Diving deeper into the story of Japanese reggae pop, Tokyo Riddim Vol. 2 explores an electronic, new wave and often experimental sound unlike anything Japan or Jamaica had ever heard before.

The first time Ryuichi Sakamoto left Japan, he did not go to the United States or Europe - he went to Jamaica. It was 1978, YMO were about to release their debut album, but Sakamoto was in Kingston, invited to play synths for Japanese idol singer Teresa Noda at Dynamic Sound Studios in a band alongside Neville Hinds and none other than Rita Marley. It’s not a story many know, but one which would spark Sakamoto’s fascination with dub and mark a new chapter in the ongoing Japanese love affair with reggae.

The Teresa Noda tracks they cut - ‘Tropical Love’ and ‘Yellow Moon’ - bookend this second volume of Time Capsule’s Tokyo Riddim compilation, which tells the wider story of how a fascination with Jamrock swept Japan, adding a dash of lime to that sweet city pop sound, embracing a globalised musical palette and creating a whole new genre in the process.

For some, like Sakamoto, a diversion into reggae was part of broader fascination with new sounds and styles, tipped into the global disco of homage and appropriation that made Japanese music of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s some of the most creative and undefinable in the world.

You had iconic shape-shifter Yosui Inoue, who toyed with reggae, afro-beat and electro-Balearic, (and whose For Life Records released several tracks on this comp), and Kay Ishiguro, who enlisted J-reggae originator Pecker on the ambitious Stevie Wonder-esque ‘Red Drip’.

Then there were the Compass Point devotees - producers and musicians alike who were enthralled by the sound of the Bahamas studio and drew on the detached cool of Grace Jones - as heard in the music of Juicy Fruits, and the disco noir of Casablanca-signed femme fatale Yuki Nakayamate. Sometimes, as was the case with Risa Minami, the J-reggae influence said more about Japan than it did about Jamaica.

But where Tokyo Riddim Vol. 1 focused on the city pop sound, this compilation goes further, digging out the more experimental collaborations and hybrids exemplified by Tomoko Aran, who in working with Yusuaki Shimizu and Mariah emphasised just how far reggae had travelled to be recast into something entirely new on the other side of the world.

Perhaps more than anything, in connecting the dots between Tokyo and Kingston, between Jamaica and Japan, the Japanese reggae was building a musical language that existed outside of the paradigms of US and European cultural hegemony - an encounter shaped by commerce, capital and creativity that is now being recognised more broadly for the first time.

Compiled by Kay Suzuki
Artwork by Noncheleee
Liner notes by Anton Spice, Kay Suzuki & Ayana Honma
Coordinated by Ken Hidaka & Kay Suzuki
Mastered by Mike Hillier at Metropolis Studios, London, UK
Time Capsule | TIME021 | 1979-1986 -> 2024
UPC: 748322322256 More

"Irrepressible, off-the-wall and utterly unique - the late 70s/early 80s Latin jazz-funk and leftfield electronic boogie of Japanese composer and pianist Izumi ‘Mimi’ Kobayashi collected for the first time.

A star in Japan, she moved to Europe to record global hits with Depeche Mode and Swing Out Sister, toured the world with the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra and made beats with Attica Blues’ Tony Nwachukwu. Now based in London, Mimi currently fronts Tokyo Riddim Band - the intergenerational live Japanese Reggae outfit born from Time Capsule’s acclaimed 2023 compilation of the same name - playing live shows and releasing a trio of recordings.

Choice Cuts 1978-1983 collects eight recordings from four of Mimi’s first five albums – Sea Flight (1978) recorded with her group Flying Mimi Band, and Coconuts High (1981), Nuts Nuts Nuts (1982) and Tropicana (1983) under her own name.

The compilation opens with a syncopated electro-funk cover of Sergio Mendes’ ‘Mas Que Nada’ (Tropicana) and the crisp and stripped back techno-pop of ‘Coffee Rumba’ (Nuts Nuts Nuts) with a keyboard bass line that would have made Stevie Wonder weep.

Alongside the off-beat synth jam ‘Quiet Explosion’ (Nuts Nuts Nuts) and piano samba of ‘Espresso’ (Tropicana), there’s two low slung soul-jazz numbers, ‘Naze’ and ‘Angel Sky’, from Sea Flight (1978) that recall the collaborations between Herbie Hancock and Kimiko Kasai. But it is around the two tracks from Mimi’s 1981 album Coconuts High that this compilation revolves (and from whose cover shoot it borrows).

Released on legendary guitarist Takanaka’s Kitty Records label, Coconuts High was recorded in LA with a jazz fusion backing band, including Alex Acuña, Abraham Laborial, Harvey Mason and the Tower of Power horns. A riot of playful Latin-tinged jazz, funk and fusion with the off-beat spirit of Kid Creole & and the Coconuts, the album became a cult hit. Here it’s the sultry, Minnie Riperton-esque ‘Crazy Love’, with its addictive groove and bittersweet melodies that makes the cut, alongside the steel drum-infused carnivalesque bounce of ‘Palm St’.

Choice Cuts 1978-1983 will introduce the idiosyncratic energy and playful verve of this under-the-radar pioneer to a wider audience for the first time. Welcome to the world of Izumi ‘Mimi’ Kobayashi." More

Tokyo Riddim Band continue their journey striding across times and cultures, this time with their colourful keyboardist and frontwoman Mimi Kobayashi breathing new life into a song she originally penned in 1981. ‘Lazy Love’ first featured on Mimi’s highly sought after Coconuts High LP, which she recorded in LA recruiting top session players to play alongside her. It was also included in Time Capsule’s 2024 compilation of Japanese reggae - Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985.

This soulful pop tune turned deep dub cut retains the romantic charm of the original, whilst the tasteful performances of the Tokyo Riddim Band and Ras Tavaris combined with Prince Fatty’s studio magic give the song a newly found depth.

London based Tokyo Riddim Band is a unique fusion of cultures, bringing together the vibrant energy of three generations of Japanese female musicians with the eclectic sounds of London. Their dynamic performances blend reggae drums, funky bass lines, and the smooth City Pop guitar, all magically dubbed-out live on stage. This is not just music; it's a cultural phenomenon, offering a fresh and exciting take on the reggae scene. More

2024 new vinyl repress release on 28th June

Dive into the spiritual depths of Carnatic Music(Southern Indian classical music) - An enchanting journey of devotion and transcendence pulsates with raw sincerity and profound spirituality, casting a spell that transcends boundaries of belief.

Born into a musician family steeped in the south Indian tradition of vocal music, the Mumbai-raised singer took advantage of the city’s cosmopolitism to study northern Hindustani disciplines, one of the few vocalists to train in both. Now revered as one of the greatest living exponents of Carnatic music, she received an Oscar nomination for her work on Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.

