An'archives

Shizuka 10″ LP 狂気の真珠 [ Lunatic Pearl] – An’archives

Catalogue number [An’32]

November 25th

Regular edition comes in a silkscreened jacket with obi (dark blue & dark red), insert and a postcard. Edition of 550

Sub-edition of 150 exclusive to the label Silkscreened jacket, with black obi , insert and a postcard – subtle split fountain print making each cover slightly different alike a cyanotype…

exclusive 21 x 21 cm insert

Screenprinted by Alan Sherry

Following the long-awaited Paradise Of Delusion LP from 2021, An’archives announces Lunatic Pearl, a 10” EP by Japanese psych-pop legends Shizuka. As with the material on Paradise, Lunatic Pearl draws from the deep well of music the quartet recorded in 2001, this time from two studio sessions. Here, though, the group’s classic line-up of Shizuka, Maki Miura, Jun Kosugi and Seven is augmented – on the a-side, they’re joined by Yasushi Nagata on guitar; flip the record, and Kazuhide Yamaji chimes in on acoustic guitar and bass.

Both Nagata and Yamaji were members of long-running Tokyo psych-out gang Dip (also known as dip the flag); Yamaji eventually joined Shizuka for a time, appearing with them on the 2010 DVD, Owari No Nai Yume, released by PSF. Part of Lunatic Pearl finds Shizuka in Paisley Underground mode, the spaced-out acoustic mantras of “Shiroi Inochi” and the instrumental “The Street The Fairy Goes” surprisingly reminiscent of the smeared, slow-motion psychedelics of Opal’s early EPs. The latter, a weightless blur, hovers in the air on dreamy drifts of DX-7, drifting melodies landing on the track like an astral traveller, lost and delirious.

“Lunatic Pearl” itself is a monster, one of Shizuka’s most rock-reverent moments, its bold riff soaring over a rhythm section that thuds menacingly, as though they’re the kings of the rumbling spires. “Signs”, another track from the Studio EUN session, features some gloriously unhinged playing from Miura, as though he’s tearing the song’s seams apart, as the group push Shizuka’s simple, perfect song into the stratosphere.

Regular edition 20€

Special “blue” edition, ltd to 150, 28€

Release date : Sept 16

Mai Mao LP Ricshari

Silkscreened jacket & obi (textured tan or black) by Alan Sherry, inserts and a postcard –

liner notes by Jon Dale, ltd to 285

An’archives are thrilled to announce the release of Ricshari, the first LP from Japanese free improvising duo MAI MAO. Consisting of Shizuo Uchida of Hasegawa-Shizuo, Albedo Gravitas, archeus, Kito Muzukumi Rouber, TERROR SHIT, UH, etc. on bass, and Kyosuke Terada, of HUH (who have their own release due on An’archives soon), TERROR SHIT, Bay City Rolaz, Praymate, The Obey Unit, etc. on guitar, they’ve previously released two wild cassettes, Curvature Improvement Plan (Haang niap, 2020) and Folk Dope Rally (2021), both documenting one-take improvisations from live gigs. Ricshari was recorded by Nobuki Nishiyama in January 2021, and is proof, if any was needed, that this duo is one of the most fiercely unique, out-there units currently extant – in Japan, or anywhere, for that matter.

The music of MAI MAO seems to proceed by opposites and juxtaposition, shifting from frantic, hectic runs of splattering note spray to moments of granular stasis, where Uchida and Terada coax their instruments into and out of deep wells of silence, or rest, temporarily, in a lagoon of fermenting fuzz. Spiralling kinetics are largely the order of the day, though – the opener, “Chew a flying flash prayer”, skitters here and there, guitar and bass jumping over one another in games of leapfrog and Twister, finding new ways to perplex and puzzle the listener, and perhaps each other in the process, Uchida and Terada fully committed to the short-circuiting spirit of the moment.

The energy here is hyperactive, but it also speaks of a curious and committed attention to improvisatory responsiveness, one that’s just as likely to fork off into different directions in a split second – it’s real edge-of-the-seat stuff, as though the hands are moving too fast for the mind to follow. That’s all the better, then, to let the gush of genuinely free-thinking, devoted duo improvisation to fly at its most playful and intelligent. File next to the likes of Davey Williams & LaDonna Smith and their TransMuseq companions, or the wickedly perplexing bass-synth/trombone duets of Dave Dove Paul Duo, and you’ve some idea of what’s going on here, provisionally at least, ‘cos this one’s an enthralling, yet welcoming, head-scratcher of the highest calibre.

