various artists - Ask The Sky

I bought this 30-year-old comp from a Half Price Books clearance shelf for $2 because it had Redd Kross on it. I figured, hell, if the "Phaseshifter"-era McDonald brothers are batting lead-off, then the rest of the lineup can't be too bad. And I was right. This one's a mix of UK & US early 90s indie and Japanese indie pop. The Penelopes' two songs are great, and Samantha's Favourite is a band I'll be keeping an eye out for. This one probably should be on I Hate The 90s, but I never heard back about contributing there, so here you go.

Discogs

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Yusuke Homma - Fushigi Yûgi・ Original Soundtrack

Not a compilation, per se, but it's a pretty cool find, features multiple performers of Yusuke Homma's score, and this is my blog, not yours. So it's allowed.

Mrs. Ape, the Mummy Mommy, has been revisiting a lot of anime in recent months. And I manage to turn up a lot of Taiwanese grey-market soundtracks out in this part of the country. Put it all together, and she's thrilled whenever I show up with the music from one of her childhood favs. Yusuke Homma's anison for Fushigi Yugi, featuring vocals from Akemi Satou and Yukari Konno, hits that sweet spot for both of us. For her, it evokes adolescent weekdays after school in a small town on the Central Coast, slotted beside the likes of Sailor Moon. For me, it's some of that sweet, sweet J-pop, reminding me it's a-ok to still get stoked on anime, even as I'm nearer to 50 than 15.

Discogs

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various artists - Zeppelin Classics

1/13/23: UPDATED WITH NEW DL LINK

Another P-Vine "Classics" comp. For my money, Thin Lizzy > Zep. But Brock Samson is a fan, so respect must be paid. And as much as I'd like to sit here, talking shit, Plant/Page/Jones/Bonham had fantastic taste and great influences. So this, like the previous one, makes for a pretty compelling comp. Imagine my joy when I found this one at Goodwill for a measly three-spot.

Discogs

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various artists - The Beach Boys Classics

1/13/23: UPDATED WITH NEW DL LINK

It's the early hours of December 25th as I write, and, yeah, I oughta go to bed, otherwise Santa won't come. But Santa never really comes, does he? The Amazon delivery driver is probably the closest modern version, and that poor bastard works a hell of a lot more for a lot less reward than the adoration of the world's children. Besides, I ate half a share-a-bag of M&Ms and chased 'em with a half gallon of zero calorie sweet tea, all in a quest to vibrate into the 6th dimension.

I've been reading a lot of Luke O'Neil lately. Can you tell?

There's a pretty interesting series that Tokyo's P-Vine Records did approximately 30 years ago. The "Classics" series took a famous group (in this case, the Beach Boys), and pulled together a compilation of songs either covered by the group or influencing the group. This one has a great mix of girl groups, early rock 'n' roll, a bit of surf and beach music, and a lot of late 50s/early 60s pop. I think it's a pretty rad concept, the creative sort that Rhino was also really good at coming up with around the same time period.

Old time music makes staying up late a bit easier. Sorry, Saint Nick.

Discogs

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various artists - Thrash Til Death

This is not my rip, but seeing as how I own a physical copy, I don't feel bad about sharing.

I have had a rip of this since the early Limewire days, and it was with some joy that I found my copy of "Thrash Til Death" at Disk Union during my first trip to Tokyo in 2010. I didn't expect to find a long-sought-after Pusmort release on the other side of the world from home, much less at a pretty reasonable price ($20, if memory serves).

It's up there with the Gauze and Assfort 7"s that Prank put out in the late 90s, as well as 625's circa-2000 thrash revival releases, that opened me up to the sicko world of Japanese hardcore, in all of its various iterations. Not a bad song in the whole lot.

Discogs

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Elvin Jones "Special Quartet" – Tribute To John Coltrane: A Love Supreme

I may not believe in God, but I do believe that "A Love Supreme" is sacred music.

Here's drummer Elvin Jones' recreating one of my most treasured recordings with Wynton Marsalis rearranging the music for trumpet. It never got released here in the States; this is an EU release.

It ranks fourth of my list of recordings of "A Love Supreme".