Within the first minute of opener Sada Bada (Slokam), Jayashri’s intensely spiritual vocals give a clear indication of why she has been increasingly embraced by a new generation of western listeners who’ve made the natural leap from ambient soundscapes to new age and devotional music. Accompanied on the following Bhajeham Bhajeham by a hypnotic rhythmic backing of mridangam drums, bells and the drone of a tambura, over its epic twenty-minute length she stretches her voice into a variety of spellbinding forms – her softly enunciated dedications to Shiva enveloping you with their immersive warmth and cosmic beauty. Keshvaya Namaha is an invocation to Lord Vishnu, the protector of creation and one of the other major deities of the Hindu tradition, while Raghavam recites the names and attributes of two of his most popular avatars: the heroic Rama and the playful, loving Krishna.

One of the album’s new-found devotees is label boss Kay Suzuki: “every time I listen I’m amazed at how such a small ensemble can create such a deep musical landscape. The incredible production plays a big part. That intricate percussion sounds so clear and sits in all the right pockets rhythmically and sonically. Just by following this groove I’m put into a timeless zone, but when her voice hits on top of that gorgeous drone sound and I focus on the details of her small melodies within melodies, my heart centres and I find myself in a blissful place.”

As professor of cultural and political theory in Universicty of East London, Jeremy Gilbert states in the album’s liner notes, the mesmerising sincerity and deep spirituality of these songs present an intense and spiritual charge that will appeal to an audience well beyond believers and devotees of Hinduism.

Originally released on CD in 2000 from South Indian Carnatic music label and reissued on vinyl and digital first time in 2019 by Time Capsule. New 2024 repress vinyl has different tracks on the B side and it still remains as the reverse cut as the 2019 version.

Reverse Cut Vinyl!

This record plays from the inner groove to the outer groove. You don’t need to change any settings on your turntable; Just place the needle where the record usually finishes and play normally.

A long-playing record like this (over 20 minutes long) tends to have lesser dynamics and sound quality when it’s closer to the center of the record due to the progressive reduction of linear resolution as the record progresses to smaller diameters. Since this music starts quietly at the beginning and then has greater dynamics and volume towards the end, this way of cutting vinyl yields superior results. More

Dubbed out new version of a Japanese reggae classic from 1982 by UK-based Tokyo Riddim Band. Recorded and mixed by the legendary Prince Fatty in South London, it's a fusion of past and present, East and West.
Three generations of female musicians from Japan come together, blending reggae drums, funky bass, and the smooth City Pop guitar, all magically dubbed-out live on stage. Tokyo Riddim Band is a culture clash phenomenon unlike anything else.

Championed by Gilles Peterson, and featured on NTS, Pitchfork and Bandcamp Daily, the group was born out of Time Capsule’s wildly popular compilation “Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985”. In just a matter of months they have sold out headline shows across London and supported Kyoto Jazz Massive at Jazz Cafe, conjuring a raucous, dubby dancefloor that brings the classic Japanese reggae sound of the ‘70s and ‘80s to life for a new generation.

Led by the inimitable pianist and composer Izumi ‘Mimi’ Kobayashi who featured on the original compilation, Tokyo Riddim Band are set to release a series of 7” singles in the coming months with more live shows planned throughout the summer 2024.

The first single, 'Denshi Lenzi', reinvents the Natural Mystic riddim of the original Japanese production, infusing it with dubbed-out vocals, sirens, and electrifying e-tom sounds, delivering an authentic reggae/dub experience with a distinct UK flair. More

Named after one of the basic rhythms of Cuban folk music and drawing on influences from across the globe, Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin are quite simply a world unto itself.

Comprised of three childhood friends, Daido, Yuta and So, who reconnected during the coronavirus pandemic, Cho Co Pa initially emerged as a playful way for the three 23-year-olds to pass the time. Tapping into their youthful connection, they created a sound that exudes confidence and curiosity, a homage to the masterful world of YMO’s and Happy End’s Haruomi Hosono, rooted in the trio’s own idiosyncratic experience of the present.

Recorded at home and promoted on hugely popular DIY TikTok videos, their debut album Tradition is a technicolour exercise in armchair travelling – a kind of lockdown exotica for the housebound whose nostalgic flights of fancy are laced with a sense of whimsical melancholy for the lost freedoms of youth.

Referencing everything from Afro-Cuban percussion to lo-fi beats, Buddhist spirituality to trap, each member of the band brings different musical inspirations to the table. Latin American and Middle Eastern styles sit adjacent to a fascination for the electronic music of Aphex Twin, Dorian Concept, Underworld and Daft Punk. At times, the music verges on acid pop bliss, at others, it grooves with the instrumental funk sensibility of BADBADNOTGOOD.

“In the first place, when I create a song, my goal is to transport the listener to a mysterious place,” vocalist Daido explained in a recent magazine interview. Using lyrics as another sonic texture in the composition of ideas, Cho Co Pa paint beguiling sonic postcards of far-flung moods across 12 highly original tracks.

Marrying the organic and the electronic on rhythmically sophisticated compositions like ‘Chichibu’ and ‘Watatsumi’, it is on the album’s standout track ‘Gandhara’ that the experimental sound of Cho Co Pa comes to the fore. Referencing the ancient city of Gandhara through which Buddhism made its way from India to China, the track is a vocoder-trap-inspired, Udu drum-driven pop jam that lilts with unmistakable Balearic flair. If that’s difficult to imagine, then know simply that ‘Gandhara’ sounds like nothing else on this side of Saturn. Even Daido seemed surprised by the outcome: “I feel like we were able to create something that exceeded our abilities. That was huge!”

Hugely popular in Japan, with festival appearances lined up alongside BADBADNOTGOOD at Asagiri Jam in October, it's safe to say the success of Tradition has taken Cho Co Pa by surprise. Released digitally in July 2023, Tradition will get a full international vinyl release in January 2024. You won’t have heard anything like it. More

A long-lost Japanese acid folk gem, Niningashi’s 1974 private press debut Heavy Way shimmers with originality, deft song writing and a dream-like groove.

Although he was training as a pharmacist, Kazuhisa Okubo was much more interested in prescribing musical medicine.

A coming-of-age album, Heavy Way captured a turning point in Okubo’s life, and Japanese society more widely as a nostalgia for the pastoral calm of the traditional life, met the cosmopolitan thrill of coffee, sex and cigarettes in the big city.

Intoxicated by Tokyo, driven by a passion for music and surrounded by a thriving acid folk scene, the young student filtered his experiences through a psychedelic cocktail of soulful influences from the US and Japan.

Niningashi was his first band, and Heavy Way was their only album. It was honest and raw, deep and strangely funky, in an off-beat kind of way. Across nine tracks, Okubo and the 6-piece band put their own spin on the new folk sound of Japan, combining witty lyrics with electric guitar-driven solos and crisp, understated grooves.

Melancholy and profound, opening track ‘Ameagari’ feels like a synthesis of Harvest-era Neil Young and Haruomi Hosono’s Happy End. Then there’s the whimsical washboard country sound of ‘Semai Boku No Heyade’; the moody, low-lit charm of ‘Restaurant’; and ‘Hitoribotchi’, a sensitive portrayal of childhood, steeped in memories of rainfall that will resonate with fans of Woo and Mac Demarco.

