An'archives

Shizuka – 静香 LP 妄想の楽園 | Paradise of Delusion

Old style / tip-on offset & partially silkscreened jacket with obi

Regular edition : 300 – black vinyl,  duotone insert + offset insert + postcard set

Limited & numbered edition : 75 (exclusive to only the label) regular edition +  silkscreened 4 panels portfolio /wraparound with royal blue obi

Liner notes by Jon Dale

Release & shipping date : June 28th

Shizuka first came to wider attention at roughly the same time as their peers in the Japanese underground – in the nineties, really, when people started to get wise to the surprisingly wide-ranging post-psychedelic sounds emanating from the PSF label, predominantly, and a few other, similar creative cells. During that window of opportunity, Shizuka only released a few albums on P.S.F records, Persona Non Grata & Last Visible Dog. It’s not that much to go by, which is why An’archives’ Paradise Of Delusion (recorded live in 2001) is a most welcome, not to mention much-needed, posthumous collection. For the first time ever, Shizuka is now released on vinyl.

Even by the standards of their closest peers, aesthetically speaking –Fushitsusha (with whom they shared two members, Maki Miura and Jun Kosugi), Kousokuya, Ché-SHIZU – Shizuka were a mysterious, occluded bunch. Led by the late Shizuka herself, a guitarist, vocalist, song writer, and doll maker, with her husband Miura, a devastatingly powerful guitar slinger, their songs were potent, seductive things: often playing out at a snail’s pace, with the same kind of flickering, sensual ‘black-and-white psychedelia’ as the third Velvet Underground album, or a more languid Les Rallizes Denudes. Shizuka’s songs always felt far more certain of themselves, far steelier in their resolve, than their face-value fragility might suggest. Perhaps it’s the seeming ponderousness of the way they go about performing their songs – Shizuka’s slow iterations of simple chord changes, her psalmic vocal melodies over the top, suggesting a world-weariness, a kind of existential exhaustion, that’s often torn asunder by a soaring surge of roaring guitar from Maki Miura.

It’s no surprise to be reminded that, alongside her music making, Shizuka was a well-known doll maker in Japan, mentored by the legendary doll artist Katan Amano. Whatever is happening here is relentlessly private, psychologically introverted in many ways, but opened out to the possibilities of both great beauty and great despair – the two states that the music of Shizuka best captures.

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Masayoshi Urabe 3 LP box “Mobili In Mobili”

Edition of 285, silk-screened wooden slipcase with 3 silkscreened panels (black & gold) + inserts and a 6 postcards set

Handmade slipcases and printing job by Alan Sherry

Liner notes by Michel Henritzi

An’archives présente trois documents, trois vinyles scarifiés par les illuminations de Masayoshi Urabe, six performances gravées là comme des épitaphes sur la pierre qui recouvre le vivant. Enregistrements faits dans de petites salles banlieusardes au Japon où il a pour habitude de jouer devant un maigre public, le Bitches Brew à Yokohama, le Groove à Okinawa et Gari Gari à Tokyo.

Urabe a croisé dans les couloirs du label culte PSF : Kan Mikami, Chie Mukaï, Rinji Fukuoka, Hiroshi Hasegawa, avec qui il a joué, parfois enregistré des albums d’une insondable beauté. Mais c’est en solo qu’il est le plus troublant, lumineux et sombre, violent et poignant.

Pas d’autres frères que Kaoru Abe et Albert Ayler, un même tragique, une même corde jalouse pour se balancer dans le son, renverser le ciel sous nos pieds. Urabe s’accouple à son alto, le violente, snuff jazz appelant les anges déchus à venir nous hanter. La mort, comme son éros, hante l’œuvre de Masayoshi Urabe, se dévoile à travers ses sons cuivrés. Il suit le son, l’aspire et le crache, sac d’air retourné jusqu’à l’épuisement, violent, jouant ou dansant, voulant que les premiers rangs cèdent à son érotisme trouble. Urabe  est un magnifique mélodiste, même s’il finit par tout saccager, ne rien laisser d’autre qu’un corps musical mutilé. Notes étranglées, aucune mélodie, juste du souffle, de l’air craché, un chant d’amour.

Michel Henritzi

These are recordings made in small suburban venues in Japan where Urabe would play in front of a meagre audience: the Bitches Brew in Yokohama, the Groove in Okinawa and the Gari Gari in Tokyo.

