Music from Japan

Powerful trio music by pianist Takehiro Honda, known for his strong touch and bluesy feeling, together with an American rhythm section. The album features a line up of compelling originals, including the overwhelmingly powerful "Minors Only" and the title track "Salaam Salaam," whose title means “peace” in Swahili.   East Wind was a ground-breaking jazz label established in 1974 through the full cooperation of Ai Music, as it was then known, and Nippon Phonogram, as it was then known. Over a per…

The first leader album by Ryo Kawasaki, a jazz and fusion guitarist whose talent was recognized by Gil Evans and who went on to work internationally. The album presents a cool cosmic sound, including "Agana," where Kawasaki delivers breath-taking guitar playing over high-speed percussion, and the dazzling jazz-funk number "Phil." East Wind was a ground-breaking jazz label established in 1974 through the full cooperation of Ai Music, as it was then known, and Nippon Phonogram, as it was then know…

A representative work by popular pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, known for his swinging and bluesy feeling. Backed by Tsutomu Okada and Hiroshi Murakami, Yamamoto gives elegant performances of famous standards such as "Stella by Starlight" and "Alone Together" in a relaxed atmosphere. East Wind was a groundbreaking jazz label established in 1974 through the full cooperation of Ai Music, as it was then known, and Nippon Phonogram, as it was then known. Over a period of about five years, the label prod…

The scent of fresh greenery rising into the air. A youthful Hidefumi Toki weaves a vivid and beautiful story through a one-horn quartet. Making his professional debut while still in high school, Hidefumi Toki went on to perform with groups led by New Herd, Isao Suzuki, Terumasa Hino, Ryo Kawasaki, and Fumio Itabashi. From the late 1970s onward, he also collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tatsuro Yamashita, contributing broadly to Japan’s music scene across jazz, fusion, and pop.This album, re…

This is both a blueprint and a definitive masterpiece. Effortlessly transcending eras and genres, Terumasa Hino continues to captivate audiences around the world. His sound and presence are truly top of the tops. Long before Japanese jazz was labeled as “Wa-Jazz”, and even before the rare groove movement emerged, Hip Seagull has been shaking dance floors, stimulating listeners, and fascinating collectors alike. Since his debut album Alone, Alone and Alone, Terumasa Hino has remained at the foref…

Recorded 1984-87 in Brooklyn and never before on vinyl, jazz pianist Masabumi Kikuchi's Rokudai cycle - Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Air, Mind - turns synthesizers and a Shingon Buddhist framework into improvised electronic music. Remastered by Taylor Deupree. Complete six-2LP set.

Magic Hour, comes from FeLid, a member of the post-hardcore band the north end and an organizer of the festival platform MIMINOIMI. Combining improvisational and accidental guitar sounds, lyrical ambient drones, and high-definition sound editing, Magic Hour is both accessible and deeply experimental in its approach.

RGL is a track maker known for his lo-fi house productions and analog-textured dance music, with releases on labels such as Diskotopia and Breaker Breaker. His new work, Untitled, showcases a wide-ranging sonic palette: alongside rhythm-driven tracks, the release also features abstract drone pieces with little or no discernible beat. The result is a work that crystallizes RGL’s singular sensitivity to sound and texture.

A door into the most private corner of the Japanese underground. With its La Musica series, Black Editions turns to the catalogue of La Musica, the tiny imprint run by Asahito Nanjo - the bassist and ringleader behind High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Transonic, Toho Sara and more - on which he issued a stream of hand-assembled cassettes and CD-Rs, sold in microscopic editions at a handful of live dates and all but impossible to find ever since. This first instalment, Flight 1, gathers six of those l…

Solmania's first album in 18 years: a single 64-minute slab of avant-garde guitar torture from Masahiko Ohno and Katsumi Sugahara, wrung from self-built multi-neck guitars bristling with extra pickups. Not a static wall but a continually evolving storm of feedback and tone. On Alchemy, 2016.

A 2015 collaboration between Jojo Hiroshige on guitar and Haruo Ueda on electronics, structured around the natural elements. The Hijokaidan founder steps away from pure noise into a more textural dialogue, his guitar set against Ueda's shifting electronic fields. On Alchemy.

An instrumental solo guitar album from Jojo Hiroshige, founder of Hijokaidan and self-styled King of Noise. Improvisation for solo electric guitar pushed to a dense, heavy extreme that is hard to believe comes from a single instrument. On Alchemy.

A 2015 meeting between Hijokaidan and Nasca Car, the Osaka electronic project of Nakaya Koichi. Two studio tracks and two live sets across more than forty minutes, the King of Noise's wall of sound crossed with Nasca Car's pulsing acid-house and new-wave electronics. On Alchemy.

Jojo Hiroshige - known and feared throughout the world not only as a member of the legendary ‘‘Hijokaidan,’’ often referred as ‘‘King of Noise,’’ but also as the owner of the prestigious label “Alchemy Records,” which has released countless “Japanoise” masterpieces. "Words are different to sounds in that the images they create are limited. They’re like a two-edged sword – sometimes they can be used effectively, but sometimes they restrict the range of the images employed. When I was young I read…

A 1982 cassette by Abe Kaii, the duo of Jojo Hiroshige and Toshiji Mikawa, named in sly homage to free jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe. A monolith of free jazz and psychedelic space rock from two future architects of Japanese noise, near impossible to hear for decades, reissued on Alchemy in 2017.

A 2018 live document from Hijokaidan in their definitive musical form: Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Junko's voice, Toshiji Mikawa on electronics and Futoshi Okano on drums, fusing into a single dense wall of sound. The King of Noise captured live and unrepentant. On Alchemy.

Harsh noise at full saturation from Incapacitants, the duo of Toshiji Mikawa (Hijokaidan) and Fumio Kosakai. No melody, no rhythm, no let-up, only a dense and strangely psychedelic block of electronics pushed toward ecstatic overload. One of the defining names in Japanese noise, on Alchemy.

Gatefold LP edition + OBI.  There are few figures in improvised music quite like Akira Sakata. A marine biologist by training, he surfaced in the early 1970s inside the Yamashita Yosuke Trio, one of the most ferocious units Japanese jazz has ever produced, and for half a century since he has gone entirely his own way: bandleader, relentless collaborator, singer of strange incantations, a man who can make an alto saxophone sound like grief and slapstick in the same breath. Born in 1945 near Hiros…

Princess Mononoke (1997) is set in a mythic late-medieval Japan of iron foundries and forest gods. The young prince Ashitaka, cursed while killing a boar god maddened by hatred, travels west and finds himself caught between the people stripping the forest and the wolf-raised girl San who defends it, a story Hayao Miyazaki refuses to resolve into simple sides. Joe Hisaishi's music met that scale with his grandest and grimmest writing for Miyazaki to that point. The film score, recorded with the T…

2026 Stock. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), drawn from Eiko Kadono's children's novel, follows a thirteen-year-old witch who leaves home on the night of a full moon, settles in a European-looking seaside town with her cat Jiji, and turns the one thing she can do, fly, into a delivery business. It was the first Studio Ghibli film given an official release in the United States, carrying Hayao Miyazaki's unforced storytelling to an audience that had seen little like it. The score is by Joe Hisaishi…