While Okubo would go on to taste success with psychedelic folk bands Neko and Kaze, the latter of which scored three #1 albums, little is known about his mysterious debut with Niningashi.

Self-released by Okubo in 1974, and featuring album artwork by his brother, it has slowly generated a cult following online, intrigued by its soft and enchanting sound. So few records were ultimately pressed that those remaining have fetched up to £1,500 online.

Featured on Time Capsule’s era-spanning collection Nippon Acid Folk, Niningashi’s Heavy Way is a deep-cut grail of a vibrant time in Japan’s musical history, where even the pharmacists were making jams. More

The follow-up compilation to Time Capsule’s Nippon Acid Folk, Nippon Psychedelic Soul takes myriad pathways into the tripped-out undergrowth of 1970s Japan. Finding their feet at home and looking for inspiration abroad, the musicians featured here were engaged in the communal soul-searching that followed the breakdown of the 1960s protest movements. Some made it big, others drifted into oblivion. The music they left behind shimmers with intensity.

At the core was Happy End, the first project of YMO’s Haroumi Hosono, whose distortion-heavy guitar and crisp back-beat laid the foundations for Japanese lyrics that flipped the paradigm of Japanese rock music on its head. With it came a new found sonic ambition, such as in the bold Philly-soul style arrangements of producer Yuji Ohno, whose work with occult wandered Yoshiko Sai shares some of the bittersweet grandeur of Rotary Connection or David Axelrod.

Then there was Jun Fukamachi, a pioneer of Japanese synthesis, whose debut album was a carnival of orchestral funk, euphoric horn lines and rich production, complete with soaring guitar solos, psychedelic organ and a truly cinematic finale. The first and only time Fukamachi would sing on record, ‘Omae’ rips like the ultimate end-of-nighter.

Influenced by giants of the US soul scene, maverick composer Hiroshi “Monsieur” Kamayatsu (otherwise known as ‘the Brian Wilson of Japan’) went one step further, enlisting Tower of Power to play on ‘Have You Smoked Gauloises?’ The B-side to Monsieur’s biggest-selling single, it coasts with sophisticated cool - a liquid bassline and suave keys comping under a roaring trademark ToP sax solo. No surprise it found favour once more on the Acid Jazz dance floors of ‘90s London.

Such was the spirit of experimentation that big studio productions and private press releases sat side-by-side, with the likes of Momotaro Pink and Kazushi Inamura, taking their hopes of success into their own hands with the resources available to them. More reflective but no less robust, theirs was a heavy, fat-backed drum sound, soaked in dramatic, soulful psychedelia.

If some were dreamers and others space cadets, none were further out than sci-fi writer, musician, activist and self-made scientist Tadashi Goino, who transformed his own fantasy novel Messenger from the Seventh Dimension into an operatic prog odyssey with few discernible musical reference points – a majestic and completely bonkers outlier even among company as strange and brilliant as that which is collected here.

Less a compilation of a scene, as a compilation of a sentiment, Nippon Psychedelic Soul is a wild ride from start to finish, shattering the narratives of the Japanese folk and rock tradition into a million tiny pieces. More

A counterculture movement united by an expansive, experimental and deeply soulful sensibility, Japan’s rebel protest music challenged the status quo and changed the country’s music industry in the process.
The birth of Japan’s nascent acid folk scene was rooted in the messy and invigorating political climate of the late 1960s. It is a story of Dadaists, communists, pharmacists and cult leaders, led by a young generation of upstart students, artists and dreamers hellbent on turning their world upside down.

Born on the campuses of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, and centred around newly formed independent label and left-wing stronghold URC, this uniquely Japanese form of folk expression provided an outlet for musicians who were tired of aping Western sounds and instead found ways to sing in Japanese and integrate traditional forms in new ways.

At the forefront of this movement was Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haroumi Hosono, a polymath innovator whose band Happy End released the first Japanese language rock album, and whose influence would go on to be felt across Japanese music for decades. Alongside, and informed by the Kansai scene’s Takashi Nishioka and Happy End collaborator Ken Narita, they experimented with cadences and accents of the Japanese language to open the door for others to experiment with their own forms of psychedelic folk too.

Some, like Nishioka, were more inspired by Dadaism than drugs, while others, like Kazuhisa Okubo, would ultimately find work as a chemist, having founded two further folk groups that flirted with varying levels of success. Obstinately uncommercial, relentlessly creative, the music featured on Time Capsule’s Nippon Acid Folk represents a broad church of influences.

Perhaps the wildest addition to this congregation however was Hiroki Tamaki, a classically-trained violinist and committed iconoclast, whose synth-prog odysseys hinted at his obsession with the divine. Subsumed by the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he penned an album in praise of the infamous religious leader of which two superbly mind-bending tracks are featured on this compilation.

Charting the decade from 1970 to 1980 as the dreams of political and spiritual liberation seeded in the ‘60s turned to dust, Nippon Acid Folk surveys a little explored corner of Japanese music history, but one which ultimately laid the foundations for an independent music industry, launching the careers of Hosono and others in the process.

Nippon Acid Folk 1970-1980 is pressed on 12” vinyl and represents the start of Time Capsule’s deep dive into Japan’s rich history of folk and psychedelic soul music. More

The smooth and funky sound of prime-time Japanese reggae pop in the 1970s and ‘80s fired up an obsession with Jamaican music that persists to the present day.

If there is a year zero for the introduction of reggae music to Japan, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was 1979 when Bob Marley and the Wailers toured the country, trailed by an entourage of journalists, photographers and fans ready to spread the message of the music into all corners of Japanese society.

But the story of Japanese reggae is not a linear one, and the music that is collected on Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 captures the moment J-reggae entered the broader public consciousness, merging commercial city pop style with an infectious backbeat, that has drawn comparisons with the emergence of Lovers Rock in the UK.

Rather than look directly to Jamaica, many producers and artists in Japan were inspired instead by the more approachable sounds of The Police and UB40, their reggae fix arriving pre-filtered through the lens of new wave pop from the UK. Playful and groovy, these album deep cuts have been overlooked for too long.

Among them are Miki Hirayama, the idol singer who borrowed the bassline from Bob Marley’s Natural Mystic on ‘Denshi Lenzi’, Chu Kosaka, who headed to Hawaii to cut the Jimmy Cliff-inspired ‘Music’ and Marlene, the Philippine songstress whose cover of Roberta Flack’s ‘Hittin’ Me Wear It Hurts’ owed much to her producer’s obsession with Sly & Robbie’s Compass Point sound.

Then there was Izumi “Mimi” Kobayashi, who enlisted the Babylon Warriors to perform on a dubbed-out version of her own track ‘Lazy Love’, the city pop-meets-new wave reggae sound of Miharu Koshi’s ‘Coffee Break’, Junko Yagami’s anti-apartheid deep cut ‘Johannesburg’ and Lily, whose ‘Tenki Ni Naare’ was produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto and closes out the compilation with a flourish.