Discogs

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Tomita - Snowflakes Are Dancing

The older I get, the more new age I find myself listening to. I've found a few Tomita records on my sojourns into the world, and they're always a welcome addition to my collection. "Snowflakes Are Dancing" was Tomita's first record to get released outside Japan, his first release on RCA Red Seal, and the first of his five 70s records adapting classical music for the synthesizer. Here, it's Claude Debussy, channeled into quadraphonic Moog. It's just great stuff.

For dorks only: this was ripped from the 1991 CD reissue, produced with Dolby Surround encoding. So, you know, if you still have a hi-fi, feel free to get real loud and blow this out. The later editions have some corny looking artwork that I can do without; honestly, I'd prefer a color scheme on this one that was more in line with the aquas and greens present in the original 1974 art. But if you want to get really buck wild, Music On Vinyl released a 180g reissue of this earlier this year, featuring the original record on crystal clear & white marbled vinyl. It looks pretty sweet, and I'm sure sounds the same.

Discogs

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Tomita ‎- Live At Linz, 1984 (The Mind Of The Universe)

It's the fifth of the month, and the rent still due, but let's look to the future, shall we?

In a step away from my normal fare of "three chords and the truth" (let's be fair, it's more "two chords, a blast beat, and an haiku"), I thought I'd share a recent obsession. It's Japanese electronic artist and composer Isao Tomita, whose back catalog is mostly, sadly and unfairly out of print here in the States. Now, I'm not a streamer, so I've no clue if you can just whip up something like his recording of Holst's "The Planets" on Spotify. But I've turned up a few of his recordings on vinyl, CD, and tape recently, and I think it's worth checking into.

Brian Eno (rightfully) gets a lot of credit for originating/popularizing ambient music, but Tomita contemporaneously served as a counterpart to Eno and Wendy Carlos, bringing synthesized sounds to the music listening public in the 60s and 70s. Tomita composed music for Japanese gymnasts and anime soundtracks, adapted composers like Mussorgsky and Holst, and made a record of 60s pop and rock standards...basically as a Quadrophonic demo for Sony. Without knowing it, I heard his music first as a kid, watching "Star Gazers" and hearing him adapt Debussy for the theme song. Hell...he even did the theme for the "Zaitoichi" TV series.

ANYHOWWWWWWW...

In September 1984, Tomita performed live at the Ars Electronica festival on the bank of the River Danube in Linz, Austria. The program was nothing but bangers: Holst, Stravinsky, Wagner, Vaughan Williams. Even John Williams' theme from "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" made an appearance. It's a pretty awesome concert, the sort of thing that you could play a kid and made them fall in love with composition and the classical tradition. I wish I'd heard it in full when I was 8...or seen it live.

RCA hasn't reissued this anywhere since 1991, which I think sucks. See for yourself. I assume, as a purveyor of the finer things in life, like 20-minute long records with 30 songs, and forgotten Italian giallo movies, you'll probably dig this.

Discogs

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Sailor Moon & The Scouts - Lunarock

Here's another shameless grab at clicks and downloads, featuring the late-90s voice talent from the English language "Sailor Moon". It should not surprise you in the least that this is a North American-only release; no Japanese company would record and release something like this.

I'm no great expert on anime soundtracks or video game music, but I come across a fair amount of it in discount bins and thrift stores around these parts, so I guess I have a greater than average familiarity, because I'll be damned if I can pass it up. I think it's great that the best in that industry have gained worldwide recognition in the past two decades, thus negating the need for a market specific release like this. It never ceases to amaze me how content providers will underestimate the tastes of their audience, dumbing it down while localizing while neglecting what makes an IP interesting in the first place.

Anyhow, here's the second North American market Sailor Moon release. It's a far cry from the Takanori Arisawa composed and arranged from the original Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn series, but it worth remembering, I suppose. But it does combine English language music recorded for DIC's localization with Japanese songs from idol group DALI and vocalist Yoko Ishida. It gives it this weird mix of second-rate Stan Bush vibes with the occasional Harajuku outburst.

Hell of a week to misplace my main hard drive, is really what I'm getting at.

