midori takada

Mayumi Miyata, Midori Takada: 「星雲」～サウンド・フォレスト・シリーズ (Nebula) (1987)

2019/10/18

If we can thank the heavens for something today, it is for bringing together Mayumi Miyata and Midori Takada. Released as part of CBS/Sony’s short-lived Sound Forest (サウンド・フォレスト・シリーズ) series,「星雲」～サウンド・フォレスト・シリーズ (Nebula) presents a different aesthetic within that series idea of “environmental music”. Not necessarily made to attract electronically-minded listeners, Nebula is a nebulous blend of truly…
Takio Ito & Takio Band: TAKIO-ソーラン節 (1988)

2019/03/29

One hasn’t lived until they’ve experienced the force of nature that is Takio Ito’s voice. If you’ve encountered the soul stirring vocal stylings of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cesária Évora, Jacques Brel, and James Brown, you’ve come close to experiencing the sheer power of Japan’s own “folk” icon. Takio Ito’s TAKIO-ソーラン節 is an undisputed classic…
Kazutoki Umezu: Diva (1988)

2018/04/27

It’s not often you stumble upon an album quite like this one. A huge debt of thanks goes out to a fellow reader, Francis, for sharing Kazutoki Umezu’s Diva with me (the first of two, from him, I’ll share with you). I’m still grinning from end to end just looking at the credits of this…
Genji Sawai: Sowaka (1984)

2018/02/23

Is it Jazz? How many times can one ask that question. What exactly constitutes Jazz? Genji Sawai’s Sowaka stretches this idea limit. Myself, I think it’s exactly what Jazz should be: dangerous, provoking, and exploratory. A fusion of Japanese free-jazz with New York noise-punk shouldn’t work, then, yet again, who could ask for more? On…
Chris Mosdell: Equasian (1982)

2017/09/08

Simply phenomenal. That’s a great word to describe Chris Modell’s debut: Equasian. Phenomenally hard to describe. It’s an album released exclusively in Japan by an American artist who got his start translating Japanese lyrics into English for them, and used that entry way to get repaid back, by said Japanese artists, by allowing them to…