While these stories may not always conform to neat narratives, they do provide a more accurate reflection of the indirect ways in which styles infiltrate one another and, in their naivety, have the potential to create something beautifully strange and entirely new. Previously only available in Japan, the tracks on this compilation are a testament to that curious alchemy.

Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 is released on vinyl and as a full album download (no streaming), featuring original artwork by Japanese Fukuoka-based artist Noncheleee, whose cover pays homage to the iconic dancehall album art of Wilfred Limonious.

Released on 1st September, Tokyo Riddim 1976-1985 is a part of Time Capsule's Nippon Series, a loose series of compilations exploring different musical scenes from Japan between the 1960s and 2010s. More

Inspired equally by the soul and funk of the Black Rio movement and the samba rock innovations, Serginho Meriti’s debut album presents one of the best examples of funky Brazilian soul from 1981.

Brazil’s Black Rio movement had a lasting impact on the country’s marginalised black youth. Inspired by the African-American Civil Rights Movement and the revolutionary, politically conscious soul and funk being produced by the likes of James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott Heron, Billy Paul and Nina Simone, a new scene began to incubate in Rio’s poor and oft-neglected North Zone – one which put black culture front and centre. At bailes funk (funk balls) revellers proudly sported afros and danced to their own beat while artists such as Banda Black Rio, Trio Ternura, Tim Maia and Emilio Santiago subverted officially-sanctioned Brazilian styles by fusing elements of imported soul, funk and jazz with samba rhythms to create a new form of music they could call their own.

Se´rginho Meriti was one of many young artists caught up in the excitement of the movement. Born Se´rgio Roberto Serafim and raised in the north Rio suburb of Meriti (from which he’d take his stage name), he began his career with Black Rio funk/soul outfit Copa 7, for whom he penned the stridently funky dance floor hit Som Da Copa 7.

Snapped up by Polydor at the turn of the 80s, Bons Mementos was his first work as a solo artist. It’s the work of a young musician brimming with musical ideas and creating a new take the Black Rio sound – one he would refer to variously as Meritiense (the sound of Meriti) or as Electric Samba. The title track is perhaps the perfect distillation of his ideas, mixing Black Rio’s funky bass and guitar lines with a healthy dose of the samba rock style developed by Jorge Ben, a pinch of eighties synths, and some of the best call-and-response female vocals this side of Fela Kuti. The result is a potently-rich musical stew that has made the track a compilation favourite and the album hugely collectable among funk connoisseurs.

Elsewhere on an all-killer-no-filler effort, Madureira adds reggae-fied guitar rhythms and low-slung bass to the mix while Malandro’s added bursts of brass give playful homage to Glenn Miller’s Big Band standard In The Mood. Memorias demonstrates Meriti’s mastery of tempo. Beginning with a languid slice of samba rock the track abruptly changes speed half way through for a bright and zippy finish of brass-heavy funk. Serjane adds layers of flute and saxophone the latter adding to the natural warmth of Serginho’s rough-hewn vocals. Tipo is a classic funk workout with some deliciously squelchy synths, while Batalha ends the album with a warm slice of funk, it’s yin and yang melding of joyful horn bursts with mournful vocals a potent demonstration of the sadness that underpins the album’s seemingly sunny soul. More

Trailblazing instrumental synth pop experiments created to soundtrack Japan’s booming 1980s cartoon and comic industries. The brightly futuristic instrumentals on this collection reflect the mindset of composers and musicians who believed in a technological future where everything was possible.

In the late 1980s Japan experienced a brief but heady period where societal changes combined with new-found wealth to open up a world of possibilities. A huge influx of cash - artificially created by slashed interest rates after an agreement with the US to weaken the dollar relative to the yen - resulted in the inflation of real estate and stock market at a rapid pace. While the economic bubble it created was unprecedented and impossible to sustain, for a while money was in plentiful supply.

The musical genre City Pop reflected the aspirations of the country’s booming leisure class. Video games flourished with Nintendo's 1983 launch of their Family Computer (or FamiCom). Studio Ghibli was founded 1985 to later became one of the most famous and respected animation studios in the world, and Anime and Manga were established as major forms of entertainment for all generations of the Japanese public.

Music was no mere footnote to the anime and manga boom: the two forms of media often went hand in hand, and not simply through the presence of background melodies. With generous budgets available, even two-dimensional static manga comics could be released with an accompanying soundtrack of original music known as an ‘Image Album’.

Composer and arranger Kazuhiko Izu was one such beneficiary of this open budget approach. Written to accompany artist Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga comic Domu, the composer and arranger took advantage of the world-leading (and wallet-busting) Japanese synthesiser technology available at King Records’ fully equipped studio. Featured on this compilation, A3: Act 2 Scene 26 reflected the story’s sci fi themes with a blazingly futuristic yet warmly funky slice of synth pop that presents a joyful celebration of synthesisers and their seemingly endless possibilities.

Kan Ogasawara was another composer who made early mastery of the litany of synthesisers, drum machines and sequencers that had become available. Two tracks written to accompany the 1985 period manga Yume No Ishibumi are featured here; Honowo’s experimental electronic textures add spice to a jaunty electro pop melody that recalls the Rah band’s 1983 hit Messages From Stars; the jazz-tinged Utage rounds out Ogasawara’s shimmering synth textures with beautifully crafted backing from legendary musicians Yuji Toriyama (guitar), Pecker (percussion) and Jun Fukamachi (piano).

Before becoming one of the pioneers of Japanese Kankyo Ongaku (Ambient Music), Takashi Kokubo worked on the proto techno track Kiki (Jungle At Night). It was put together for the 1984 anime film Shonen Keniya (Kenya Boy) using some of the most expensive music technologies available at the time. This Africa-Inspired dance track offers a contemporary parallel to the early techno music that young Detroit based producers were then creating using cheap Japanese Roland drum machines and synthesisers.

This is the first compilation of Japanese anime and manga soundtracks curated by Kay Suzuki and Rintaro Sekizuka from Vinyl Delivery Service (a Tokyo based online record shop which also operates in East London's renowned wine and hifi shop Idle Moments). With a cover by artist Kazuki Takakura and two pages of liner notes, this vinyl only compilation of music never before released outside of Japan, captures a vital aural snapshot of an era whose forward-thinking sounds went hand in hand with cutting edge technology. More

The roots of Angolan popular music explored in the meticulous guitar studies of Mário Rui Silva 1980s albums.

Whether on mesmerising acoustic ballads or hypnotic groove-led tracks, the music of Angolan guitarist, researcher and intellectual Mário Rui Silva has a beguiling, melancholy quality, woven into the dynamics of his deft guitar playing.

Rhythmically complex yet supremely effortless, the music collected here stems from three albums Mário released in Luanda in the 1980s that reflect his diverse range of influences, from traditional Angolan and West African rhythms to European jazz and classical instrumentation.