24€

Available on May 13, 2022

Ki (Mico – Tamio Shiraishi – Fritz Welch) LP ” Tearful face of my cute love [is begging to me] “

ltd to 285 copies -Silkscrened jacket with obi & inserts, liner notes by Jon Dale

Ki is a trio that pits long-time collaborators Tamio Shiraishi (saxophone, voice) and Takahashi Michiko aka Mico (drums, voice, vocoder, melodica, piano, percussion) against drummer, percussionist and vocalist Fritz Welch. They each bring a wealth of experience, from Shiraishi’s early moves in the Japanese underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – he was a founding member of Fushitsusha, and played with Taco and Machinegun Tango – to his legendary, late-night solo New York subway performances; he and Mico also spent some time playing with No Neck Blues Band, while Welch, currently based in Glasgow, has a long history taking in stints with Peeesseye, Lambs Gamble and FvRTvR.

Tearful Face Of My Cute Love (Is Begging To Me), named after a yakuza song, is Ki’s first LP, after CD-Rs on Chocolate Monk (Ki No Sei, 2009) and Unverified (Stops Dropping, 2010). Documenting two live performances from 2008, it’s a startling, wild freedom chase, each piece stretching languorously across one side of the vinyl, giving the trio maximum space to thunder their way through space and time. Their West Nile 2008 show, on side one, opens with a battery of drums, fierce and livid, before Shiraishi’s unmistakable and remarkable whinnying, high-zone tone slithers into earshot. The stage is set, the battle moves forward, yet there’s remarkable simpatico between the three players, with Mico and Welch volleying guttural vocal exhortations at each other. When it does offer respite – see the sudden swoop into near-silence at around 12:30– everything’s still tense; who knows what’s around the corner?

For all its fury, though, Tearful Face Of My Cute Love… is full of oddly lyrical moments, too – see the sweet melody that winds out, with gentle melancholy, near the very end of the West Nile performance. This lyricism also haunts the second side of the album, a performance from Glassland, Brooklyn, which seems more focused on the intersection of incidents, from clattering cymbals to ghostly swarms of sax scream, to dive-bombing spirals of vocoder. There’s an appealing sense of audio verité here, as though you’re in the room with the performers, shaken and stirred by every movement, lost in the interlocking maze they’re weaving in real time. It’s a bracing, thrilling document of very immediate, human music – of three bodies moving through the world, sounding their environment. 

24€

Akiko Hotaka – Takuya Nishimura – Ikuro Takahashi LP Live – An’archives

LP ltd to 285, silkscreened chipboard jacket with obi (tan or ivory), inserts and postcard

Liner notes by Michel Henritzi

Release date : 26 November 2021

An’archives are proud to present a reissue of the self-titled first album by the trio of Akiko Hotaka, Takuya Nishimura and Ikuro Takahashi. Originally released in 2020 as a limited CD-R on the Uramado label, those who had the chance to hear this collection of live recordings, documenting a brief window of exploratory activity for Hotaka during the mid-2010s, were knocked out by its elemental force, Hotaka’s minimal, carefully sculpted pop songs spirited away to other planes of where by Nishimura and Takahashi’s improvisatory tactics, with Hotaka’s guitar now tender, now furiously overloaded.
Hotaka first came to attention as a member of Tori Kudo’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz. She’s been playing and recording her own songs for almost two decades now, though, releasing a string of CD-Rs across the 2000s that documented live performances at Enban, some with Masanori Hattori and Yuki Yoshida; this trio subsequently released several lovely folk-like albums on F.M.N. Sound Factory. More recently, Hotaka has formed a new trio, Hotarutachi, with Shohei Matsuo and Kenji Yoshikawa (their debut album, Hikari, was released by Hayabusa Landings in 2018). Playing with Nishimura and Takahashi, though, freed Hotaka’s playing immensely. There was always something expansive about her approach to the song, but this freedom was implicit in earlier music; on this album, which draws from performances undertaken across 2015 and 2016 at Hikari No Uma, Okubo, Hotaka wrings great intensities from the simplest of two-chord levitations, allowing her melodies to follow lines of deeply personal logic. There are still skeletal pop songs here, but with Nishimura and Takahashi as Hotaka’s backing group, there’s something very open about the music; it’s wild yet courteous, gallant yet refined. Throughout, both Nishimura and Takahashi draw on the double-language they’ve developed over the years, through performing in groups who are dedicated to the wide open spaces between song form and freedom – Nishimura has played with Ché-SHIZU, Miminokoto and Suishou No Fune, among others; Takahashi’s history is deeper still, with time spent with Ché-SHIZU, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March, Kousokuya, Nagisa Ni Te, High Rise, and Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha and Aihiyo, and on. They are ideal foils for the slow breathing, simply structured songs that Hotaka writes, sourcing great depth of feeling from the most fundamental of gestures.

