PSF Records - Catalog PSFD181-

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PSFD-181
Ryojiro Furusawa & Kan Mikami / Buriki/Tin

Guitar, vocals-Kan Mikami
Drums-Ryojiro Furusawa
A sparse and stripped-back yet fully impassioned meditation on time, history and freedom. Surreal folk meets free jazz. Two tracks, including a 24 minute, one-take masterpiece.
Ryojiro Furusawa is one of Japan’s most respected jazz drummers, having played from the late 60s with everyone from Yosuke Yamashita and Sadao Watanabe to Yuji Imamura, Maki Asakawa and Shang Shang Typhoon. He’s also been a long time collaborator with Kan Mikami, appearing on Kan’s Bang! album in 1974. Kan Mikami is Japan’s wisest and wildest folk-poet, a surreal master of the non-sequieter blues, a worldclass howler of truth and passion. This is the duo’s third album, following Shokugyo (1987) and Dereki (2007).
Gatefold high-gloss papersleeve, including lyrics in Japanese and English.

$18

PSFD-182
Toukasei-Bunshi / Meta-Inorganicmatter Meta-Newlon

Performer: Hironari Iwata Volume 2 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this music from historical oblivion.
Toukaseibunshi (Permeable Molecule) was an ultra-mysterious solo unit created by Hironari Iwata. Iwata was a footnote figure in the world of Japanese avant-garde/noise from the mid to late eighties. As well as Toukaseibunshi, he also recorded under the name Haiginsha, ran the Angakok cassette label and wrote for various magazines.
There's an unshowy stoicism to Iwata's investigation of drone, clank and crackling sustain, a deep seriousness of purpose that beguiles as much as it confounds.
Six tracks, fifty-eight minutes. Gatefold papersleeve.

$18

PSFD-183
Schistosoma Japonica / Kankei UFO from Zanryu-shinen

Performer Ichiro Kawamoto
Performer Wataru Kasahara
Performer Toshiya Ishida
Volume 3 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating and exiting material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this material from historical oblivion.
Schitosoma Japonica (AKA Nihon Juketsu Kyuchu) were a cracked avant-garde, recording-only offshoot of the freeform rock band Amanita. Formed around 1990, the group lived a communal existence in Saitama, on the northern borders of Tokyo, experimenting with music, magic and psychological experiments. "Our basic performance style was completely freeform, utilizing prepared instruments and rejecting regular rhythms and melodic development. Our abiding themes were communication with the afterlife/cosmos and the manifestation of paranormal accidents. We would jam endlessly until our performance space was filled with the 'signs of blood and feverish becomings'. For us, performance was a kind of ritual."
The group released a clutch of barely distributed cassettes in tiny editions. This CD compiles the best of them, sifting through the detritus of a technological society to float between noise, drone and ritualized avant-garde gestures.
Eight tracks, fifty-four minutes. Liner notes in English and Japanese.

$18

PSFD-184
Reiko Kudo & Tori Kudo / Kore kara

Recorded live in Tokyo in November last year, a set of crushing beautiful real songs, utterly devoid of commercialism but replete with the beauty and sadness of daily life.

$18

PSFD-185
Ai Aso / Aida

Recorded live, with a special appearance by Go Hirano. Unforced naturalism, untrammelled freshness of sensibility, and that unique wavering vocal fluctuation.

$18

PSFD-186
Satoshi Sonoda / Early Works of Satoshi Sonoda 1977-1978 [Memories of Yasushi Ozawa]

Memorial album for the late Fushitsusha bassist, Yasushi Ozawa, who passed away last year. The album collects recordings from the late seventies made by Ozawa's friend and musical collaborator Satoshi Sonoda. A vital document of the late seventies scene, featuring performances by members of Gaseneta, ANALkISS, GAP, etc.

$18

PSFD-187
Li Jianhong / Classic of the Moutains and Seas

Guitar: Li Jianhong
First solo album on PSF (after the Ghost Temple duo and a couple of tracks on the Asian Flashback compilation) for China’s hottest, loudest and most psychedelic avant-noise guitarist, Li Jianhong.
Born in Fenghua in 1975, Li Jianhong has been blowing ears open with his own unique brand of higher-mind noise for five years now. This solo disk sees him simultaneously channelling Keiji Haino and Masayuki Takayanagi, as he dissolves himself into an avant-guitar mandala comprised of full-bore drone, sustained runs of psychedelic soloing, and phantom echo. An essential blast of young China.
Seventy minutes.