Discogs

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G.I.S.M. and their Relapse reissue

G.I.S.M., aka Grubby Incest Stripper Mastitis, aka Grand Imperialism Social Murder

My very first exposure to the Japanese hardcore legends known as G.I.S.M. was, like so many other American punx, via their track on R Radical's landmark comp, 1984's "International P.E.A.C.E. Benefit Compilation". Slotted as the second track on Side A, between Articles of Faith and Neon Christ, the Tokyo quartet supplied the lead track from the previous year's debut LP. "Endless Blockads for the Pussyfooter" was so different from anything I'd heard up to that point. It felt more like some insane amalgam of hardcore, metal, glam, and noise collage made by lunatic punx, with crazy leads and solos by Randy Uchida and that wild-ass echoing vocal by Sakevi. Of course, none of their other work really ever turned up around me. If it showed up in Baltimore, it'd typically get picked up immediately by someone who lived closer to the store. So I'd hear more the legend than experience the music. Hearing a second or third generation tape, or a crackly bootleg 12", was akin to sharing old VHS tapes of Bo Jackson with a younger football fan. I definitely wanted to experience more. Now, the internet has been good to me, in as much as I've tracked down all their early releases digitally. It's not the same as slapping a record on the turntable, but it serves as an apéritif, whetting my appetite for the day that I eventually come across a copy of "Detestation".

Apparently, I'll be able to dine on a physical copy on December 4, as Relapse Records is taking preorders right now for the first ever authorized reissue of the first G.I.S.M. album. A split release with Japan's Beast Arts, this is an authentic recreation of the original 1983 Dogma/City Rocker release. What's new is the obi strip that comes on the 12", as well as a new CD reissue featuring three additional tracks, AND a first-time-ever release on cassette. The limited edition 12" on white and cassette with clear shell are already sold out, but the black vinyl, black cassette, and CD are still available, along with some really dope looking t-shirts and a zip-up hoodie.

If you're at all into Japanese hardcore, metal, or independent music, you know what a big deal this release is. And the idea that Sakevi is working with Relapse on this reissue suggests that we might get some additional reissues of their two later LPs, as well as comp tracks, which is totally exciting. So, don't sleep on this; slap that "preorder" button, tout en suite! But don't take my word for it. Go ahead and sample this RIGHT NOW!

Yaphet Kotto / This Machine Kills / Envy

Yaphet Kotto, circa 2003 (photo by Naz Hamid)

I'd imagine any show featuring these three bands would have been a pretty good one.

In 2002, Santa Cruz's Yaphet Kotto and This Machine Kills from Santa Barbara traveled to Japan to play with Envy from Tokyo. The tour was entitled "No Sleep Til Jaguchi". I have no clue what that's a reference to. When the tour ended, the three bands wrote a song called "A Collaborative Song", which was then performed by the lineup of Steve and Brian from This Machine Kills, Casey & Mag from Yaphet Kotto, and Masahiro, Nobukata, and Tetsuya from Envy. It's all pretty magical.

The divergent fortunes of each band after this Japan-only release fascinates me to no end. Yaphet Kotto would carry on for another three years, putting out one more 12" with Ebullition and making music that was out of step with the popular paradigm of the early/mid-aughts, but that fits in really well with what seems to be hot with the punx of 2020. Casey from YK now plays in an Oi! band with Lars from Rancid; Mag has a new band called Middle-Aged Queers that looks to be following the Limp Wrist template of fun queer punk.

This Machine Kills called it a day shortly after this tour. Steve Aoki became a pretty big deal in the following years. Dim Mak had already become the West Coast's answer to Troubleman by 2002, putting out super hip records from indie bands just emerging above ground. Within a few years, they'd be the home base for Bloc Party and Pretty Girls Make Graves. Then, of course, Aoki started making his name for dance music, becoming one of the few people to headline both the Ché Café and Electric Daisy Festival.

Envy really started hitting their groove and making their rep with this tour. They followed this up with 2003's self-released "A Dead Sinking Story", which would soon be championed by Mogwai in the UK and in the States by Level Plane Records. Their next three full-lengths would explode brains, melding post-rock sounds with Tetsuya's intenses spoken/screamed vocals. They collaborated with Justin Broadrick and Thursday on separate split 12"s, both of which continued to set bars for what could be done coming from the world of 90s hardcore. And after a break of three years, they returned this year with "The Fallen Crimson", which I really should buy a copy of.

Discogs

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