A rare example of a Japanese jazz-fusion record that’s aged well. Kimiko Kasai is a jazz chanteuse and songwriter extraordinaire who’s worked with the likes of Stan Getz, Oliver Nelson, and Herbie Hancock (this record is killer if you’re into that sort of thing). Unlike a lot of Tokyo Special‘s contemporaries, the record isn’t front-loaded with single-worthy tracks but instead burns slowly and evenly, from its unhurried but brutally hooky start (“バイブレイション [Love Celebration],” written by Tatsuro Yamashita) to its rolling piano-jam finish (“待ってて [Laidback Mad Or Mellow],” written by Akiko Yano).
Kimiko’s vocals are terrific here, sometimes breathy and pillowy and elsewhere powerful and with admirable range. Even the obligatory slow jams are tastefully produced and never veer into cloying territory–I love “木もれ陽 (Sequoia Forest)” for its heady, misty backing harmonies, judicious use of chimes, and woodblocks that mimic birds and insects. Excitingly, you can hear the pre-city pop and AOR influences taking shape. If you don’t like smooth jazz fusion, I can’t help you. If you do, please step inside.
Another progressive and very beautiful collection of compositions from undersung genius Daniel Lentz. Missa Umbrarum, or “mass of shadows,” is named in part for its use of 118 “sonic shadows” in the title piece, produced using a 30 second tape delay technique. It was originally written in 1973, and a first version of “O-Ke-Wa” was written for eight voices in 1974, so I’d assume that “Postludium” was written around the same time. Though it includes a singing of the Agnus Dei, the piece explores similar tonal territory to “Lascaux,” which appears on his excellent On The Leopard Altaras well as on some later releases of Missa Umbrarum.
A mystical invocation of the Christian Last Supper, much of the titular mass employs a severe, fixated kind of devotional singing that makes me think of Geinoh Yamashirogumi, though it also includes wine glass resonance, with the pitches shifting as the singers drink. On the first repetition of a phrase, the lowest notes of the segment are played, and then the singers drink from the glasses before adding the next layer at a higher pitch. Though there are only eight voices in the piece, between this layering technique and the use of the tape delay “sonic shadows,” we eventually end up with a very large choir, cut through with the weightless ring of the glasses. Lentz has long been interested in both the sonic and aesthetic value of wine in performance–please refer to this bananas interview for more information.
The other two pieces are gentler, more pillowing explorations of vocal dialogue, the soft bubbling percussion of Native American bone rasps, and an even more expansive wine glass resonance that very much evokes a cathedral full of sound. When asked about the closing piece in an interview, Lentz had this to say:
Interviewer: “O-ke-wa (North American Eclipse),” a piece for multiple voices, drum, bone rasps and bells, is based on the O-ke-wa, the Seneca Native American dance for the dead. Ritual appears to be implicit to this 1974 piece in terms of structure and explicit in terms of performance.
Lentz: In [both versions of “O-ke-wa”], each singer is a soloist having his / her own text and melody. The melodies become the harmonies via the singers extending the notes of each of their melodies. It’s to be performed with the performers moving around the listeners, allowing individual lyrics and music to always be somewhere else when it sounds again. It is also how the original O-ke-wa dance was done in the Seneca Native American death ceremony – usually from dusk to dawn for them. The ritual element of this piece is very important to me, as it is for “Missa Umbrarum.” I am a small part Seneca, briefly a Catholic as well. The piece works best in a resonant environment.
Peak private press folk. Moody, gorgeous, stripped down acoustic guitar and flute, all written and performed by Javier Somarriba. Plenty of warm room tone and vinyl static if you’re into that sort of thing. The last track of the b-side, “Dos Samurais Continúan Luchando Aún En Las Nubes” (“two Samurai still fighting in the clouds”) reminds me, perhaps very deliberately, of the Kwaidan soundtrack, with its howling wind flute dissonance and metal-edged koto mimicry. Ideal reading indoors music.
Peerless genius. She brought us decades of joy and left us with a mountain of gold. If you didn’t grow up with Aretha (I didn’t) and are aren’t sure where to start with her enormous discography, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You is an easy entry point as it’s among the best ever made, but I might also suggest YouTube, as so many of her most electrifying moments are from her live performances. Here, here, here, here, and here are some ideal inroads. Thank you for everything, Aretha; you won’t be forgotten.
Note that I’ll be removing this download link soon.