In the corridors of cult label P.S.F. Records, Urabe came across the likes of Kan Mikami, Chie Mukai, Rinji Fukuoka, Hiroshi Hasegawa, with whom he played, and sometimes recorded albums of unfathomable beauty. But he is most disturbing, luminous and dark, violent and poignant, during his solo sets. Hideo Ikeezumi (the cultural ambassador behind P.S.F.) supported him more than others and tried to offer him all the space he could hope for.

His only kindred spirits are Kaoru Abe and Albert Ayler, with whom he shares a sense of tragedy, the same jealous string to swing into the sound, to turn the heavens over to our feet. Urabe mates with his alto sax, assaults it, snuff jazz calling fallen angels to come and haunt us.

Death, like Eros, haunts Masayoshi Urabe’s body of work, and unravels through copper sounds. He follows the sound, inhales it, spits it like an air bag turned inside out until exhaustion, violent, playing and dancing, willing the front rows to give in to his murky eroticism.

Urabe is a magnificent musician, even though he ends up trashing everything, leaving only a mutilated musical body behind. Strangled notes, no melody, just breath, spat air, un chant d’amour.

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情趣演歌 | Enka Mood Collection 10’ LP

Mineko Itakura – Shin’ichi Isohata – Michel Henritzi

RQRQ ( Yuka Ijichi – Doronco – Tabata Mitsuru)

Edition of 275, silkscreened gatefold jacket with inserts, postcards & obi

Liner notes by Alan Cummings

Catalogue number : [An’19]

Label : An’archives

Release date : 5 November, 2019

On this, the fifth volume of An’archives’ Enka Mood Collection split 10” series, two trios explore the possibilities of enka in typically expansive fashion. Side one features four songs performed by the trio of Mineko Itakura, Shin’ichi Isohata and Michel Henritzi. They’re all musicians with impressive histories: Itakura was a member of downer psych group Angel’in Heavy Syrup and Slapp Happy Humphrey; Isohata has worked with Otomo Yoshihide, and composed a soundtrack for Tadasuke Kotani’s film, The Legacy Of Frida Kahlo.

Michel Henritzi is also a known quantity: over the years, he’s been a tireless supporter of Japanese underground music, a writer, critic and record label owner who’s also recorded with Junko, Tetuzi Akiyama, Rinji Fukuoka, Masayuki Urabe, and Á Qui Avec Gabriel, among others. The trio takes on four enka songs, extracting the bittersweet tang from each melody, comfortable in the space that enka inhabits, a world of longing and nostalgia that sits somewhere between tradition, folk and blues.

Flip the 10” over, and Yuka Ijichi, Doronco and Mitsuru Tabata stretch out across three songs. They’ve plenty of prior form for this – Tabata’s history includes time with Acid Mothers Temple, Boredoms, Zeni Geva, Green Flames, and 20 Guilders; Doronco goes further back, a one-time member of Les Rallizes Denudes. Ijichi is a relatively new presence, but she’s released two gorgeous cassettes of acid folk on Selection Records. There’s an immediately sympathy to their playing, and a preternatural ability to grasp the core of the material; it’s beautifully performed.

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Albedo Fantastica 

Keiko Higuchi + Sachiko

“Culvert and Starry Night”

CD ltd to 250
Free Wind Mood  series
Label : An’archives
Ref : [An’17]
7 inch silkscreened jacket with obi (red or grey), insert and postcard
Printed by Alan Sherry

Albedo Fantastica  is the duo of  Keiko Higuchi  and Sachiko. 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, Uchida Shizuo, Shin-Ichiro Kanda…

Albedo Fantastica isn’t exception to the unexpected. This album is one of their most powerful performances and their first released on CD.  35 minutes of free spirits calling voices, piano, electronics and more , using all sonic waves to take any good listener to unknown shores. For sure it’s not a comfortable & easy album as the entire experience is rather intense and does not bear a distracted attention.  It requires engagement. Magicians, witches, shamans – just leave your landmarks behind you, as the whole performance will hook and embark you in an intense and unpredictable sonic trip.  Dive into a new dimension, call it psychedelic if you need to label such a bloody and uncompromised music – a listen that is not about to fall into oblivion with these two free women beating space and senses.