$18

PSFD-188
New Miminokoto / All About Mimi

Guitar, Vocals: Junzo Suzuki Bass: Takuya Nishimura Drums: Koji Shimura
Another first release on PSF for Miminokoto, a Tokyo-based garage psychedelic rock trio who have previously released a string of acclaimed albums on the Alchemy, Gyuune, Siwa and Last Visible Dog labels. This is the group's first album since Junzo Suzuki (20 Guilders, Astral Travelling Unity, ex Overhang Party) took over on vocals and guitar.
The key to this group has always been their deep sense of song--a densely emotive core around which the songs surge, billow and break. That core is retained here with an even harder psychedelic edge to the guitar. Includes two covers of songs by the late Jutok Kaneko of Kousokuya.
Forty minutes, seven tracks.

$18

PSFD-189
Tokyo Flashback vol. 7

Released: September 15, 2009
Includes tracks by: Le son de l'os; Bon no Kubo; Derakushi; Sabu Orimo Unit; Touyoumajyo; hasegawa-shizuo
Once again PSF Records has combed the darkest live houses on the grungiest streets on the wrong side of the Tokyo tracks to bring you the undiscovered cream of the city's psychedelic improvisation scene!
Eighteen years on from the original Tokyo Flashback compilation, the city is still throwing up unknown groups with their own viscerally weird takes on the esoteric practices of psychedelic rock, garage punk, acid folk drone and free improvisation. These are groups that wrongfoot our facile assumptions about how genre, technique and conception music should combine, whether the tactile space improvs of Le son de l'os (featuring Yuko Hasegawa from Onna-kodomo) or Hasegawa-Shizuo; the white-hot free-punk chaos of Derakushi; Bon no Kubo's classically minimalist free-improv moves or the bizarre shapes thrown up by shakuhachi sensation Sabu Orimo's unit.
Six tracks, seventy-six minutes. Liner notes in English and Japanese.

$18

PSFD-190
Painting Petals On Planet Ghost / Haru no omoi

Vocals, Wind Chimes - Ramona Ponzini
Piano, Keyboards, Harmonica, Gong, Cymbal, Percussion, Effects - Roberto Opalio
Acoustic/Electric Guitar, Accordion, Gong, Cymbal, Percussion, Etc - Maurizio Opalio
Ethereal collaboration between vocalist Ramona Ponzini and the Opalio brothers from the Turin-based psych-experimentalists My Cat Is An Alien.
Using Japanese texts from the sensual female poet Akiko Yosano and the 11th century diarist Sei Shonagon (author of The Pillow Book), Ponzini shrouds her crooned and whispered vocals in layered echoes reminiscent of the swirling mists in pine-clad valleys. Around her vocals, the Opalio brothers weave delicate and sensitive filigrees of mostly acoustic instruments, minimal guitar, toy keyboards and softly chiming clouds of percussion. It's a uniquely restful and meditative album, ripe with mysterious atmospheres, recorded over several years in "different mystic locations" in the Western Alps of northern Italy.
Seven tracks, 37 minutes. Gatefold mini-LP style papersleeve with obi.

$18

PSFD-191
Tori Kudo / piano solo

Piano - Tori Kudo
Enticing and beguilingly enigmatic disk of solo improvisations from the leader of Maher Shalal Hash Baz.
Recorded as a soundtrack for a dance performance by Mari Fujii, these six tracks show Kudo's stunning facility for using the accidental to animate and invigorate complex technique with humanity and wit. The flow of fractured lines and clumpy chords here invoke fleeting memories of pianists of the past, melodies drifting in and out through thickets of dissolving chords like revenant ghosts. Beguiling, entrancing and quite wonderful.
Six tracks, 45 minutes. Jewelcase with obi.

