Reviews 353: Island Sounds from Japan 2009 - 2016
The newest release from Time Capsule carries the completely irresistible title of Island Sounds from Japan 2009 - 2016 and finds label co-founder Kay Suzuki curating a miniature compilation aiming to present a personalized window into modern Japanese music. I say personalized because, rather than seeking to reflect what is contemporaneously popular, this release celebrates what Kay calls the “Island Sound,” which comprises a sort of loose and tropically-minded ideology dedicated to expanding genre boundaries and fusing musical traditions from all around the world. Thus across the vinyl’s five tracks, we are treated to a Caribbean-tinged reggae rewrite of a legendary jazz classic, a polychromatic surf slide and Hawaiian psych groove out, a fried and freaky mutant disco stomper led by chugging funk basslines, slashing fuzz riffs, and southern blues slide guitars, and an elegiac fusion of Aino folk, Afrobeat, and dub exotica made in tribute to the profound grief experience by both Syrian refugees and oppressed indigenous cultures within Japan’s own borders. As well, Island Sounds from Japan 2009 - 2016 sits nicely alongside the recently released Oto No Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988-2018 in the following sense. While many reissue labels have their sights set on Japan’s musical past, with most of the focus being given to the rare groove, jazz, city pop, and environmental ambient music of the 70s and 80s, the curators of both Island Sounds of Japan 2009 - 2016 and Oto No Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988-2018 choose instead to spotlight lesser known and ever more modern corners of Japanese music, thus collecting together the kind of leftfield oddities and impossibly creative genre mashups that will inspire future generations of obsessive crate diggers, balearic minded DJs, and visionary producers.
Island Sounds from Japan 2009 - 2016 (Time Capsule, 2020) Saxophonist Akira Tatsumi made his name with The Determinations, an Osaka-based ska band operating throughout the 90s and early 00s. Following the group’s dissolution, Tatsumi dove ever deeper into Caribbean musical forms such as calypso and soca and following a solo album in 2013, he began to brainstorm ways he and his fellow musicians could develop a more distinctive musical identity…something “they could export to the world instead of merely following their influences.” Thus a regular jam out called “Akira Tatsumi presents Island Jazz Session” was born, featuring an ever-shifting collective of jazz and reggae musicians who eventually recorded an EP under the name Speak No Evil, the centerpiece of which is an inspired re-interpretation of the Wayne Shorter classic of the same name. Stabbing piano chords bring in a throbbing riddim, with hi-hats guiding the flow, snare rimshots cracking, piano chords skanking on waves of tropical sunshine, and Shinichiro Akihiro’s palm-muted guitars scratching on the beat. Tanko’s sensual basslines bob the body and work through zany high note accents as familiar horn themes flow over the mix, with Tatsumi’s alto and Motoharu’s tenor and soprano singing together through moaning reveries, descending through cinematic refrains, and bleating in bombast as Pablo Anthony’s martial snare rolls and proto-fusion drum fills break free from the riddim glide to bash and crash towards the sky. Eventually, we settle down into a deep reggae zone out while the saxophonists alight on dizzying solos, with hyperkinetic blues spirals and circular marathon cascades intertwining and occasionally shrieking towards free jazz desperation. Then comes a dreamy piano solo from Tetsuya Hataya, which intersperses blazing runs and percussive cluster chords as the entire length of the keyboard is explored. After these solo passages, we return to Shorter’s classical horn themes, with pleading blues melodies and soar ascents married to a sun-soaked Kingston skank. And following a false ending, everything drops back in heavier than before…the bass now locked into a sinister pulse while ghostly dub pianos underly a panning panorama of alien saxophone mesmerism.
The second track comes from AQATUKI, a group formed by “two guitar kids” Taaki and Chen who, together with a fluid collective of musicians, have been developing their own strand of psychedelia since the late 90s, one equally influenced by 70s space rock and 90s rave. However, for “Wakanoura,” Taaki, Chen, and friends are in bathing in rays of tropical sunshine, as the track is based around a Chen’s gemstone guitar harmonics, which themselves take inspiration from the junkyard-sourced idiophonics of Konono Nº1. As the prismatic guitar layers spread out across an infinite ocean surface, tight psych rock beats from Toda3 and Moro enter to sway the body while Taaki’s slide guitar glides between textures of Hawaiian rock and surfadelic splendor. Aknee’s bass chugs along and brings atmospheres of 50s pop romance as Chen’s crystalline harmonic webs flow into shimmering seaside arpeggios…the whole thing bringing visions of sunset skies and dolphins dashing through coral reefs. In fact, the liner notes explain that, in addition to taking inspiration from Konono Nº1, “Wakanoura” in finds the band lost in nostalgic revery as they collectively remember a beautiful sunset bar they played in the titular location. At some point, the track erupts in small scale as rimshots rain over the stereo field, basslines move down low, and double-time hi-hats add further propulsion to the rhythmic flow, with my mind drifting to the drug-induced balearica of Pharaohs and the post-rock exotica of Cul de Sac…especially as shimmering webs of polyrhythmic six string harmony support increasingly far out slide guitar explorations. Descending surf chords signal another transition, with the rhythms evolving into a sort of equatorial breakbeat while basslines dance on sunbeams, fuzzy slide hooks refract rays of tropical light, and distorted surf-psych licks hold down the groove. Elsewhere, we lock into a sort eternal two-note loop of tropical island fantasy…with everything breathing in unison and seeking out an eternal horizon…all before the cycles are broken by a glorious guitar solo, which rides high in the sky as tapped ride cymbals spread golden wavefronts in every direction.
