sound library

condition (records/covers/box): NM / NM / NM (book has light foxing)

Box with 5 red vinyl LP's in individual covers with 32-page book.

Japan retired its last mainline steam locomotives in 1975, and the run-up produced an entire genre of records: engineers from Victor travelling the country with Nagra decks to capture D51s and C62s before they were cut up. This five-disc box is the encyclopaedic version, organised by class and line, with whistle codes, coal being shovelled, the specific clatter of a Hokkaido snowplough run, and a booklet for the tetsudō fan who could tell a C57 from a C58 by the exhaust beat alone.

Heard now, the long crescendos of rhythmic noise, doppler shifts and silences sit oddly close to the Cologne electronic music of the same decade. Chris Watson would recognise the technique. Complete boxes are rarely seen outside Japan.