$18

PSFD-192
Derakushi / same

Sax, Voice -- Shun Suzuki
Bass -- Luis Inage
Drums -- Norikazu Orizo
Guitar -- Kuzuha
Throbbing and flailing fusion of free jazz and foot-to-the-floor psychedelic avant-rock!
The long-awaited first album from Tokyo's Derakushi, who first grabbed the ears of free skronk aficionados worldwide with their entirely unhinged appearance on Tokyo Flashback 7. The group is driven along by the caverndeep throbbing carburettor hum of Inage's bass and the skittering metallic pistons of Orizo's drumming. Kuzuha spraypaints barbed wire hotrod decals over the wings, while Suzuki tourette-twitches in the driver’s seat like some cartoon monstermeld of Keiji Haino and Kaoru Abe. Basically, a whacked out reimagining of the Takayanagi-Abe duo jamming at a High Rise rehearsal!
Five tracks, 38 minutes. Gatefold mini-LP papersleeve with obi.

$18

PSFD-193
Bonn No Kubo / same

Second album from striking new Japanese free improv trio, who first shot to prominence on Tokyo Flashback 7 (PSFD-189).
The young group consists of Masahiko Ota (guitar), Shintaro Takasugi (contrabass) and Naoto Yamagishi (drums, percussion) - all still in their 20s. They first formed in 2007 and self-released their now sold-out debut album the following year.
The group displays a sure sense of structural dynamics and excel at the construction of brooding ambient atmospheres that seem to be informed by traditional Japanese aesthetics. Ota’s acoustic guitar is occasionally reminiscent of the sour, tangled lines of Masayuki Takayanagi, but the group have a confident sense of their own identity that belies their age. A group to watch!
Five tracks, 39 minutes. Papersleeve.

$18

PSFD-194
Masayoshi Urabe & Toshi Ishizuka / Natsu no sebone

Alto Saxophone, Bells -- Masayoshi Urabe
Percussion -- Toshi Ishizuka
Thrilling, bloodshaking, soulscraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans.
Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation - ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. His lines seem to boil up from his flesh, with gurgles, gasps and rasping breath defining sparse, sonic regions in which silence itself seems to breath. Ishizuka is the perfect foil, providing subtle shade and balance around Urabe's transformative sculpting of space.
One track, 58 minutes. Comes with a booklet of evocative black and white photographs of the event by Tatsuo Suzuki. The title translates as "The Backbone of Summer".

$18

PSFD-195
Tamio Shiraishi / Chikatetsu - Sax Solo

Alto Saxophone - Tamio Shiraishi
A set of unique site-specific live recordings from one of the true legends of the Tokyo underground, taped at a number of different subway stations in Queens, NYC.
Tamio Shiraishi is one of the legends of the Japanese underground. For over thirty years he has continued to pursue an utterly unique eruptive style of performance interventions into consensus reality, ranging from visceral, guttural vocal explosions, intense synth blatter in an early Fushitsusha lineup, to his trademark dogwhistle sonics on alto saxophone. In recent years he has been resident in New York, where he has performed with Sean Meehan, Alan Licht and sundry No-Necks.
Site-specific field recordings, particularly in urban spaces, have been a longterm interest in Shiraishi's work, and while he lived in Tokyo he could often been seen late at night playing with the wind on a pedestrian bridge in Shinjuku. These recent recordings from 2008 and 2009 capture Shiraishi in the NYC subway, exhaling long thin wires of aural razorlight through the tunnels, breathing in bleak, beautiful harmony with the clanks and squeals of the occasional passing subway train. Mindblowing.
Five tracks, 33 minutes.

$18

PSFD-196
le son de l'os / Grass Pillow

Guitar, Voice -- Yuko Hasegawa
Guitar, Flute, Piano, Bell -- Masahiro Deguchi
Bass, One String -- Shizuo Uchida
First album from mysterious free-floating acoustic improvisation trio.
Debut album from le son de l’os who had a stunning track on the Tokyo Flashback 7 compilation. The group have apparently been together for several years, exploring performance in a variety of outdoor spaces. They consist of Yuko Hasegawa, Shizuo Uchida (Hasegawa-Shizuo, Kito Mizukumi Rouber), and Masahiro Deguchi (Gendai Sokkyo). Hasegawa and Uchida previously played together in Onna-Kodomo - one of the great, lost late-night Tokyo drone improv groups of the nineties. There’s a similar sense of subtly shaded space and poised atmosphere here, as Hasegawa threads wordless threnodies around the breathy lines of flute, and the strangely accented spaces created by Uchida’s bass. Simultaneously fragile, melancholically beautiful and unsettling. File with your Taj Mahal Travellers, Nijiumu and Toho Sara records.
Five tracks, 48 minutes. Gatefold papersleeve with obi.