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Fuji Yuki – Michel Henritzi – Harutaka Mochizuki
Shiroi Kao
CD ltd to 250
Free Wind Mood  series
Label : An’archives
Ref : [An’15]
7 inch silkscreened jacket with obi blue, red or grey), insert and postcard
Printed by Alan Sherry
release date : July 7th, 2018

SHIROI KAO

 Disque hivernal, fleurs et flocons, il y a le bleu du ciel où le souffle s’évapore, épouse les nuages blancs, le cristal de la voix et les notes cuivrées  tomberont comme une neige humide sur un temps passé, quelque chose n’est plus et pourtant.

 Souffles de la voix et d’un saxophone alto, calligraphies soniques dessinées sur la page blanche du silence, griffée par les cordes d’un lapsteel mélancolique. Courbes et tourbillons ascendants, appelant l’orage. Quelque chose pleure, un alto au bord du gouffre, on ne renonce pas à ce qui nous hante, ça nous appelle, nous tient comme au bout d’une corde.

Harutaka Mochizuki est comme un asphyxié, écoutez le ! Il joue des phrases tristes sur cette pierre tombale, ce wall of noise. Le bruit assourdissant des larmes et du cœur, tout çà coule là dans l’embouchure, le pavillon débordant de notes maigres, de pétales de chrysanthèmes, de stridences, d’étouffements.

Puis une voix semblant sourdre d’autres temps, Fuji Yuki  ectoplasme flottant dans le murmure du crépuscule, nous prenant la main contre son cœur, lied infiniment mélancolique, ses longs cheveux noirs la recouvrant, échappant à la terre qui nous tire à elle. Elle flotte, Ophélie noyée, ondine serpentant vers une mélodie apaisée. Cordes frottées, un écrin de soies et de rouilles s’enveloppant autour de sa voix, au loin s’en vont les nuages. Il reste le corps flottant, visage blanc, infini paysage, les ombres dévorantes qui gagnent. D’anciens folklores joués pour cette danse oubliée, cordes percussives, glissendi plaintifs.

Un banjo au loin rappelant la tourbe de l’existence. Etait-ce toi, ces voix ? Le sax reviendra dans la ronde, la voix tue, s’accordant au lapsteel dans un jeu de miroir brisé, deux soliloques entendus à travers un brouillard de tristesse, le crépuscule nous appelant à rejoindre nos ombres.

Michel Henritzi assis dans l’antichambre face à ce visage blanc silencieux, la barre glissant sur les cordes, les notes mourant avec le souffle du sax. Un feedback qui meurt ou est-ce nos pleurs …

*

SHIROI KAO

 Winter record, flowers and snowflakes. Here is the blue sky into which the breath evaporates and kisses the white clouds, the crystal voice and the brass notes will fall like a wet snow on a long gone time, something vanished and still…

The breathing of the voice and the alto sax, sonic calligraphies drawn onto the white page of silence, scratched by the strings of a melancholic lapsteel. Ascending curves and whirls, calling the storm out.

Something cries, an alto on the edge of the abyss, you don’t give up on what haunts you, it summons you, holds you at the end of a rope. Harutaka Mochizuki is almost asphyxiated, listen to him !

He plays sad phrases on this tombstone, this wall of noise. The deafening sound of tears and heart, all of this flowing into the estuary, the bell overflown by lean notes, chrysanthemum petals, shrillness, mufflings.

Then, a voice that seems to arise from other times, Fuji Yuki, floating ectoplasm in the whisper of dusk, taking our hand onto her heart, her song of infinite melancholy, her long black hair cloaking her, escaping from the soil that holds us back.

She floats, like a drowned Ophelia, like a female spirit winding towards a relieved melody. Bowed strings, a net of silk and rust wrapping around her voice, and faraway, clouds drift.

The floating body remains, pale face, infinite landscape, devouring shadows spreading. Ancient folk songs played for this forgotten dance, on percussive strings, plaintive glissandi.

A distant banjo recalls the peat of existence. Was it you, these voices ? Sax will come back into the circle dance, the voice kills, tuning to the lapsteel in a broken mirror play, two soliloquies heard through a smog of sadness, with dusk calling us to merge with our shadows.

Michel Henritzi assis dans l’antichambre face à ce visage blanc silencieux, la barre glissant sur les cordes, les notes mourant avec le souffle du sax. Un feedback qui meurt ou est-ce nos pleurs …

Michel Henritzi, sitting in the antechamber in front of this white silent face, the bar sliding across the strings, notes dying in the sax breath. A feedback loop dying, or is it our sobs ?

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