It is united by a sense of low-key beauty, whether on the chugging opener ‘Kazum-zum-zum’, the jazz-funk keys of ‘Lembrança Dum Velho’, or the twinkling, late-night poly-rhythms of ‘Kizomba Kya Kisanji’.

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Born in Luanda, Angola in 1953, Mário dedicated his life to Angolan popular music. His fifty-year career has seen him live between Angola and Europe, rub shoulders with Cameroonian musicians Francis Bebey and Ewanjé, record the seminal album Angola ’72 with fellow Angolan musician Bonga, and draw influence from Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell.

It was the teaching of Angolan legend and Ngola Ritmos co-founder Liceu Vieira Dias that Mário gained a technical, political and spiritual understanding of Angolan musical culture. In the hands of Liceu, the traditional Angolan semba and kazukuta rhythms of the 1940s and ‘50s helped create an emancipatory sense of national pride and collective agency that awakened its listeners to the racism and tyranny of colonial rule, underpinning the country’s push for independence in the process.

What might sound like the intonations of Brazilian influence are what Mário attributes to the “African rhythms taken by the slaves [which] gave rise to other musical cultures” around the globe. Instead, this music emerged from a collective instinct to assert a cosmopolitan Angolan identity free from the patronising falsehoods of Lusotropicalism.

“There was a need within me to contribute in doing new things,” Mário describes. “In the sense of solidifying the music of Angola that was the result of the meeting of two cultures, and wanting to value the Angolan part whenever possible.”

A selection from Mário’s three 1980s albums, Sung’Ali (1982), Tunapenda Afrika (1985) and Koizas dum Outru Tempu (1988) have been compiled here as a 2xLP release by Time Capsule’s Sam Jacob and Kay Suzuki. Together, they provide a snapshot of one man’s journey to the core of his nation’s music, charged with the search for a culture uprooted by colonialism. More

Propulsive deep house & transcendent grooves bring the revolutionary spirit of Martinique’s Gratien Midonet to the fore on this new Time Capsule remix EP. Includes reworks by Kuniyuki Takahashi (Music From Memory), Khidja (DFA, Hivern, Malka Tuti) & Kay Suzuki (Time Capsule)

Tracklist:
A: Osana (Kuniyuki Remix) 10:35
B1: Roulo (Kay Suzuki Remix) 8:50
B2: La Reine (Khidja Remix) 9:16 More

The music of Martinique poet and composer Gratien Midonet is being treated to a special three-track remix EP, A Cosmic Poet Revisited, providing a new context for the political activism and cosmic folk sound of the original recordings.

A musician informed by his academic and spiritual pursuits, who penned albums in France that became cult anthems for the independence movement in his native Martinique, Midonet developed a unique sonic language that combined bélé and beguine rhythms, acoustic mysticism, Creole lyrics and electronic instrumentation.

Releasing four albums across a ten-year period between 1979 and 1989, Midonet’s catalogue has been revisited for the first time on Time Capsule compilation, A Cosmic Poet from Martinique (TIME009).

With the label also reissuing all four original albums digitally over a number of months, this extensive retrospective of Midonet’s career is joined by an EP featuring three new interpretations from a trio of like-minded sonic disciples from across the globe.

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On the A-Side, Sapporo-based producer and sound designer Kuniyuki Takahashi tugs at the spiritual threads of Midonet’s ‘Osana’ to unravel the sun-soaked funk devotional into an 11-minute deep house odyssey.

Up next, London-based Time Capsule boss Kay Suzuki’s soft touch rework of ‘Roulo’ emphasises the organic syncopation of Midonet’s original to craft a tantalising slow-burner that ebbs and flows with a natural ease.

Closing out proceedings, Romanian duo Khidja provide an acid-tinged adaptation of ‘La Reine’, the final track of the Time Capsule compilation. A minimalist affair which nods towards kosmische musik in its forward motion, Khidja bring the loose drums and elastic synth lines to the front on what is a fittingly euphoric climax to the EP.

Speaking to compilation curator Cedric Lassonde, Midonet stressed the spiritual necessity of his music in approaching “the transcendental worlds whose door remains closed for most humans”.

In curating a remix project that seeks not to exaggerate the intention of the originals but to compliment them, Time Capsule has succeeded in lifting Gratien Midonet’s message of mystical togetherness into new realms. More

Creole poetry, folk mysticism and heavy-grooving cosmic synths combine on this unprecedented survey of spiritual Martinique polymath Gratien Midonet’s first four albums.

“I always broke free from the rules, from codes being too narrow,” says poet, musician and sonic shaman Gratien Midonet. “I have always had this sense of peaceful knowledge that there is no separation between genres, beings and universal things.”

For Midonet, pushing musical boundaries was less a choice than an extension of his spirit. A self-taught guitarist and composer, drawing on his childhood memories of bélé and beguine rhythms, Midonet’s musical life developed in parallel to his academic and spiritual pursuits. Studying philosophy and psychopedagogy in France, it was his fascination with pan-Africanism and animism which fuelled the transcendent energy of his music.

Although Midonet honed his sound in France, the four albums he released during the late ‘70s and ‘80s were heavily inspired by diasporic nostalgia, or what he describes as the “smells and colours… subliminal noises… fruity notes, the memories of funeral wakes, the bombastic organ of the cathedral and the gasps of the drums” of his childhood home on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Fittingly, it’s there that Midonet achieved cult status for the title track of his 1979 debut, Van An Lévè, which became a protest anthem for the island’s independence movement, and was briefly censored by the French authorities. Look no further than ‘Mari Rhont Ouve La Pot’, which opens this collection, to hear the propulsive mix of cosmic synths, acoustic folk, and Creole lyricism that became the essence of Midonet’s sound.

Released on Martinique label Touloulou, Van An Lévè was followed in 1980 by L’inité, whose tropical acid folk (‘M’en ka Monté Mon’) and majestic, violin-led melodies (‘Kannaval Sakré Pou Tout Z’Heb Poussé’) confirmed Midonet’s unique and intuitive approach to composition.

Not content to skip effortlessly between genres and influences, Midonet also began pushing the boundaries of the album form itself. His third album, Bourg La Folie, released in 1984, was a soundtrack for a lost film about the mysticisms of carnival, while his fourth, Fô Ou Tchimbé, took the form of a ‘conte musical’ (a narrated story accompanied by music) presented at the Pompidou Centre, and spoke to Midonet’s literary prowess as a fierce proponent of the Creole language.

Like Fô Ou Tchimbé’s iridescent ‘Antille Ô Cristal’, with its sparse synth stabs and rubbery bassline, Midonet’s music has found a new home on psychedelic dance floors like Beauty and The Beat, where resident Pol Valls first brought Midonet to curator Cedric Lassonde’s attention.

