★An'Archives
The Last Song of My Life
"This album documents a recording of Tori Kudo’s Last Song of My Life. Some may know Kudo already as prime mover in pop-naïf collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz; his history stretches back over four decades, and he’s a significant figure in the Japanese underground, thanks to his membership of groups like Noise (with his wife Reiko Kudo), Guys ’N’ Dolls, Snickers, and Sweet Inspirations. Untold numbers of said underground have passed through the ranks of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, among them members of…
Enka Mood Collection
Masami Kawaguchi has been an influential figure in the Japanese underground scene for 2 decades, playing with bands such as Miminokoto, Broomdusters, Los Doroncos and more recently with his New Rock Syndicate. He's also known as a major & regular Keiji Haino collaborator in Aihiyo, and more recently in Hardy Soul. He's one of the greats of modern Japanese psychedelic rock and more recently he recorded the beautiful The Mad Guitar Sings' album on Black Petal, which is a dark solo take on Ma…
Enka Mood Collection
This is the first in a series of Enka mood 10" LPs to be released on An' archives. This record is an expression of the soul of a people, an exotic, sentimental journey. To stand aside or take the ride? The decision lies with what our feelings say. Side A of this split LP features self-proclained 'King of Noise', Jojo Hiroshige, founder member of the legendary Hijokaidan and stalwart of the Japanese noise scene. The B-side is engraved with the naked and guttural voice of sax-player Tamio Shiraish…
Enka Mood Collection
Aoki Tomoyuki is mostly known with as the guitarist & vocalist of Up-Tight (Alchemy records, 8mm) and for more than 2 decades he has been behind some albums which mix plaintive echo-drenched imprecations, love of bitter-sweet folk and blissfully nihilistic guitar noise reminiscent of Les Rallizes Denudes and Mizutani’s velvetian ballads.Harutaka Mochizuki is a multi-instrumentalist, mostly known his saxophone improvisations recalling like the same other lonely satellites and solo thinkers lik…
Le jardin bizarre
CD comes in a silkscreened gatefold cover. Le Jardin Bizarre (the odd garden) is the follow up to the album 'Outside Darkness', released in 2011 by PSF. It is a hollow album, stretching out long rests in which a sticky melancholy, an infinite sadness amplifies itself. 6 tracks dark as so many gardens - gardens seen through night, 6 shades of black, 6 colours of silence. While 'Outside Darkness' appeared like a shadow cast over Fukushima, 'Le Jardin Bizarre' is it's elegy. Disquieting calligrams …
Mutsu no Hana
Reissue of a tape edited in 2011 for the victims of Fukushima. Drony and melancolic. Gatefold cover silkscreened by Alan Sherry, mastering by Denis Blackham.
Swing Low, Sweet Silence
Here, on this record, the screamer and the whisperer sail away toward the worst, expelling from their bodies shredded songs whereon our senses shatter. Such a poetic extremity is not drawn from the cultural landscape, but from the breath of the living world. Raw poetry or a poetic racket made of copper whispers and screams of terror, erotic glossolalia and ramshackle choirs. They stand like two narrators, burnt in the hullabaloo of an infinitely melancholic melody, dislocating in great devouring…