$18

PSFD-197
Anla Courtis + Tabata Mitsuru + Kawaguchi Masami / Aum Air

$18

PSFD-198
Michel Henritzi & Fukuoka Rinji / Outside Darkness

Michel Henritzi -- lapsteel, guitar, effects
Fukuoka Rinji -- violin, bells, effects, vocals
Thierry Delles -- (track 2)
A stark and moving collaboration between the French avant-garde guitarist Michel Henritzi and Fukuoka Rinji, formerly of Overhang Party and currently of Majutsu no Niwa.
The track titles of their first duo album limn a cosmos out of joint, hopeless and despairing - suns in eclipse, falling angels, the ghosts of Fukushima. The mood is emphasized in the bleak, dystopian photography of the jacket with its bare, wintry trees and landscapes devoid of human presence. The music translates these ideas into actuality, echoed and stark sonorities that question, lament, mourn. Henritzi's lapsteel and guitar summon up grey drone fields, shimmering with baleful energy over which Fukuoka floats elegiac, writhing lines of violin and emotionally resonant yet wordless vocals.
"A deep stillness is apparent in Michel's music. It’s not something he has come to possess through playing electric guitar, rather it's more like an innate and very important part of his temperament. Either way, it's an extremely rare quality even among artists." - Kazuki Tomokawa
Six tracks, forty-five minutes.

$18

PSFD-199
Suishou no Fune / Your Tears

Guitar, Vocals -- Pirako
Guitar, Vocals -- Kageo
Bass -- Hideo Matsueda
Drums -- Shizuo Uchida
Formed in 1999, Suishou no Fune were part of the third wave of indigenous psychedelia to emerge from the depths of the Tokyo scene. Fronted by female vocalist and guitarist Pirako and her partner Kageo, the group treads a unique line between the tremulous and the cavernous. Joined by Shizuo Uchida from Hasegawa-Shizuo, le son de l’os, etc on drums, this is the group’s most elegiac album yet, a gorgeously aching evensong to love, lanquidity and loss, sung in echoing cathedrals of drone, distortion and fuzz. Measured, coherent, and at times emotionally overwhelming.
Four tracks, 49 minutes.

$18

PSFD-200
Tokyo Flashback vol. 8

Featuring tracks by: Solider Garage, Majutsu no Niwa, Reizen, Mamushi, Oser, Metaphoric, Netanoyoi, Demons, Heavy Metal Glue.
It’s entirely appropriate that the 200th release on PSF Records should be the latest report from the frontline of Tokyo’s psychedelic underground. Over the years, the compilation has given Western listeners their first introduction to a host of astonishing and influential bands ? High Rise, White Heaven, Kousokuya, Ghost, Overhang Party, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Shizuka, and many others.
The Tokyo Flashback series has always been valuable for the invaluable real-time snapshot it provides of Tokyo’s underground rock scene, allowing for micro shifts in the vocabulary of the music to be plotted and tracked. Two years on from Tokyo Flashback 7, this volume sees a host of younger, unknown bands gene-splicing the existing tropes with new forms, but still animated by a stubborn belief in the alchemical power of Marshall amps, distortion, improvisational insanity, and in-the-moment openness to cosmic vibrations.
Of the artists included, only Majutsu no Niwa (led by ex-Overhang Party mainman Fukuoka Rinji) and Heavy Metal Glue (featuring members of Marble Sheep, White Heaven, and stoner rockers Church of Misery) have previous form with stomping heads-down psychedelic garage rock. Elsewhere Soldier Garagedisplay some fully internalized Fushitsusha moves. Reisen and Metaphoric deal in creepy drone-washes of haunted ambient sound. Oser weld face-peeling noise with improv guitar, while Demons toss Led Zeppelin, The Boredoms and Michio Kadotani into a rehearsal-studio blender. Equally jawdropping are the gasping, twisted vocals at the heart of Mamushi’s rough-cut garage rock sound.
Nine tracks, 62 minutes.

