Haruomi Hosono’s second solo effort, Tropical Dandy, now released as a standalone album for the first time in the U.S., shows the bassist and bandleader moving on from his folk-rock beginnings. A complex, eccentric and deeply committed commentary on exotica, sonic simulacra and tropical vibes, it’s full of contradictory constructions and proud artificialities that tap into something deeper than the merely real.
Category: Japan
World Standard :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the debut album from World Standard, the avant-pop moniker of wunderkind musician Soichiro Suzuki. Also an accomplished and passionate music writer (including the Mondo Music series on exotica and lounge music), Suzuki joined us from his home in Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about his varied musical and writing career, now spanning four decades. Among the topics discussed include formative influences like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, deriving inspiration from David Lynch and Twin Peaks, his long running collaboration with Hauromi Hosono, creating music for tinnitus sufferers, giving talks and lectures on The Beatles in Japan, dissecting pop music with Jim O’Rourke and much more.
Go Kurosawa :: Soft Shakes
The post-Kikagaku Moyo universe expands with the release of soft shakes, the solo debut from Go Kurosawa, the disbanded Japanese quintet’s drummer and vocalist. The second solo release from a member of the now defunct band, following Tomo Katsurada’s Dream of the Egg EP last year, soft shakes finds Kurosawa, who is also a co-founder of the excellent Guruguru Brain label, remaining largely true to his former outfit’s sound while also injecting his own sandcastle style of playful eclecticism.
Modern Bible: A Lost Acid Folk Masterpiece from the Japanese Underground
As a record collector, some albums exist more like myths than tangible objects. You come across a passing mention, just enough to spark curiosity, and soon you’re chasing shadows, trying to confirm whether the record even exists. About 15 years ago, this happened to me with a record called Modern Bible, a recording deep from the Japanese underground credited to an Angura theatre troupe named Gekidan Buraiha (“Gekidan” being a Japanese word for “theatre troupe”).
Happy End :: S/T (1973)
When Japanese four-piece Happy End wanted to follow up their folk rock masterpiece Kazemachi Roman with their own slice of the “California sound” in 1972, they went about it the natural way. Show up at Hollywood’s mythical Sunset Sound studio, equipped with a suitcase full of cash and a pearl (a special gift for the producer Van Dyke Parks). Though the language and cultural barrier proved challenging, Haruomi Hosono looks back on the sessions fondly. With a decisively mellow tone throughout, the final eponymous Happy End record recalls formative west coast influences such as Buffalo Springfield, while foreshadowing the innovative solo ventures of Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki and Shigeru Suzuki.
Sketch Show :: Audio Sponge
Even for Yellow Magic Orchestra loyalists, the new millennium timing of the short-lived Sketch Show made the project easy to fly under the radar. Audio Sponge is the 2002 debut from duo Hauromi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. While veering back at seminal influences like Brian Wilson, the mellowness of the compositions here are downright hypnotically restrained; a canopy of soft glitch samples, acousto-electric rhythms and relaxed vocals that simply evaporate as soon as they’re uttered.
Takuro Okada :: The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line
The stateside debut of a versatile Japanese guitarist focuses on mostly solo work, largely recorded at home over a period of years. Encompassing ambient ECM mellowness, electronic urgency and tangy noir, The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line shows us an eclectic musician stubbornly chasing tranquility and always restlessly on the move.
Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai :: S/T (1975)
Recorded slap bang in the middle of the 1970s is this free US/Japanese free jazz behemoth Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai, which translates to ‘Lifestyle Improvement Committee’ – a jocular reference to the reference to the Marxist discourse doing the rounds among radical students at the time. The record involves the coming together of key figures of the New York (William Parker, Ahmed Abdullah and Rashid Sinan) and Tokyo (Kazutoki “Kappo” Umezu and Yoriyuki Harada) scenes.
Tomo Katsurada :: Dream of the Egg
When Kikagaku Moyo surprisingly called it quits a few years back, one naturally anticipated that we’d eventually see new projects (solo or otherwise) trickle out from the uber-talented five piece. Described as a “unique fusion of music and visual art”, the first offering arrives as the debut EP from lead vocalist Tomo Katsurada.
Chu Kosaka :: Arigato
Chu Kosaka’s Arigato is wide-open pastoral bliss. The natural extension of Happy End with a bit more of a singer-songwriter orientation, Kosaka pieces together what could be the finest example of American country rock through the lens of a Japanese perfectionism. Don’t let that fool you. The tunes are loose.
Masayoshi Fujita :: Migratory
Masayoshi Fujita says his music aims to evoke the skies and mountains of his native village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, in Japan. To some extent, they really do: the sedative vibraphones and marimba of Migratory, bundled as they are with a geographical tracklist, allow us to visualize the natural tranquility that is so often associated with a branch of traditional Japanese music.
Les Rallizes Dénudés :: 屋根裏 YaneUra Oct. ’80
In the two years since Les Rallizes Dénudés began their campaign to officially release the recordings that have been stashed away in their sizeable archives, Takashi Mizutani’s famously enigmatic underground […]
Yoshiko Sai :: Mangekyou
Before the explosion of city pop, before shibuya-key and Tokyo’s collectors mania, there was already Mangekyou itself, the 1975 debut record from Yoshiko Sai, then just a 22 year old dropout from the art school of Kyoto. Approaching the 50 year anniversary of Sai’s legendary debut, WEWANTSOUNDS has announced a reissue that will see the album available outside of Japan for the first time ever.
Virtual Dreams II :: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999
Circumventing the music collector mania of Japan at the height of the acid house fever of the 1990s, these minimal tracks, based on sharp silken hi-hats and psychedelic space-age phasers, add a new twist to the history of the Detroit genre at the same time that they sound as contemporary as any new work by Actress, Jon Hopkins, or Pantha du Prince.
Ginger Root :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Ahead of forthcoming record SHINBANGUMI, Ginger Root joins us to discuss the musical and visual world building that went into the endeavor. Drawing on new horizons as well as the pastiche of eighties City Pop and vintage soul, we explore a deep dive into the musician and filmmaker’s meticulously crafted cinematic world. Plus, recording drums in a dusty karaoke bar and the importance of Glen Campbell covers.