SOLD OUT

LSD March LP The Night – An’archives

LP ltd to 400, silkscreened jacket with obi (light blue, tan-ivory), inserts and postcard
Liner notes by Michel Henritzi

Shinsuke Michishita : vocal & guitar

Ikuro Takahashi : drums

Richard Horner : recording engineer
2008.02.25

LSD March is a band from Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, whose members revolved around Shinsuke Michishita, guitarist/singer, the band’s black star, before being reborn nowadays, after several years of hiatus, as a duet with Ikuro Takahashi, legendary drummer who was the heart muscle of Fushitsusha, and of most of the underground Tokyo bands.
Shinsuke Michishita has a taste for immersion, for plunging into the electric waves of gaping amplifiers, psychedelic surfer haunted by this sonic ocean and its crushing shore breaks, where the self dissolves, becomes one with the sound, where the self escapes to his dreams and nightmares.
This album recorded in 2008 is caught in a crazy time spiral, as in a dream where one desperetaely runs without moving, with the ground slipping away under our feet. The clock turns celibate, Ikuro Takahashi fractures the rhythm, hammers it further like an impossible point to reach.
Sometimes, the guitar follows or precedes him, resets the clock, with its chords slammed on the ticking, a ceremony of fleeing time. And the voice weeps like rain, or a prayer.
LSD March has often been compared to the Rallizes Denudes, a sort of poisonous resurgence of them, with Shinsuke Michishista being seen as a revenant from those psychedelic dark times. The same dark Moire, spilling from a bog overflowing with distortion, the same nihilistic, maladjusted, collapsed lyricism, a similar sad voice singing from within the ruins of time. 

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Albedo Gravitas LP Eihwaz – An’archives

LP ltd to 285, silkscreened jacket with obi (red or black), inserts and postcard Free Wind Mood series

Liner notes by Jon Dale

Keiko Higuchi + Sachiko + Shizuo Uchida

Albedo Gravitas is an extension of Albedo Fantastica (released on An’archives in 2018), the duo of Keiko Higuchi and Sachiko (Kousokuya, Overhang Party, Vava Kitora).
Both of them are well known names to those who are evolving in the Japanese underground waters since each has been involved in many projects and each has a consisting discography on labels as Musik Atlach, Improvising Beings, Utech. Their respective backgrounds are maybe a little bit different but they share a common interest in different genres from jazz and rock to free improvisation and have collaborated with a cast of various musicians in the likes of Cris X, Fukuoka Rinji, Kawaguchi Masami, Shin-Ichiro Kanda…

For Albedo Gravitas, Shizuo Uchida joins on bass. A peripatetic member of the Japanese underground, having played with groups such as Nord, Onna-Kodomo, Hasegawa-Shizuo, Kito Mizukumi Rouber and Keiji Haino’s Nijiumu, he most recently turned up on An’archives as one half of UH, alongside sax player Takayuki Hashimoto (of KMR and .es).
While this is Albedo Gravitas’s first album, they play together with intelligence and sensitivity, but also with a strong capacity for the unexpected; there are many moments here where you’re wrong-footed, caught askance by the way the music comes together, and comes apart.
Higuchi’s and Sachiko’s instrumental armory is multiple : piano, drums, melodica, electronics. Maybe their most remarkable presence, though, comes through voice – the glottal contortions, heart-rending sighs and moans, and chopped’n’screwed real-time vox improvs that soar across the album’s unpredictable musical terrain. Uchida works here with temporal disruption, there with heavyweight bass punctuation; drums plot out the most welcome rudimentary anti-rhythms, as electronics and melodica shoot arcs of white light through the air, lending an avant-chamber charm to the music here.
Most startling are the dynamics of the two side-long pieces, and the way the group use silence and stilted landscapes to suggest all kinds of routes previously unnavigated. In its capacity for disorientation, it feels indeed like a surprising kind of psychedelia, one far from generic constraint, and much closer to the sidereal suspension that that most overused of terms should rend through your head. 

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