$18

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PSFD1-20 | PSFD21-40 | PSFD41-60 | PSFD61-80 | PSFD81-100

PSFD101-120 | PSFD121-140 | PSFD141-160 | PSFD161-180 | PSFD181-200 | PSFD201-220

PSFD8001-8020 | PSFD8021- | PSFD1001-/MKCD/TOMOKAWA | LP/CD single/Video/DVD/Book/T-Shirt


	PSFD-181 Ryojiro Furusawa & Kan Mikami / Buriki/Tin Guitar, vocals-Kan Mikami Drums-Ryojiro Furusawa A sparse and stripped-back yet fully impassioned meditation on time, history and freedom. Surreal folk meets free jazz. Two tracks, including a 24 minute, one-take masterpiece. Ryojiro Furusawa is one of Japan’s most respected jazz drummers, having played from the late 60s with everyone from Yosuke Yamashita and Sadao Watanabe to Yuji Imamura, Maki Asakawa and Shang Shang Typhoon. He’s also been a long time collaborator with Kan Mikami, appearing on Kan’s Bang! album in 1974. Kan Mikami is Japan’s wisest and wildest folk-poet, a surreal master of the non-sequieter blues, a worldclass howler of truth and passion. This is the duo’s third album, following Shokugyo (1987) and Dereki (2007). Gatefold high-gloss papersleeve, including lyrics in Japanese and English.	$18

	PSFD-182 Toukasei-Bunshi / Meta-Inorganicmatter Meta-Newlon Performer: Hironari Iwata Volume 2 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this music from historical oblivion. Toukaseibunshi (Permeable Molecule) was an ultra-mysterious solo unit created by Hironari Iwata. Iwata was a footnote figure in the world of Japanese avant-garde/noise from the mid to late eighties. As well as Toukaseibunshi, he also recorded under the name Haiginsha, ran the Angakok cassette label and wrote for various magazines. There's an unshowy stoicism to Iwata's investigation of drone, clank and crackling sustain, a deep seriousness of purpose that beguiles as much as it confounds. Six tracks, fifty-eight minutes. Gatefold papersleeve.	$18

	PSFD-183 Schistosoma Japonica / Kankei UFO from Zanryu-shinen Performer Ichiro Kawamoto Performer Wataru Kasahara Performer Toshiya Ishida Volume 3 in the ongoing Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. The 80s and early 90s saw a great deal of fascinating and exiting material released on cassette in the Tokyo underground. While some of the more noise-orientated stuff enjoyed a modicum of international distribution, the avant-garde material generally did not. This series, whose first release was Iro / Tamafuri (PSFD-180), aims to rescue the best of this material from historical oblivion. Schitosoma Japonica (AKA Nihon Juketsu Kyuchu) were a cracked avant-garde, recording-only offshoot of the freeform rock band Amanita. Formed around 1990, the group lived a communal existence in Saitama, on the northern borders of Tokyo, experimenting with music, magic and psychological experiments. "Our basic performance style was completely freeform, utilizing prepared instruments and rejecting regular rhythms and melodic development. Our abiding themes were communication with the afterlife/cosmos and the manifestation of paranormal accidents. We would jam endlessly until our performance space was filled with the 'signs of blood and feverish becomings'. For us, performance was a kind of ritual." The group released a clutch of barely distributed cassettes in tiny editions. This CD compiles the best of them, sifting through the detritus of a technological society to float between noise, drone and ritualized avant-garde gestures. Eight tracks, fifty-four minutes. Liner notes in English and Japanese.	$18

	PSFD-184 Reiko Kudo & Tori Kudo / Kore kara Recorded live in Tokyo in November last year, a set of crushing beautiful real songs, utterly devoid of commercialism but replete with the beauty and sadness of daily life.	$18

	PSFD-185 Ai Aso / Aida Recorded live, with a special appearance by Go Hirano. Unforced naturalism, untrammelled freshness of sensibility, and that unique wavering vocal fluctuation.	$18

	PSFD-186 Satoshi Sonoda / Early Works of Satoshi Sonoda 1977-1978 [Memories of Yasushi Ozawa] Memorial album for the late Fushitsusha bassist, Yasushi Ozawa, who passed away last year. The album collects recordings from the late seventies made by Ozawa's friend and musical collaborator Satoshi Sonoda. A vital document of the late seventies scene, featuring performances by members of Gaseneta, ANALkISS, GAP, etc.	$18