As Lassonde writes in the liner notes: “Midonet’s musical world is cosmic, mystical and he has created his own idiosyncratic style around it: not plain folk, not bélé, chouval bwa, beguine or gwoka, but rather a transcendental fusion of all these and a true reflection of his personality.”

Now based on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, Midonet and his message of musical unity are ready to resonate once more.
crédits More

A classically trained dancer, Gabriel Roth was involved with the early ’60’s counterculture movement as a dance instructor for therapeutic workshops at the legendary Esalen Institute in San Francisco and Arica School in New York. These facilities and groups played key roles in the Human Potential Movement in psychology which later led to Transpersonal Psychology and the New Age Movement.
Through direct encounters and training from the era’s noted psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and spiritual gurus, she single-handedly rediscovered and redefined the ancient shamanic technique of ecstatic dance, establishing a method she named 5Rhythms in the late 70’s.
The practice of 5Rhythms consists of five movements: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Through this dance sequence difficulties and obstructions in life can be identified and ultimately overcome. The sequence of the rhythms helps create waves that allow the dancer to reach a point of inner stillness. It is a globally recognised movement meditation practice with over 400 qualified teachers in more than 50 countries. Though Gabrielle Roth passed away in 2012, her spirit and legacy have been passed down through her family and extensive followers. It is still being practiced today.
Music plays a key role in these workshops. Following the shamanic tradition of using live percussion as a driving force, the music is necessarily rhythmic in nature and repetitive enough to focus on self-movement without invasive melodies or lyrics to distract one’s mind. It must be fairly lengthy in duration, with the journey defined by the pulsing waves of emotional flow that guide the body’s movement. The music was not intended to be consumed while socialising, but as an aid to the internal journey into one’s soul. It is minimal, abstract, and atmospheric. As a result of these characteristics (or rather functionalities), their albums didn’t fit into any conventional styles at the time of their release in the early 80s. Theirs is a pure form of dance music that also shares many commonalities with ambient music in the modern context. Yet ambient music had yet to establish itself as a genre at the time despite the early efforts of Brian Eno while underground dance - the genre with which it shares many of its stylistic qualities - was yet to be born. Their releases were rarely appreciated outside of workshops.
Between 1982 and 2008, Gabrielle and her husband Robert Ansell produced 16 original albums as Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors. Robert brought together some of the best studio musicians that New York had to offer while his son Scott - who later became a Grammy-winning sound engineer - recorded and mixed all of their crystal clear productions.
Endless Wave: Vol 1 was originally released on their own private label in 1996 on CD. Comprised of a selection of their past recordings, the first part acts as a seductive entry point into their rhythmic sound world, with Roth’s voice intoning gentle instructions over each track. The opener Body Parts commences with a series of rolling polyrhythmic beats to prepare the body for meditation. From there the music shifts through a series of ambient moods that evoke each of the ‘5Rhythm’ states of being. Atmospheric synths and stately violins combine to help ease into movement on Flowing. Didgeridoos and funky bass lines evoke masculine energy on Staccato before the tumbling rhythms of Chaos encourage the uninhibited release of one’s mind and body. The soft vocal harmonies of Lyrical help the listener towards a lighter, more fluid, and creative state of being creating a becalming state that continues with the deep ritualistic chants and languid drums of Stillness.The second part of the album consists of a non-guided version of the same journey. Freshly recorded for the album’s release in 1996, the band deliver up an equally vital series of brilliantly realised rhythmic excursions.
In the words of Gabrielle Roth: “I have found a language of patterns I can trust to deliver us into universal truths, truths older than time. In the rhythm of the body, we can trace our holiness, roots that go all the way back to zero. States of being where all identities dissolve into an eternal flow of energy. Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that, energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.” More

(2023 Repress) Safe Trip is taking one final deep dive into the warm waters of Italian dream house with Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, the concluding chapter in the label’s journey through the previously overlooked world of one of dance music’s most vibrant and influential underground movements.While the influence of dream house continues to echo through the ages, the style was at its peak between 1989 and ’94, when producers across Italy delivered a high volume of loved-up, wavy and occasionally blissful productions that fused contemporary deep house tropes – most notably from Chicago, New York and New Jersey – with elements borrowed from ambient, jazz and Balearica. It’s this six-year period that provides the focus for Welcome To Paradise Volume 3, which draws together a spine-tingling mixture of sought-after classics, unheralded gems and little-known delights from the original Italian dream house movement. Thrillingly, Welcome to Paradise Volume 3 co-curator Young Marco has managed to source two previously unreleased tracks during the dream house period: the gently unfurling, sunrise-friendly bliss of Jacy’s “Resounding Seashell” and a special “Longer Edit” of Neurostate’s brilliant “Dance To The House”, a track that – somewhat surprisingly – has never previously been issued on vinyl before. Elsewhere, there are plenty of treats to set the pulse racing, from the must-have deep house brilliance of Leo Anibaldi’s “Universe” – a rare foray into dream house territory from the Italian techno pioneer – and the Afro-bleep-goes-dream-house trip of Golem’s “Sun City”, to the cowbell-driven, New Jersey garage-influenced warmth of Deep Choice’s “Children Trip” and Cosmic Galaxy’s “Walkin’ On The Moon”, a Detroit techno-influenced outing with a deliciously saucer-eyed, extended ambient intro. You’ll also struggle to find a more inspired house record than Green Baize’s “Tramp Heart”, which mixes familiar dream house elements with spacey electronics and tribal chants that recall Italy’s early ‘80s Afro-cosmic scene. It all adds up to another essential selection of rich, glassy-eyed dream house treats tailor-made for sound-tracking drawn-out Adriatic sunsets, Mediterranean sunrises and loved-up parties the world over. More

The Heliocentrics are a group for which genres are meaningless and boundaries invisible. Since first appearing on DJ Shadow’s 2006 album The Outsider the group have gone on to release a string of records that float through jazz, hip-hop, psych, krautrock, and musique concrete whilst collaborating with numerous genre heavyweights from Mulatu Astake to Gaslamp Killer and picking up prestigious fans along the way, such as Madlib and the recently departed David Axelrod.

The primarily instrumental group, who operate out of their vintage analogue studio in East London called the Quatermass Sound Lab, bring in a new singer on album number four - a young Slovakian singer called Barbora Patkova. The result is an album that takes the band, already solidified in ever-ex- panding grooves and rhythms into new previously unexplored dimensions.The group’s deep-set ability to craft music intuitively and impulsively stems from a desire to avoid typical processes or generic structures. Since its conception, the band’s music has mainly been created from live improvisation. This musical approach gives the band its own sound and identity -”for anything to happen it must be at that time from the people in the room, and on the spot”. A decade of such sonic adventures has resulted in a tightly knit bond that the group refer to as “almost a form of telepathy” with “musical changes that otherwise would be near impossible to write.” More

Tokyo DJ’s sonic memoir spanning two decades of life and music in Japan - Japan Vibrations Vol. 1 will transport listeners in time to energetic nights at Japan’s legendary club venues and delight with a spirited journey of musical discovery and reflection.

