0
1975-1977 (Limited 3CD Box Set)
Kazuki Tomokawa
Blankforms
769791979437
GEN 168242
BFBX002CD
JAZZ
3
Warning: Last items in stock!
Availability date:
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.
FORMAT | CD |
DISCS NUMBER | 3 |
RECORDED | 0 |
LABEL CODE | BFBX002CD |
STYLE | JAZZ |