	PSFD-187 Li Jianhong / Classic of the Moutains and Seas Guitar: Li Jianhong First solo album on PSF (after the Ghost Temple duo and a couple of tracks on the Asian Flashback compilation) for China’s hottest, loudest and most psychedelic avant-noise guitarist, Li Jianhong. Born in Fenghua in 1975, Li Jianhong has been blowing ears open with his own unique brand of higher-mind noise for five years now. This solo disk sees him simultaneously channelling Keiji Haino and Masayuki Takayanagi, as he dissolves himself into an avant-guitar mandala comprised of full-bore drone, sustained runs of psychedelic soloing, and phantom echo. An essential blast of young China. Seventy minutes.	$18

	PSFD-188 New Miminokoto / All About Mimi Guitar, Vocals: Junzo Suzuki Bass: Takuya Nishimura Drums: Koji Shimura Another first release on PSF for Miminokoto, a Tokyo-based garage psychedelic rock trio who have previously released a string of acclaimed albums on the Alchemy, Gyuune, Siwa and Last Visible Dog labels. This is the group's first album since Junzo Suzuki (20 Guilders, Astral Travelling Unity, ex Overhang Party) took over on vocals and guitar. The key to this group has always been their deep sense of song--a densely emotive core around which the songs surge, billow and break. That core is retained here with an even harder psychedelic edge to the guitar. Includes two covers of songs by the late Jutok Kaneko of Kousokuya. Forty minutes, seven tracks.	$18

	PSFD-189 Tokyo Flashback vol. 7 Released: September 15, 2009 Includes tracks by: Le son de l'os; Bon no Kubo; Derakushi; Sabu Orimo Unit; Touyoumajyo; hasegawa-shizuo Once again PSF Records has combed the darkest live houses on the grungiest streets on the wrong side of the Tokyo tracks to bring you the undiscovered cream of the city's psychedelic improvisation scene! Eighteen years on from the original Tokyo Flashback compilation, the city is still throwing up unknown groups with their own viscerally weird takes on the esoteric practices of psychedelic rock, garage punk, acid folk drone and free improvisation. These are groups that wrongfoot our facile assumptions about how genre, technique and conception music should combine, whether the tactile space improvs of Le son de l'os (featuring Yuko Hasegawa from Onna-kodomo) or Hasegawa-Shizuo; the white-hot free-punk chaos of Derakushi; Bon no Kubo's classically minimalist free-improv moves or the bizarre shapes thrown up by shakuhachi sensation Sabu Orimo's unit. Six tracks, seventy-six minutes. Liner notes in English and Japanese.	$18

	PSFD-190 Painting Petals On Planet Ghost / Haru no omoi Vocals, Wind Chimes - Ramona Ponzini Piano, Keyboards, Harmonica, Gong, Cymbal, Percussion, Effects - Roberto Opalio Acoustic/Electric Guitar, Accordion, Gong, Cymbal, Percussion, Etc - Maurizio Opalio Ethereal collaboration between vocalist Ramona Ponzini and the Opalio brothers from the Turin-based psych-experimentalists My Cat Is An Alien. Using Japanese texts from the sensual female poet Akiko Yosano and the 11th century diarist Sei Shonagon (author of The Pillow Book), Ponzini shrouds her crooned and whispered vocals in layered echoes reminiscent of the swirling mists in pine-clad valleys. Around her vocals, the Opalio brothers weave delicate and sensitive filigrees of mostly acoustic instruments, minimal guitar, toy keyboards and softly chiming clouds of percussion. It's a uniquely restful and meditative album, ripe with mysterious atmospheres, recorded over several years in "different mystic locations" in the Western Alps of northern Italy. Seven tracks, 37 minutes. Gatefold mini-LP style papersleeve with obi.	$18

	PSFD-191 Tori Kudo / piano solo Piano - Tori Kudo Enticing and beguilingly enigmatic disk of solo improvisations from the leader of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Recorded as a soundtrack for a dance performance by Mari Fujii, these six tracks show Kudo's stunning facility for using the accidental to animate and invigorate complex technique with humanity and wit. The flow of fractured lines and clumpy chords here invoke fleeting memories of pianists of the past, melodies drifting in and out through thickets of dissolving chords like revenant ghosts. Beguiling, entrancing and quite wonderful. Six tracks, 45 minutes. Jewelcase with obi.	$18