An old–really old–favorite for me. Super bare bones, unadorned post punk pop recorded in a garden shed. Largely just guitar and vocals, with the odd bit of hand percussion, so it’s loose, brusque, and lo-fi. Despite the title, the airiness, and the occasional bird sounds, these are songs of heartbreak and longing, but delivered with a deadpan that somehow manages to be cynically blasé and willfully naive at the same time. Dazed and unassuming in a way that will certainly get under your skin if you give it the chance. Despite (what I assume was) some deliberate irony in titling such an understated and unblinking record Beach Party, I would argue that you could successfully soundtrack a beach party with this, as long as it’s a meandering, low-key kind of party, maybe with a bonfire, but definitely no volleyball or solo cups.
Marine Girls was originally comprised of sixth form school friends Gina Hartman and Tracey Thorn, though by the time they released their debut Beach Party, they had expanded to include Jane Fox on bass and her younger sister Alice on percussion. They went on to release two more records before disbanding to work on separate projects–most notably, Tracey Thorn went on to find more critical success as one half of sophisti-pop darlings Everything But The Girl. For fans of Young Marble Giants, or even Dolly Mixture (friendly reminder how good that record is).
You may remember Piero Milesi from his excellent The Nuclear Observatory of Mr. Nanof(hi Adam, thanks again)–here he’s in collaboration with Daniel Bacalov, another linchpin of Italian minimalism from whom we’ll definitely be hearing more in the future.
The two made La Camera Astratta as a score for a large-scale dance and performance piece, also referred to as a “video opera” by Studio Azzurro and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti (you can see some excerpts here). Though the record was released in 1989, it looks as if the score and the piece itself were both made in 1987.
The score is most memorable for its use of samples, which are often treated as percussion: water splashing, a camera snap, gasps, exhales, shushes, shouts, and sighs. At times it becomes difficult to distinguish between sample and instrument: “Camera 1 Parte” is perforated by what sounds like crickets but (I’m pretty sure) is some kind of percussion; regardless, it blankets the song in a hushed evening pastorality. Elsewhere, the dry, blunt avant-gardism of “Sequenza Ragazze 1 Parte” might appeal to Meredith Monk fans; and personal favorite “Acqua” is deeply playful (despite being used to accompany some pretty anxious moments in the performance piece)–a calypso-esque percussive backbone punctuated by bathtub splashes, camera snaps, a cash register bell, worked up into nine frothy minutes. Though La Camera Astratta might seem deceptively academic upon first listen, it opens up with increasing generosity, revealing something deeply thoughtful, meditative, and even joyful.
Richard Tinti travelled to Borneo and recorded the sound of the forest. When Ariel Kalma listened to it, he could hear his melodies sung by the birds, even sometimes in the very keys he uses… Natural harmony and inspiration seems to flow from the same spring. Thus began the studio work: to tune, record, mix the different element together; to the animals and atmosphere of the jungle, answered generators, flutes, saxophones, bird-calls, synthesizers, organs. Some surprises also occurred, like this fly coming down to the mic at the end of “Planet-Air” …
Mixed at the Groupe of Research in Music (GRM), a department of French National Audiovisual Institute (INA).”
Deep, densely psychedelic synth experiments. At times it’s difficult to distinguish between insects and electronics, and difficult to tell whether the natural cadence of bird song has been looped to sync with synthetic rhythms or vice versa. Big harmonium, reverb-soaked flute, circular breathing saxophone, long delays, drum machines, flanged keyboards, and plenty of synth, alongside birds, forest sounds, and war drums. Mostly voiceless, with the exception of the stark and heavy “Osmose Chant.” Clever play with space and distance, with the music sometimes pulling back into the distance in a way that allows room tone (or even unintended noises, such as the aforementioned fly on the mic, which makes several appearances) to become a kind of third musical actor. The whole thing feels like a very well-executed joke about what “ambient music” is. Try it with good speakers, if you can.
Tracks 1-6 originally comprised Disc A of the 1978 double LP split with Ariel Kalma and Richard Tinti, with the second disc comprised of Tinti’s tracks (if anyone has these and would be willing to share, I’d love to hear them). Disc A was later rereleased in 2006 with two additional unreleased tracks that were recorded at the same time, credited as just to Ariel Kalma. While it’s just these Disc A tracks that I’m sharing today, given that these were made in collaboration with Tinti and with the aid of his field recordings (recorded on a Nagra recorder), I’m using the original credits. (I’m particularly fond of the closing unreleased track, “Orguitar Soir,” which is one of the more mellow moments in the collection: just gentle guitar plucking and a keyboard drone tucked into forest sounds.)
