2026 Reissue. LP version. Originally issued in 1983, Midori Takada's debut LP Through The Looking Glass has long remained one of the most coveted artifacts to emerge from the fertile soil of 1980s Japanese experimental avant-garde. A near-perfect work - a window into the unquestionable singularity of its era and geography. For many record collectors, this is the great holy grail, the unobtainable gem. Its reemergence has been long awaited.
For Japanese experimental avant-garde musicians, the 1980s was a high-water mark - a movement without loyalty, sidestepping association and signifiers, sculpting a spectrum of sound previously unheard and entirely new. Through The Looking Glass sits solidly within this tradition: a layered hybrid of hybrids - Minimalism drawing on the diverse musical traditions of the globe, equally ambient, New Age, and Pop. It is an effort in sonic joy, light and airy, while never losing sight of profound creative rigor. It presents an alternate history in the narrative of Minimalist music - both real and hypothetical - the paths and possibilities of rhythm and ambience that Reich and Glass never explored.
Through The Looking Glass is unquestionably one of the most engrossing albums of its day - profoundly beautiful and hypnotic to the core - a shimmering gesture in multicultural cross-genre utopianism, filling an unacknowledged void with uncharted realms of sound.
Midori Takada is a composer, multi-percussionist, and theater artist renowned in Japanese vanguard circles. She debuted at the Berlin Philharmonic with the RIAS Symphonie-Orchester just after graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1974, and throughout the 1980s explored the traditional music of Asia and Africa through collaborations with Kakraba Lobi (Ghana), Lamine Konte (Senegal), Farafina Band (Burkina Faso), and Korean musicians Chi Seong-Ja, Won-Il, and Kang Tae-Hwan. She also led the innovative percussion collective Mkwaju Ensemble and continues to perform with free-jazz band Ton-Klami.
Jointly reissued by Palto Flats and WRWTFWW on LP. Get it before it's gone (again) for good.
