète compositions recorded in the 60’s and 70’s, all previously unreleased. Lachartre had a classical formation, studied with a.o. Darius Milhaud, Iannis Xenakis and Michel Philippot. Her broad formation and interest as well as her profound commitment and singular vision created a solitary voice even within the field of electronic music and musique concrète, strangely enough unheard till this day. Her first tape composition from 1968 was recorded in Pierre Henry’s Apsome studio and most of her other electronic and electro-acoustic compositions included in this box set were recorded at the IPEM in Ghent.

$55

Yuzo Iwata LP LP “Daylight Moon” Siltbreeze

2023 ltd repress!
Daylight Moon is Yuzo Iwata’s 1st outing since his debut lp, Drowning In The Sky, got the green light in 1999 on the legendary Org label. While Yuzo’s been living stateside for a couple of decades, his roots, style & fluidity harken back to the Kichijoji Minor days of the late seventies Tokyo underground scene. He also put in some time as a member of Tori Kudo’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz early on & there’s no one else in Philadelphia who can make that claim. His pedigree is legit. As is his playing. For fans of Kousokuya & Hallelujahs especially + PSF & Org label output overall.

$24

Aube CS Plangent recoil – Advaita

special and nicely done packaging as always with this label, ltd and numbered to 100

Originally released in 1996 on Gabriele Giuliani’s(DEAD BODY LOVE, etc.) Less Than Zero label , will be reissued on cassette.

We have reproduced the original A5 size double layer jacket, and also produced a double layer jacket in regular cassette size to imitate G.R.O.S.S.’s GR series.
The sound uses only metal as the source material, and the scene in which the quietly echoing metallic sound gradually emerges like a gigantic illusion is perfectly visualized by the double layer of silver paper and geometric patterns represented on the jacket.

Akifumi Nakajima’s style of examining a single material and bring out its fullest potential is again rooted in the Japanese spirituality.

$22 SOLD OUT

Umeko Ando 2 LP “Upopo Sanke” Pingipung

“Upopo Sanke“ means “Let’s sing a song” in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-response structure of many of the songs is performed with a mantric, hypnotic quality in a vocal style that is perhaps best described as elastic, relaxed and breathing. The lyrics praise the lush nature of the islands. They mention the deity Kamuy, who can appear in the form of animals such as bears or swordfish, and the singers repeatedly ask the audience to dance. Listening to this music can be a meditative experience. There seems to be a gentle smile in every note and syllable. This music softly hits the heart.
“Upopo Sanke“ was recorded on a farm in Tokachi in the summer of 2003. We hear dogs barking, a distant thunderstorm and voices imitating animals. The liner notes that accompany the 2LP release gather the anecdotal memories of Umeko Ando and Oki Kano about the stories of the 14 songs.
Oki Kano is a musical ambassador of the Ainu culture who tours worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band and also gives solo concerts, always playing the Tonkori, the five-stringed Ainu harp.
The Ainu have suffered from the oppression of their culture and language by Japan, especially since the 18th and 19th centuries. Only recently, in 2008, were the Ainu officially recognized again as an indigenous people culturally independent of Japan. As a result of the marginalization, there are now only a few hundred native speakers of the Ainu language left, making it a particularly worthy object of preservation. This music would not exist if the Ainu had not maintained their culture in remote and secret communities against Japanese hegemony. Thanks to Oki Kano, Umeko Ando’s interpretation of Ainu music has been recorded in great detail from within the community. “Upopo Sanke” is a treasure of the Ainu heritage.
“Upopo Sanke” was mixed again in part by Oki Kano before being mastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer. The 2LP plays on 45rpm and it sounds fantastic.

This album was the second album by Umeko Ando, the follow-up to “Ihunke”, originally recorded in 2000 and also re-released in 2018 by Pingipung together with Oki Kano.