Another dear favorite from Penguin Cafe Orchestra, a project spearheaded by UK-born composer and musician Simon Jeffes. Jeffes saw PCO as the ongoing soundtrack to a dream he had had while suffering from food poisoning in the south of France, as well as a vessel through which to explore his interest in “world” folk music, particularly African percussion. The project that didn’t exactly suffer from under-exposure, if their dozens of commercial song placements are any indication. Still, I think the music very much belongs here. Plenty of ink has already been spilled by much more knowledgeable people about the group, so without attempting to poorly explain what makes this music great, I’ll say that what I love about this record, as with much of PCO’s catalogue, is the way it challenges and subverts what background music is and what it can do.
Though the exuberant “Music From A Found Harmonium,” named after the discarded pump organ upon which it was composed that Jeffes found in an alleyway in Japan, is easily the record’s most famous track, I’m a huge sucker for more pared back moments like “Prelude & Yodel,” which milks little more than three string instruments for far more than the sum of their parts; and the heartbreaking “Isle Of View (Music For Helicopter Pilots).” Elsewhere are hints of reggae (“Music by Numbers”); baroque, as per usual (“Sheep Dip”); and the perfect Latin jazz riff “Heartwind,” co-written by none other than Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lofty, nostalgic, and unabashedly sentimental, but with enough warmth and playfulness to keep it precise and never saccharine. Razor sharp and meticulous musicianship from a group of musicians who, by this time, had fully locked into the ethos of what they were doing and how best to play with each other. I hope you have a great time with this.
Super bare bones meditative instrumentals. Ocarina, Tibetan bells and bowls, bamboo flutes, and koto. I haven’t been able to confirm a release year, but my best guess is 1988. It looks as if the pair later released a record with a similar tracklisting in 2010, though the songs that have the same titles as these seem like modified versions. Predictably gorgeous room tone. I love how intimately you can hear the inhales and exhales of the flutist–despite being recorded in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, there are moments where, rather than feeling drowned in cavernous echo, you feel as if you’re sitting a few inches away from the musician. From the liner notes:
We only use the pure sounds of instruments wrought from the earth: clay, wood, bamboo, precious metals. As we performed in the Cathedral, we experienced an interplay between the instruments and the reverberation of the Cathedral itself, as if the Cathedral were a sacred instrument.
The Tibetan bowls have been used in Buddhist meditations for many centuries. The ocarina, also called “huaca” in the Andes, means “breath of spirit.” In the Andean burial grounds, huacas call forth the Divine and assist the passage of souls to the next world.
The Japanese koto, a 13 stringed instrument made of Paulownia wood, came to Japan in the 8th century from China. The four-foot-long side-blown bamboo flute has only four finger holes, and uses the same pentatonic scale as the shakuhachi. We use Eastern as well as Western musical scales.
Edie Hartshorne has lived and studied in Japan, Europe, and South America, and has played Japanese and Western music for over 25 years. She uses music to create group rituals and ceremonies, and sacred spaces for individuals. She works with poets and artists exploring the synthesis of music, image, and words.
Janet Bray has worked with sacred sound for over 30 years in music and healing. She synthesizes disciplines of music, Ashtanga yoga, meditation, dream work and integrative hypnotherapy. Janet’s commitment is to guide those who seek inner growth and harmony.
Classic favorite. A singer, actress, model, and TV personality, Susan (Suzan Nozaki) was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a French-American father, and as a teenager worked widely in commercials, radio, theater, and voiceover. This was the first of two records she released on Sony with a dream team: production, arrangement, and drums by Yukihiro Takahashi, co-production and guitar by Kenji Ohmura, programing by Hideki Matsutake, bass by Haruomi Hosono, keyboards by Ryuichi Sakamoto, cover photo by Masayoshi Sukita, etc.
It is, as you might imagine from its context, a raucous, scronky, brilliant pop record. The 60’s referentiality shows up not just in the title track, a Lovin’ Spoonful cover, but also in the surf and garage rock sensibility of the songwriting (“24,000回のキッス,” “Dream Of You”) and the proclivity towards psychy vocal processing–though of course the overall texture and programming speak very loudly to 1980. The record’s best moments evidence both decades simultaneously: “Ah! Soka” flits between dry electro synth verses and choruses of reverb-soaked psychy guitar pop. My favorite is closer “Screamer,” with a very YMO churning and whirring percussive backbone underneath warped, spacious vocal layering–at almost seven minutes long, by the time it’s over I always wish it would keep rolling for a few more minutes. Still, nothing ever feels gimmicky or formulaic–there are too many thoughtful details for that. I hope you love this as much as I do!
