Kazuki Tomokawa

• 3-CD SET

A poet, soothsayer, bicycle race tipster, actor, prolific drinker, self-taught guitarist, and living legend of Japanese sound, Kazuki Tomokawa catapulted into Tokyo's avant-folk scene in the mid-1970s, forging a sound and sensibility marked by throat-wrenching vocals and searing ennui. Among his musical peers in postwar Japan, Tomokawa distinguished himself as a pioneer of radical individualism. He had "the personality of a hydrogen bomb"-as the notorious ultraleft band the Brain Police once put it-and a sound to match.

Now, Blank Forms Editions gathers Tomokawa's earliest records for the first time in a deluxe three CD boxed set comprised of Finally, His First Album (Harvest Records, 1975), Straight from the Throat (Harvest Records, 1976), and A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth (Harvest Records, 1977).

In each record, Tomokawa shouts, cries, wails, and croons, his folk stylings tinged with psychedelia and swelling into ground-shaking rock. Many tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a highly regional vernacular of north Japan rarely heard beyond the prefecture, and even less often used in music.

Matching his guttural, all-out vocals are profoundly existential meditations on everyday life and the world around him; this is, as record executive Kiichi Takara dubs it, "I-music." It looks toward the interior, the quotidian, and the domestic with piercing and ever-honest eyes. The accompanying liner notes (here translated for the first time) include introductions by Takara, a round table discussion with Brain Police, and lyrics for all three albums-tracking the rise of Tomokawa as the "screaming philosopher" of Japan.

TRACKS:

• CD ONE: FINALLY, HIS FIRST ALBUM
• 01. The Flower Of Youth
• 02. Souls
• 03. Yumiko's Spring
• 04. Song From The Void
• 05. Grave
• 06. Hail The Wonderful Law Of The Lotus Sutra
• 07. Phone Call
• 08. An Akita Phone Call Run Amok
• 09. World School
• 10. .Resistance, Age 23
• 11. Mr. Ishimori
• 12. First Bon
• 13. A Cat Burglar In The Night
• 14. Bright Night

• CD TWO: STRAIGHT FROM THE THROST
• 01. Grampa
• 02. Goddam Winter
• 03. Ameran Kuyuran
• 04. Dagadzugu
• 05. A Fitting Adolescence
• 06. Footbridge
• 07. The Spring Is Here Again Song
• 08. Fridge
• 09. Smithereens
• 10. Don't Kill The Sea Lions
• 11. Harmonica
• 12. A Little Ditty
• 13. Stone

• CD THREE: A STRING OF PAPER CRANES CLENCHED BETWEEN MY TEETH
• 01. Try Saying You're Alive
• 02. Kill Or Be Killed
• 03. Memory
• 04. Got A Problem
• 05. Namahage
• 06. My Hometown Is Also Inside A Dog
• 07. The Boys Of Hachiryu
• 08. The Donpan Song Goes Off The Rails
• 09. Runaway Boy
• 10. Missed My Time To Die