$30

Umeko Ando 2LP “Ihunke” Pingipung

2nd edition

Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was a folk singer from Japan. She was a representative of the Ainu culture on the Hokkaido Island in the north of Japan.
“Ihunke” was her first album which was recorded with the Ainu musician and dub producer Oki Kano in 2000. It was released on CD in Japan only and is finally available on vinyl (2LP + linernotes, DLC included). “Ihunke” is following last year’s single “Iuta Upopo” [Pingipung 58, incl. M.Rux Remix] which had been received with overwhelming enthusiasm and was quickly sold out.
The 16 Ainu songs on “Ihunke” are delicate, natural gems. They are built on Oki Kano’s Tonkori patterns (a 5-string harp), over which Umeko Ando develops her repetitive, mantric vocals, often in a call-response manner. Oki Kano is one of very few professional Tonkori players who performs worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band. The songs possess a mystical energy – when crows call accurately with Ando’s brittle voice in the first song, it seems like natural powers join in with her music. Her voice sounds like animals of the sky and the forest.

$30

Albedo Gravitas CD “Luminescence” Musick Atlach

Albedo Gravitas are derived from the improvised duo group called Albedo Fantastica of Keiko Higuchi and Sachiko established in 2015 joined by Shizuo Uchida to be a trio. The kaleidoscopic voices of Higuchi and Sachiko intermingling with the piano, bass, electronics and melodica, seem to stagnate and cut up the space which to result to create their only unique improvisation. They have been constantly performing in Tokyo and released their first album Eihwaz from the French label An’archives in 2021.
This very latest one is their first studio recorded album ever. The music here appears to be a roaming in the tranquil darkness, breathing deeply and tracing the spiritual vein of gold while spotting luminescence.

$15 we’re doing some distribution for this release, shops and mailorders can ask for wholesale

Suishou No Fune 水晶の舟 LP The wind is spring – There is a rainbow in the sky – Love is hiding in the waves

LP ltd to 275, black vinyl, 3 colors silkscreened jacket with obi (white, black or kraft), inserts and a postcard Liner notes by Jon Dale

Printed by Alan Sherry

Release date : sept. 15th

Since forming in 1999, Suishou No Fune (A Ship Of Crystal), the vehicle for long-term musical collaborators Pirako Kurenai (guitar, voice) and Kageo (guitar), have been one of the most compelling groups in the Japanese underground. Their long, languorous songs are devastating in their simplicity, as though the gently sung ballads of the Velvet Underground’s third album were re-scored by the legendary Japanese free-rock gang, Les Rallizes Denudes. Their new album, 風は春、空は虹、愛は波間に隠れている (The wind is spring -. There is a rainbow in the sky – Love is hiding in the waves.), documents a live performance from May 2021, at Silver Elephant, where the duo are joined by Matsuedo Hideo on bass, and Mark Anderson (Greymouth, Mysteries Of Love) on drums.

The duo of Pirako Kurenai and Kageo have come a long way since their early performances and self-released CD-Rs – in the intervening decades, they’ve released albums on P.S.F., Holy Mountain, Important, Archive, 8mm and Essence, amongst others, each album another manifestation of the duo’s ever-changing same. You can hear them patiently toiling over these beauteous songs, with their choral melodies and lush waves of tonology, Kageo’s guitar radiating bejewelled chimes and dense passages of texture, pulling the songs into a black hole of quietude and sadness. And as Kurenai once told journalist Phil Kaberry, “Suishou No Fune’s songs, sounds and words are often born from heartrending feelings like sadness and pain”.

The wind is spring. There is a rainbow in the sky. Love is hiding in the waves begins with the deep blues of “Cherry”, a drawn-out drift-song that pivots on a most elegant two-chord mantra, as Kurenai sings, siren-like, amidst the sheets of noise Kageo peels from six strings. There’s something painterly about the duo’s playing here, and indeed, Kageo was a painter and Kurenai was a doll maker and watercolour painter when they met in the late ‘90s. On the flip side, a spare, spaced-out improvisation, “A Rainbow Is Floating”, acts as a prelude to “Endless Descent”, one of Suishou No Fune’s most remarkable songs, where a mesmeric guitar line endlessly coils and twines around the flicker and toll of Kurenai’s hypnotic one-chord strum. It’s a bruised, quietly desperate ending to an album that has an acroamatic air, as though the songs were transmitting to a cabal of lost spirits.

digital only :

https://anarchiveslabel.bandcamp.com/

As we’re almost sold out source, buyers can purchase from Souffle Continu shop in France and some more shops in Europe & UK.

https://www.soufflecontinu.com/

US buyers can order from https://worldgonemad.bigcartel.com/

A very few copies will be also available at Ergot records in NYC

26€ SOLD OUT