interior music

Gontiti (ゴンチチ): Legacy Of Madam Q (1987)

2018/01/12

I hate to say it but Osaka guitar duo Gontiti (pronounced Gon-Chi-Chi) really nailed it when they called themselves the creators of “The Most Comfortable Music On Earth”. You see, I first encountered the music of Gontiti in the most unlikeliest of likeliest places. On some fateful day, I was with my partner at a…
Toshifumi Hinata: Story (1987)

2017/12/15

I wish I had a great way to describe the beauty of Toshifumi Hinata’s music, more so, the beautiful music you’ll find in Story. I’ll skip over his background, which you can peruse here, in a previous post, so that we can get to the meat of the album. Though not quite as dark/moody as…
Hajime Mizoguchi: Halfinch Dessert (1986)

2017/08/04

These are the things that surprise sometimes. I went into researching some background story behind Hajime Mizoguchi’s deeply affecting Halfinch Dessert and wound up uncovering that their is some meaning behind this album. Hajime Mizoguchi was born and raised in Tokyo. By the age of eleven he had chosen to educate himself in the ways…
Motohiko Hamase: #Notes Of Forestry (1988)

2017/07/28

What’s with Japanese session bass players? Yoshio Suzuki, Tsugutoshi Goto, Hirobumi Suzuki, etc. and now Motohiko Hamase, all at one point or another decide to show the world that they can do more than lay down a tasty bass line. #Notes of Forestry shows exactly how fascinating their own ideas can be when they’re given…
Takashi Toyoda: Big Bang (1985)

2017/07/07

Takashi Toyoda’s Big Bang promises in the back cover “total spiritual stability and stress relief” through 40-odd minutes of Japanese New Age music. What really stands out, though, is the word “BIG BANG” in the album title. Attempting to provide some respite from a stark external world, Takashi tries to create the first 1/f fluctuation…
Mich Live: Plant Planet’s (1988)

2017/06/16

Let’s try a little tenderness from Mitsuru Sawamura, otherwise known as Mich Live, one-time member of Japanese band Interior (with whom he wrote songs like “Luft” and “Park“) and brilliant session musician for others like Yukihiro Takahashi, Hajime Tachibana, Pierre Barouh, and Mari Iijima. In 1988, Mitsuru released under the Newsic label (home of Yoshio Ojima) something that straddles…
Ric Kaestner: Music For Massage (1982)

2017/04/19

What a lovely hour of music. What’s else is there to say about Ric Kaestner’s criminally unknown Music For Massage? “an hour of soothing music designed for massage therapy” is what the cassette cover states on the Japanese-influenced woodblock album artwork, for once who am I to disagree? Made up of two cassette sides – one a-side devoted…