	PSFD-192 Derakushi / same Sax, Voice -- Shun Suzuki Bass -- Luis Inage Drums -- Norikazu Orizo Guitar -- Kuzuha Throbbing and flailing fusion of free jazz and foot-to-the-floor psychedelic avant-rock! The long-awaited first album from Tokyo's Derakushi, who first grabbed the ears of free skronk aficionados worldwide with their entirely unhinged appearance on Tokyo Flashback 7. The group is driven along by the caverndeep throbbing carburettor hum of Inage's bass and the skittering metallic pistons of Orizo's drumming. Kuzuha spraypaints barbed wire hotrod decals over the wings, while Suzuki tourette-twitches in the driver’s seat like some cartoon monstermeld of Keiji Haino and Kaoru Abe. Basically, a whacked out reimagining of the Takayanagi-Abe duo jamming at a High Rise rehearsal! Five tracks, 38 minutes. Gatefold mini-LP papersleeve with obi.	$18

	PSFD-193 Bonn No Kubo / same Second album from striking new Japanese free improv trio, who first shot to prominence on Tokyo Flashback 7 (PSFD-189). The young group consists of Masahiko Ota (guitar), Shintaro Takasugi (contrabass) and Naoto Yamagishi (drums, percussion) - all still in their 20s. They first formed in 2007 and self-released their now sold-out debut album the following year. The group displays a sure sense of structural dynamics and excel at the construction of brooding ambient atmospheres that seem to be informed by traditional Japanese aesthetics. Ota’s acoustic guitar is occasionally reminiscent of the sour, tangled lines of Masayuki Takayanagi, but the group have a confident sense of their own identity that belies their age. A group to watch! Five tracks, 39 minutes. Papersleeve.	$18

	PSFD-194 Masayoshi Urabe & Toshi Ishizuka / Natsu no sebone Alto Saxophone, Bells -- Masayoshi Urabe Percussion -- Toshi Ishizuka Thrilling, bloodshaking, soulscraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans. Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation - ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. His lines seem to boil up from his flesh, with gurgles, gasps and rasping breath defining sparse, sonic regions in which silence itself seems to breath. Ishizuka is the perfect foil, providing subtle shade and balance around Urabe's transformative sculpting of space. One track, 58 minutes. Comes with a booklet of evocative black and white photographs of the event by Tatsuo Suzuki. The title translates as "The Backbone of Summer".	$18

	PSFD-195 Tamio Shiraishi / Chikatetsu - Sax Solo Alto Saxophone - Tamio Shiraishi A set of unique site-specific live recordings from one of the true legends of the Tokyo underground, taped at a number of different subway stations in Queens, NYC. Tamio Shiraishi is one of the legends of the Japanese underground. For over thirty years he has continued to pursue an utterly unique eruptive style of performance interventions into consensus reality, ranging from visceral, guttural vocal explosions, intense synth blatter in an early Fushitsusha lineup, to his trademark dogwhistle sonics on alto saxophone. In recent years he has been resident in New York, where he has performed with Sean Meehan, Alan Licht and sundry No-Necks. Site-specific field recordings, particularly in urban spaces, have been a longterm interest in Shiraishi's work, and while he lived in Tokyo he could often been seen late at night playing with the wind on a pedestrian bridge in Shinjuku. These recent recordings from 2008 and 2009 capture Shiraishi in the NYC subway, exhaling long thin wires of aural razorlight through the tunnels, breathing in bleak, beautiful harmony with the clanks and squeals of the occasional passing subway train. Mindblowing. Five tracks, 33 minutes.	$18

	PSFD-196 le son de l'os / Grass Pillow Guitar, Voice -- Yuko Hasegawa Guitar, Flute, Piano, Bell -- Masahiro Deguchi Bass, One String -- Shizuo Uchida First album from mysterious free-floating acoustic improvisation trio. Debut album from le son de l’os who had a stunning track on the Tokyo Flashback 7 compilation. The group have apparently been together for several years, exploring performance in a variety of outdoor spaces. They consist of Yuko Hasegawa, Shizuo Uchida (Hasegawa-Shizuo, Kito Mizukumi Rouber), and Masahiro Deguchi (Gendai Sokkyo). Hasegawa and Uchida previously played together in Onna-Kodomo - one of the great, lost late-night Tokyo drone improv groups of the nineties. There’s a similar sense of subtly shaded space and poised atmosphere here, as Hasegawa threads wordless threnodies around the breathy lines of flute, and the strangely accented spaces created by Uchida’s bass. Simultaneously fragile, melancholically beautiful and unsettling. File with your Taj Mahal Travellers, Nijiumu and Toho Sara records. Five tracks, 48 minutes. Gatefold papersleeve with obi.	$18