Dive into the exhilarating era of Japan’s electronic dance music scene from the mid ’80s to the mid ’90s with Japan Vibrations Vol. 1. The hand-picked collection by DJ and musical storyteller Alex from Tokyo pays homage to the trailblazers and innovators who shaped the landscape.

Set for release this autumn, the compilation serves as a time capsule recording a vibrant point in Japan’s modern music history. Likewise, a love letter from someone who lived it.

11 newly remastered tracks spanning ambient, downtempo, dub, world beats, deep house, new jazz, and techno. Together they showcase the creative ingenuity and energy of a paradisiac era marked by a symbiotic fusion of international sounds with distinctively Japanese influences. Experience the vibrations of pioneers Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yasuaki Shimizu. Culture-shaping forces Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kan Takagi, Susumu Yokota, Silent Poets, Mondo Grosso and Kyoto Jazz Massive. And new- generation artists Jun CMJK Kitagawa (C.T. Scan), Mind Design, Okihide, and Hiroshi Watanabe. The evolution of a scene, a moment, presented with the progression of a DJ set.

Hi-fidelity remastering by sound engineer Isao Kumano (PHONON). License coordination by Ken Hidaka, album artwork by Takehiko Kitahara.
Photography by Meisa Fujishiro and Beezer, and from Alex and friends’ personal collections.
Pressed by Mother Tongue Records. Distribution by Rush Hour.



Track info:

1. Haruomi Hosono — Ambient Meditation #3

The compilation opens with an invitation to tea in the dream layer. The tranquil track, dedicated to new age legend Laraaji and ambient great Brian Eno, features Hosono on the Prophet 5 synthesizer and the American multi-instrumentalist Laraaji plucking a glittering zither. Hosono released it in 1993 as the closing track of his Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge. True to its title, the album charts the early ‘90s contemplative turn of one of Japan’s most influential musical artists. Recorded in the tea-room modelled RACOON studio in Yutenji, Tokyo, the album weaves together house, techno, and ambient elements with Hosono’s signature eclectic-exotica touch. The result is a divine elixir, and this track is especially captivating.

2. Silent Poets — Meaning In The Tone (’95 Space & Oriental)

The bubbling dub is impossibly vibey on this remix of “Meaning In The Tone” by Japanese electronic duo (turned solo) project Silent Poets. The original track by Michiharu Shimoda and Takehiro Haruno appeared on their 1993 sophomore album, Potential Meeting. This ethereal, downtempo reworking came out in 1995 for the compilation album New Chapter for DJ/artist Nobukazu Takemura’s newly launched label idyllic records. Silent Poets went on to garner international acclaim for its catching sound palette—spanning dub, trip hop, acid jazz, and downtempo like this track—and holistic approach to art fusing music, design, and culture. Shimoda’s original music and brand Poet Meets Dubwise continues to capture the meaning in the tones.

3. Mind Design — Sun

Soft and resonant with a cinematic build up, “Sun” by techno unit Mind Design (Tomonori Sawada and Koji Sakurai) feels like daybreak at Mount Fuji. Sawada and Sakurai made the track (and all their music at the time) using a sequencer to run synths and rhythm machines, and a DAT recorder to capture everything in a single shot. In 1993, Mind Design signed to Transonic (predecessor of Trigger Label), Kazunao Nagata’s underground electronic music label, after the muiltitalented DJ, musician, mastering engineer, and producer saw the duo perform live at a Tokyo techno party. Mind Design’s first and only album View From The Edge followed in 1994, paralleling Sakurai and Sawada’s rising careers as sound composers and designers in the video game industry, where they remain active today.

4. Quadra — Phantom

A rare downtempo gem by Hiroshi Watanabe under his Quadra alias featured on his debut album Sketch From A Moment. With its gently swaying synths and confident percussive stride, “Phantom” is a total vibe. Watanabe, a prolific and versatile artist, is a man of many aliases (Quadra, Kaito, Hiroshi W, Tread [with Takehiko Kitahara], 32 project), label homes (Nite grooves, Kompakt, Third Ear Recordings, Ibadan, Transmat Records), and sound profiles (deep slow house, uptempo, melodic techno, to name a few). The mid ‘90s found Watanabe hard at it, studying composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston, spreading from New York the deep house gospel with EPs released on Japanese label Frogman, spinning hard house and techno at NYC clubs like the legendary “Save The Robots,” and more. “Phantom” captures the spaces between—a mid-album track with a subtle, unrushed flow. Nothing dramatic, everything chill and beautiful.

5. Yasuaki Shimizu — Tamare-Tamare

Few artists create a vibe as timeless, innovative, and totally fun as Yasuaki Shimizu. Singing and sax-ing (he does both on this track), connecting dots across the world, tinkering with scales and studio techniques—Yasuaki’s organic and highly experimental flickering about is an artform itself. Enter “Tamare Tamare,” an electro, world-fusion dance-floor killer featuring renowned Senegalese singer and musician Wasis Diop. Recorded in Paris’ ADS-Colour studio with Martin Meissonier, worldbeat and ethnic music producer extraordinaire (think Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Salif Keita, and Manu Dibango) and released on Shimizu’s 1987 Subliminal, the track shines like the sun. “Tamare Tamare,” as the maestro himself says, is a potent spell in sound form.

6. Ryuichi Sakamoto — Tibetan Dance (Version)

A groovy collage of deep slaps, snappy beats, feathery strums, ethereal windings, rolling keys, and plenty of experimental tweaks, the track feels like a joyful gathering of friends. And it should—Sakamoto invited his YMO colleagues and collaborators Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums), Kenji Omura (electric guitar) and string instrument master Ayuo Takahashi on the Japanese zither instrument the koto into the studio to make “Tibetan Dance”. The revolutionary Fairlight CMI synthesizer joined the party, too, providing the perfect foil for an epically funky, buoyant tune. This slightly stripped down, club-oriented version first saw the light of day in 2015 with the Japan-only re-issue of Sakamoto’s 1984 Ongaku Zukan, remastered in high-resolution format (DSD) by Seigen Ono. Our “professor" Ryuichi Sakamoto, prodigious (and pioneering) musician and beautiful human, passed away in March 2023. His astonishing body of work - some 25 solo albums, 41 albums with YMO, 14 live albums, 19 collaboration albums, and 40 EPs and singles - will enliven and inspire for generations to come!

7. T.P.O. — Hiroshi’s Dub (Tokyo Club Mix)

Thunderclaps and a driving downpour of beats—we’re deep in the club now, Japan vibrations at max amplitude. This atmospheric club classic tells a story of scenes and genres—whole worlds—merging at the close of the ‘80s in Japan. An early release by the powerhouse hip-hop label and posse Major Force, the track is a remix twice over. It started with the uptempo “Punk Inc.” by Tiny Panx Organization” (T.P.O.), brainchild of Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kan Takagi, and K.U.D.O. Next came the dub take by Hiroshi, supreme music and culture tastemaker. And here we have the Paradise Garage-inspired deep-house reworking by Sapporo-hailing DJ Heyta. Got that? Now imagine taking it in at the tiny basement club Aoyama MIX during one of DJ Heyta’s wildly popular Wednesday nights back in the day. Lights out!

