Reviews by kuvien

This is a collaboration, yes, but it needs to be known that Mikami, the vocalist and guitarist, wrote basically everything on here. You might think, therefore, that the other two performers are just along for the ride, but that wouldn't be right. Aketagawa's and Ishizuka's playing breathes as much spirit into this live music as its composer does. They all become co-creators in one of the wildest yet most intimate live recordings I've ever heard. A timeless classic that captures all that was free, wild, and exploratory of the best music of the 20th century. I'd been in Tokyo four years when this album was recorded, and I lived not too far from the venue. Too bad I wasn't into this kind of music then; I could've experienced an excellent show. I could've been the fourth person in the crowd. I'm pretty sure I would have sat stunned like an idiot as the piano playing washed over me. Like I didn't belong. Like I was intruding. The title track near the end is just...so beautiful and powerful. I wonder what the "large bill" is referring to. Some kind of insurmountable debt?

To be honest, I can take or leave American Primitivism as it stands, and most of the time, I just shrug and move on. Sure, it's good, but technical skill isn't all I'm looking for. Hell, sometimes it's not what I'm looking for at all. And then comes along an album like this, sprinkled with American Primitivism, but also with moaning, sighing, lo-fi vocals that are simultaneously soothing and anxious. A contradiction, yes, but it works. Like something's coming... if you'll just let it. This album is the moment of daybreak in music form.

ゴミ。何曜日に回収するだろう。

What happens when a clueless north-country boy comes to the big city and gets swept up in its charms and its filth, when the sake flows like a Tokyo river and the romantic relationships are as entangled as the metropolis' seedy backstreets and as obscured as the invisible stars? You get a wonderful album that's as much theater as it is music, peppered with just the right amount of found sounds and narration. Genre-wise, it's all over the place, and that's just what it should be: but that sole, mournful, dark-cabaret violin holds it all together. This album is basically one long love poem to Shinjuku, taking the good with the bad and embracing it all. And if you ever visit Shinjuku, you'll understand.

A beautiful, classy album led by shakuhachi and supported by bass, piano, and drums. Meditate in front of the stones at Ryouanji, and then get caught in the rain running for the bus! All but one track written by the pianist, Kikuchi. A lot of room to explore on this album, so take a peek between the notes and find whole worlds therein.

This is my fourth Tatsuro Yamashita album (because yall won't stop nosebleeding over such mediocre music), and I have yet to be impressed. Yes, sure, he's good at doing what he's doing, but what he's doing is fit only for background music in a restaurant. Is it something yall spin again and again? What a weird thing to do!

A percussion-led jazz album, the drums giving it a very Japanese feeling, being one of those extremely interesting dives into all that fearless space and wild, unpredictable rhythms that only jazz can provide. Do yourself a favor and expand your mind with this one.

I expected this to be merely a music artifact from a bygone era, but the passion with which Miyagi plays engages and delights me. I have a sneaking suspicion there are just the teeniest bit of Western moments on this album. Not sure, though.

Freak(ish) folk driven mainly by lo-fi whispered vocals and sparsely-strummed acoustic guitar, with flourishes of bamboo flutes and field recordings. The self-released vinyl of this album had only 25 hand painted sleeves, any hipster's wet dream. The album title, of course, is a contradiction, at least for me, because I cannot understand how sunlight through foliage could be scary. Perhaps it's a reflection of neurosis? Maybe because Hitomi is the Devil?

My kids hijacked my Spotify in the middle of this album, and I didn't care.

Upon the occasion of this specific response to the album, I was sitting in my listening room playing this album when my house guest came in to sit with me and listen, and I was glad he did, not only because he is my friend but because he's Japanese and could give me his insider perspective on the music. I have a better than normal grasp on Japanese culture, but I'm not a native, so I always like to learn more. As we discussed the album afterward, two words/phrases came to mind: setsunai and mono no aware, sadness and transient existence, respectively. This album is, in part, about the death of the musician's childhood friend at a young age, cut off in the bloom and promise of life, just as the cherry blossoms fall almost as soon as they reach full bloom. Musically, this album is extremes meeting, both soothing flutework and on-edge, manic vocals. This album satisfies on many levels, not least of which being the space for interpretation at the word level.

Goated fr fr 🔥 karaokecore good vibes shit. You get the right middle-aged women to sing this with you, and you'll be drowning in pussy at the bar.

Considering that the chrysanthemum symbolizes joy and resilience, the flower's meaning is quite ironic in this painful tale of a rural world lost to modernity. The main-character farmer in this concept album leaves his agrarian life for industrial work in the city, exchanging a rural existence for an urban one, with obvious commentary on the fickleness of bubble economics. From the farm to the city and then back to the farm, but a return to a region consumed by a globalist greed hoping to cash in on the demand for chrysanthemums. Beautiful vocals full of longing, accompanied by pensive guitars and strings.

This album is a pearl, formed in the secret place where Nikaido's sometimes-hazy sometimes-silly always-enchanting voice resides, deep under the folds of acoustic instruments and the field recordings of mundane life, shining with the afterglow of emotions undulating like waves from a gentle sea.

This unknown gem is an escape from all the shitty music you've been listening to. Two women, with guitar, theremin, and voice, weave a minimalist album of enchantment that has no beginning or end, just like chitotetochitotetochitoteto... I'm conflicted about them having only one album, though. It'd be nice to hear more from them--perhaps they could've explored man'yo-gana more--but there is something to be said for created a one-and-done jewel. 47 minutes of peace.

I want to hurt them for writing their band name in katakana.

[https://media.tenor.com/pYa4Mv5E66sAAAAC/jules-winnfield-chill-out.gif,Bitch be cool!]

This is what happens when I trip and fall down some middle-aged Japanese dude's RYM list of rare Japanese folk and rock vinyl releases. Soothing flutes, enchanting lap-harps, warbly, psychedelic vocals, and, of course, a spoken-word female part. This gives way to singalong campfire folk harmonies, and then something almost cowboy in its bouncy cadence pops up, before a return to the peaceful, melodic beginning. This record certainly doesn't stick to one theme!

I bet this is pretty good, if I could hear what's actually going on. The recording is awful... I mean awful. Perhaps a re-recording or a re-mastering (?) would do wonders for this psych pop out of late-70s Myanmar.

So little Persian reaches my ears, which is sad, because my ears like what they hear. This album is carried by the vocals--that's what holds my interest--those sidewinding, fluttering vocalizations so unlike the music I'm used to.