Just as Aqatuki found themselves backpacking to India and Southeast Asia in the 90s to bathe in psychedelic radiance, so did Altz, who also took inspiratios from “Japanese punk originator[s]” Murahachibu and a host of other avant-rock bands discovered in his youth. Around the turn of the millennium, the artist began producing on his own via a computer and MPC, and has since enjoyed a prolific and eclectic career, with releases appearing on well known labels such as DFA, EM Records, and Bearfunk. “Orympia Rocks,” which comes from Bear Funk’s Hibernation (Vol. 1) sampler, slams right away into crushing disco kicks and ringing cymbals, with strange reverb effects spreading outwards into exo-planetary caverns. Chugging punk funk basslines cut in and out alongside chopped and mangled fuzz guitar riffs, which drop in and out from all sides of the mix or suddenly rocket across the spectrum while everything else flows and transforms through dub delay chains. After a surprising cut to silence, we drop back into the groove, with stoned basslines and muscular disco house freakbeats stomping beneath a grease-soaked cascade of country-fried slide guitar…a completely strange and inspired mash up that, as told by the liner notes, was inspired by Altz spinning southern rock classics such as The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The result comes off like something from the wildest reaches of the Mind Fair universe…with everything anxious, unsettled, and stubbornly refusing to lock in, preferring instead to tease out various elements while maniacally subverting well known forms of disco, house, funk, and stoner rock into a maddening dancefloor fever dream. Bleeping and blooping synthesizers beam in from faraway galaxies, crazed whistles zoom skywards, and occasionally, the slide guitar flies solo over the drums...its tremolo-soaked blues meditations fly solo before everything devolves into a storm of dubwise chaos. Later, laughing children induce LSD visions that obscure the mutant disco rock groove out and towards the end, after the drums disperse, the southern rock slide guitars transform towards Hawaiian tropicalia as calming ocean waves crash to shore.
In the liner notes, Kay Suzuki presents a beautiful and personal meditation on Keiichi Tanaka’s unique talents as well as his tragic passing. Indeed, Tanaka was a world traveller, having ventured as far as Mali, Senegal, and Morocco to learn a wide swath of rhythmic folk traditions. Coupled with a private lesson from Afrobeat legend Tony Allen, these experience established Tanaka as a distinctly skilled and diverse drummer…something that was on full display in his band Kingdom Afrorocks. After Kingdom Afrorock dissolved in 2014, Tanaka relocated from Tokyo to Hokkaido and reconnected with deep dub and Ainu folk fusionist OKI, who encouraged Tanaka to record a solo album, which eventually led to Keta Iicna Hika. However, Tanaka passed before seeing the LP’s release, which is all the more heartbreaking given how incredible the music is, with the record hinting at a deeply creative musical mind who was only just beginning to explore the full reaches of his artistic imagination. Taken from Keta Iicna Hika, “City of Aleppo” sees Tanaka and OKI creating a unique sort of blues inspired by the bombing of Aleppo, wherein mystically aligned basslines snake up and down through Afrobeat and tradition folk drum accents led by urgently tapped hats, four-four kicks, and sparse snare smacks. Sawing scrapes background kaleidoscopic layers of Ainu folk psaltery, with buzzing spiderwebs and psychotropic spirals woven from OKI’s tonkori and mukkuri. And the whole thing ebbs and flows in intensity to evoke the way sorrow hits in waves…as moments of apparent calm give way to dense cascades of pain and anguish, with the exotica drum gallop erupting into climactic flamboyance while infinite string webs evoke the spiritual suffocation of Aleppo’s occupation, as well as the historic oppression of the Ainu people at the hands of Japan’s government. OKI’s dub version of the track from Keta Iicna Hika is also included, which brilliantly deconstructs everything into miasma of oscillating echo and prismatic future folk. Basslines dance over beatless stretches, dubwise fx chains mutate and morph the Afro-Aino rhythms amidst echoing bursts of plucked string violence, and the mix is increasingly overwhelmed by psychedelic editing, with elements dropping unexpectedly, black smoke drone clouds cycling through chasms of silence, and cavernous drum fills ricocheting beneath waterfalls of fractalized psaltery.
(images from my personal copy)