8. Okihide — Biskatta

Cycling through sugar cane fields in Okinawa, intense sun overhead and a glistening ocean stretching out into infinity. That’s a sweet memory Okihide Sawaki was recalling when he made this track in his Kyoto “Sleepy Room” home studio. Okihide, a sound otaku since childhood (proud owner of a Korg Mono/Poly at age 12!), caught the attention of Fukuoka’s top DJ and producer Ken Inaoka in 1994 when he was playing live under the moniker Tanzmuzik at Shibuya On Air in Tokyo. Inaoka signed the young artist, now going just by Okihide, to his just-launched techno label “Syzygy Records,” and in 1996 A boy in picca season came out. This smooth, uplifting, Detroit-inspired jam from his eclectic, “intelligent” debut album is full of feeling.

9. Mondo Grosso — Vibe PM (Jazzy Mixed Roots) (Remixed by Yoshihiro Okino)

Peppy, elegant, and massively jazzy bops from 1994 that feel so familiar and fresh. The Kyoto-based acid-jazz collective Mondo Grosso roared to life in the early 90s, led by the multitalented Shinichi Osawa. “Vibe.P.M” (Jazzy Mixed Roots) appeared on the compilation Kyoto Jazz Massive (For Life Records), the brainchild and handiwork of Shuya Okino who, along with his brother Yoshihiro, formed the eponymous musical project (Shuya had been managing Mondo Grosso while working at the Kyoto club “Container”). Yoshihiro’s remix presented here is a slice of Japanese crossover jazz that “makes me feel so alive,” just like American vocalist Brenda Kay Pierce beautifully sings on the track. Thirty years on, Kyoto Jazz Massive and Mondo Grosso, together and as individual artists, continue to evangelize good vibes and heady crossover dance music.

10. Prism — Velvet Nymph

A masterful straight-up deep-house track by one of the masters of Japanese electronic music, the late Susumu Yokota. Working under the pseudonym Prism, and fittingly so, Susumu refracted and refined the Detroit techno sounds he loved into Metronome Melody, released in 1995 on the newly formed Japanese label Sublime Records ran by Yamazaki Manabu. The track and album came on the heels of several pioneering moments for Yokota and, by extension, the Japanese electronic music scene. First, he created a storm in December 1993 performing live at club Yellow as the opening act for Underground Resistance (their first appearance in Japan!). Then, in June 1994, Yokota rocked his unique acid-techno sound at Berlin’s Love Parade to huge fanfare (the first Japanese performer at the legendary technoparade!). The dearly missed Susumu Yokota left us with an amazing, eclectic body of work—some 70 albums and singles over 2 decades.

11. C.T. Scan — Cold Sleep (The Door Into Summer)

The compilation closes with an epic techno gem that spins the story of an era: Frogman Record’s 15-year history as a key incubator of Japanese techno music. Among those discovering techno music in the early ‘90s in Japan was a crew of club-going music writers and industry workers that included Kengo Watanabe, Tsutomu Noda, Dai Sato, and Masakazu Hiroishi who would all in different ways influence and innovate the whole scene. Watanabe and Noda launched the groundbreaking electronic music magazine ele-king. Moved by the Berlin techno scene and spurred on by German-Japanese techno ambassador DJ Toby Izui (aka Tobynation), Watanabe and Dai created the techno label Frogman. They tapped C.T. Scan (better known as synthpop artist and producer CMJK of J-pop fame) for the label’s first and final releases. This version of “Cold Sleep (The Door Into Summer)” appeared on Frogman’s 2008 entering-into-hibernation compilation, Fine – The Best of Frogman. Inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s sci-fi tale about traveling back in time to find oneself, the track is reflective, floating, and gently futuristic. Looking back to create the future, the highest Japan Vibration. More

Ever since he made his first trip to Japan to DJ, Optimo Music founder JD Twitch has been bewitched by Japanese music, and particularly the vibrant, imaginative, and often far-sighted sounds which emerged from the island nation during the 1980s. Now he’s put years of digging in Japanese record shops to good use on Polyphonic Cosmos, the latest release on his compilation-focused Cease & Desist imprint. Subtitled ‘A Beginners Guide to Japan In The ‘80s’, the collection offers a personal selection of Japanese gems recorded and released between 1981 and ’86 – a period when advances in recording and musical technology offered the nation’s artists and producers a whole new tool kit to employ. When combined with the unique musical culture of Japan, where local traditions are frequently fused with Western styles to create timeless, off-kilter aural fusions, this embrace of locally pioneered music technology had spectacular, often unusual results. Eight years in the making, Polyphonic Cosmos provides an endlessly entertaining musical snapshot of Japanese music of the early-to-mid ‘80s with all of the open-minded eclecticism and sonic twists that you would expect from the Glasgow-based DJ. Compare and contrast, for example, the gently breezy, morning-fresh folk-plus-electronics bliss of ‘???? Baranikyoku (Fellini&Rota)’ by World Standard – the most familiar alias of long-serving musician/producer Sohichiro Suzuki – and the hallucinatory, slow-motion tribal rhythms, post-punk rhythms and tape delay-laden electronics of Imitation’s ‘Exotic Dance’. Or, for that matter, the tipsy mid-‘80s electronic reggae of Pecker’s ‘Sha La La’, the grungy but melodic post-punk strut of ‘You Go On Natural’ by Earthling (a track Twitch accurately describes as “sheer unrelenting groove”), and the unearthly, swirling sonics, new age instrumentation and flotation tank vocals of prolific (and seemingly mysterious) act Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s ‘Rimme Kohkyogaku Meiki’. It’s a credit to JD Twitch’s curatorial skills that the quality never dips, and sonic surprises lurk around every corner. Consider for a moment the hard to describe, far-sighted audio immersion of D-Day’s ‘Ki-Ra’ – all languid post-pop guitar, enveloping chords, spoken word vocals, shuffling 808 beats and marimba melodies – and the two contributions from video games soundtrack specialist (and driving instrumental synth-pop specialist) Hiroyuki Namba. The collection naturally includes some selections that have long been favourites in Twitch’s DJ sets – see Masumi Hara’s ‘Your Dream’ – as well as a handful of tracks from artists who may be more recognisable to those with only rudimentary knowledge of Japanese musical culture. The great Yasuaki Shimizu, whose work as Mariah has become far better known in recent years thanks to reissues of some of his most magical albums, is represented via ‘The Crow’, a picturesque chunk of horizontal, hard-to-define jazz-not-jazz smokiness, while the collection fittingly concludes with a sublimely funky, oddball electronic workout from Yellow Magic Orchestra legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (the frankly incredible ‘Wongga Dance Song’). More