	PSFD-197 Anla Courtis + Tabata Mitsuru + Kawaguchi Masami / Aum Air	$18

	PSFD-198 Michel Henritzi & Fukuoka Rinji / Outside Darkness Michel Henritzi -- lapsteel, guitar, effects Fukuoka Rinji -- violin, bells, effects, vocals Thierry Delles -- (track 2) A stark and moving collaboration between the French avant-garde guitarist Michel Henritzi and Fukuoka Rinji, formerly of Overhang Party and currently of Majutsu no Niwa. The track titles of their first duo album limn a cosmos out of joint, hopeless and despairing - suns in eclipse, falling angels, the ghosts of Fukushima. The mood is emphasized in the bleak, dystopian photography of the jacket with its bare, wintry trees and landscapes devoid of human presence. The music translates these ideas into actuality, echoed and stark sonorities that question, lament, mourn. Henritzi's lapsteel and guitar summon up grey drone fields, shimmering with baleful energy over which Fukuoka floats elegiac, writhing lines of violin and emotionally resonant yet wordless vocals. "A deep stillness is apparent in Michel's music. It’s not something he has come to possess through playing electric guitar, rather it's more like an innate and very important part of his temperament. Either way, it's an extremely rare quality even among artists." - Kazuki Tomokawa Six tracks, forty-five minutes.	$18

	PSFD-199 Suishou no Fune / Your Tears Guitar, Vocals -- Pirako Guitar, Vocals -- Kageo Bass -- Hideo Matsueda Drums -- Shizuo Uchida Formed in 1999, Suishou no Fune were part of the third wave of indigenous psychedelia to emerge from the depths of the Tokyo scene. Fronted by female vocalist and guitarist Pirako and her partner Kageo, the group treads a unique line between the tremulous and the cavernous. Joined by Shizuo Uchida from Hasegawa-Shizuo, le son de l’os, etc on drums, this is the group’s most elegiac album yet, a gorgeously aching evensong to love, lanquidity and loss, sung in echoing cathedrals of drone, distortion and fuzz. Measured, coherent, and at times emotionally overwhelming. Four tracks, 49 minutes.	$18

	PSFD-200 Tokyo Flashback vol. 8 Featuring tracks by: Solider Garage, Majutsu no Niwa, Reizen, Mamushi, Oser, Metaphoric, Netanoyoi, Demons, Heavy Metal Glue. It’s entirely appropriate that the 200th release on PSF Records should be the latest report from the frontline of Tokyo’s psychedelic underground. Over the years, the compilation has given Western listeners their first introduction to a host of astonishing and influential bands ? High Rise, White Heaven, Kousokuya, Ghost, Overhang Party, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Shizuka, and many others. The Tokyo Flashback series has always been valuable for the invaluable real-time snapshot it provides of Tokyo’s underground rock scene, allowing for micro shifts in the vocabulary of the music to be plotted and tracked. Two years on from Tokyo Flashback 7, this volume sees a host of younger, unknown bands gene-splicing the existing tropes with new forms, but still animated by a stubborn belief in the alchemical power of Marshall amps, distortion, improvisational insanity, and in-the-moment openness to cosmic vibrations. Of the artists included, only Majutsu no Niwa (led by ex-Overhang Party mainman Fukuoka Rinji) and Heavy Metal Glue (featuring members of Marble Sheep, White Heaven, and stoner rockers Church of Misery) have previous form with stomping heads-down psychedelic garage rock. Elsewhere Soldier Garagedisplay some fully internalized Fushitsusha moves. Reisen and Metaphoric deal in creepy drone-washes of haunted ambient sound. Oser weld face-peeling noise with improv guitar, while Demons toss Led Zeppelin, The Boredoms and Michio Kadotani into a rehearsal-studio blender. Equally jawdropping are the gasping, twisted vocals at the heart of Mamushi’s rough-cut garage rock sound. Nine tracks, 62 minutes.	$18