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SWAX 080CD
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2nd CD reissue from Showboat of this classic Japanese underground folk-rock album, originally released by RCA Japan in 1971. Great mini-LP gatefold packaging, but very few made and not long for this world. "The Tropics was Minami Masato's first record on which he got assisted by Mizutani Takeshi of the Rallizes Denudes, his only appearance on record ever. Minami Masato was one of Japan's first beatnik hippie scum singers, who before venturing into the music world, spent some time in Mexico where he indulged himself in the narcotic goodies the country had to offer, went to America and witnessed in 1964 the rise of the beatnik movement and saw one of Bob Dylan's early performances. Minami's life would never be the same again. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean, criss-crossed through Europe and returned to Tokyo in 1966. He participated at the 1968 Kyoto Folk Jamboree Festival. However, his debut single did not appear until October 1969, followed by a second single in 1970. This album, his debut appeared in July 1971 for which he got assisted by a loose collective of fan musicians and befriended artists. Hadaka no Rallizes' Mizutani Takeshi was such a fan collaborator since he was quite in awe for what Minami stood for, being the unattached beatnik and drugged singer-songwriter he was. He let loose some ear shattering electric guitar on the album's closing track. This is the sole recorded output of Mizutani on disc. At least officially, if one ignores the dozen bootlegs and unofficially released music of his (like the Arthur Doyle-Mizutani 2LP set that was released without his consent). An unbelievably valuable document of the early Japanese underground. Hyper-rare and demented all the way. For lovers of Hadaka no Rallizes, Tomokawa Kazuki, acid folk, Jandek, and obscure and psyched-out sounds."
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SWAX 066CD
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"Second Yanagida Hiro album, with Kimio Mizutani at the helm, swirling acid leads, heavy psych moves with at one point even an acidic Elvis joining the trip." Originally released in 1971. Deluxe gatefold sleeve packaging.
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TENJ 99003CD
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"This is a limited reissue of the ultra rare privately released Tenjo Sajiki record Baramon. This identical reissue dates from 2003 and was released in a tiny edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a matter of weeks. But about the music: 'Some of the most exciting and evocative music of the early '70s in Japan was born out of the avant-garde theatre groups that had played such a central role in the '60s ferment. One of the most important was the Tenjo Sajiki Company formed by poet, film maker, boxing fan and all-around agent provocateur Terayama Shuji. Renowned for Living-Theatre inspired audience participation happenings and extreme street theatre designed to shock the bourgeois; by 1970 the group had already become a haven for runaway teens, and a focus for police investigation. Terayama was canny enough to realize that co-opting their music was an ideal way to hijack adolescent energies and he consistently used heavy amplified rock to jump-start his chaotic, socially critical acid operas. By 1972, Baramon saw J.A. Seazer and Kuni Kawauchi (of the Happenings Four and Kirikyogen) splitting the compositional scores on a bizarre musical manifesto for sexual liberation. So far so Hair, but rather than a tribute to free love, Terayama instead composed an eloquent plea for the liberation of the sexual underclass suffering discrimination, in the form of a 'gay revolution.' It wasn't Terayama's first engagement with the Tokyo queer scene -- one of the earliest plays he wrote for the Tenjo Sajiki was a vehicle for transvestite actress and chanson singer Akihiro Miwa, who was rumored to have had a dalliance with Yukio Mishima. Baramon's opening is a blast -- a densely narrated and impassioned call to arms set to a Nazi military march that links sexual second class citizenship to imperialist social control and warmongering. Featuring the actual voices of numerous smutty, cross-dressing scene queens, the record's content was deemed so subversive that it was only sold under the counter of Tokyo gay bars. Like a biker backstage at the Cage Aux Folles, fuzzed out guitar riffs and heavy swelling organ-based psych rock tracks rub shoulders with the lachrymose ballads and tawdry, mascara smudging chanson still favored in certain Shinjuku nighteries.'" - The Wire, Alan Cummings.
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