Jane Siberry – The Walking, 1987

I’m about to revert to a mode of musical description that I strongly dislike, which is: comparing female musicians with other singular female musicians, specifically female musicians who often get lazily categorized as “weird.” I’m sorry, I don’t like it either! But Jane Siberry is slippery to describe. I’ll do my best anyway.

The Walking is the fourth full-length from Canadian musician Jane Siberry. It’s the follow-up to No Borders Here, which was a highly ambitious record–and yet The Walking feels even moreso, both incredibly intricate and enormous, rapidly oscillating between macro and microcosmic. While Siberry found critical acclaim in Canada, her records–as I understand it–mostly flew under the radar in the US, in ways that feel both legible and surprising. There are elements of these songs which feel like they could have been commercially marketable to the art pop crowd, in spite of everything: there’s a theatrical spaciousness that’s difficult not to compare to Kate Bush or Laurie Spiegel, and a navy blue moodiness with cavernous percussion that suggests Talk Talk. Ultimately it seems that it was the songs’ length that kneecapped their commercial viability, at least for radio play, which is unfortunate given how easy it is to picture the jangly and ecstatic “Ingrid And The Footman” rolling through the ending credits of a John Hughes movie. The Walking functions as a series of eight mini-suites, only one of which is shorter than five minutes, and most of which comprise a series of movements, or, as Siberry refers to them, “emotional clearings”–which, if we are to take the title of The Walking at face value, starts to make sense as an extended metaphor.

And still, in spite of all of the tones and colors that she wrings out in less than an hour, she speaks in interviews of having “more to say than [she] could fit into a song,” and of having to abridge tracks that stretched over 30 minutes down to nine. Perhaps it’s this condensation which, in spite of how expansive these songs are, produces the feeling of rolling a many-faceted prism in your hands as it catches the light. It’s rare to hear a musician who so effectively combines poetic lyricism and razor-sharp, stunningly beautiful musicianship. Joanna Newsom’s Ys and its mode of mythical, longform, large-scale storytelling immediately come to mind. Not much else does.

For me, the most emotionally pointed track on the record is “The Lobby,” which, lyrically, paints in large, dreamlike gestures: it provides the flint-spark of pathos, gorgeous musical bones, and a lot of empty space. The rest is up to the listener, left to drape their own emotions and projections all over the structures that Siberry has built for us. I don’t know what this song is actually about, but I don’t need to, as I’ve already stuffed it full of my own stories. Listening to it provides the odd sensation of long fingers rooting around in your psyche, prodding deftly at the parts that hurt the most. There’s catharsis here too, though. If pain is a movement in Jane’s suite, then so is joy, and so is self-realization.

Thank you Nick for introducing me to Jane–you can read Nick’s post about her record No Borders Here from a few years ago, and read his more recent and very good interview with her here.

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Isabelle Antena – Hoping For Love, 1987

One of my favorites, so much so that I’m confused why I haven’t posted this already. If you’re unfamiliar, Isabelle Antena is a French pop and jazz musician and composer, who began making music with her band Antena (whose highly influential Camino del Sol was one of the first records I ever posted here!). She went on to be a highly prolific solo artist, gaining a huge following in Japan–which makes sense aesthetically, as I think her sound very much anticipated Shibuya-kei. In fact, I grew up listening to Isabelle Antena because my dad heard the maddening “Quand Le Jazz Entre En Lice” in a hair salon in Tokyo, where my family was living at the time, and took it home to my mom, who got hooked on it. A lot of her live performances on YouTube were shot in Japan, like this particular gem.

Hoping For Love is jazzier than its excellent predecessor, En Cavale, but it has all the prowess you’d expect from Isabelle Antena, who wrote, arranged, and produced this record. Here she flits easily between Latin, samba, bossa nova, funk, and synth pop, with a few of her signature bass-driven dance floor twirlers like “Laying On The Sofa” and “Sweet Boy,” the latter of which I often catch myself singing to my dog. While it’s still strongly reminiscent of contemporaries like Sade and Linda di Franco, it’s fully her own world, spending most of the record’s second half squarely in the realm of acoustic jazz to terrific effects. Such a special, masterful record–I hope you love it as much as I do.

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Nobuo Ariga – SHERBET, 1987

Delighted to share a record here after a long hiatus, and delighted that it’s this one. (Hello, hi! Thank you for your patience, and for being here, and for the sweet emails that I haven’t responded to because I don’t know how to email anymore, sorry!)

SHERBET is one of the more apt album titles that comes to mind–it feels like a candy-toned icy sugar cloud. (Also realizing as I type this that my boyfriend was correct when he said a few years back that sherbet is due for a resurgence in interest–it does seem like the most proto-vaporwave dessert, no? Suddenly consumed with a strong desire to bust out my ice cream machine.)

Nobuo Ariga only released three records under his own name, none of which seemed to pick up much traction as it took me a long to track this one down, but he was prolific as a writer and session musician on a ton of other pop releases. If you like any of the following, you will probably like this record:

  • The Beach Boys
  • jingly Christmas bells in non-Christmas songs
  • Ice Choir
  • fretless bass
  • city pop
  • judicious use of reverb

Enjoy, thanks for being here, more soon!

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The Tallis Scholars – Victoria Requiem, 1987

This endless, drizzly winter has put me in a major early choral music rut, and it’s been so good that I almost don’t want the sun to come out. If you’ve never stomped around slushy Brooklyn subway stations in too many layers listening to this stuff in headphones, I’d highly recommend it–it’s a very easy way to lend some potent saintly gravitas to whatever you’re doing and thinking about, however trivial. Along the way, I’ve decided that Spanish Counter-Reformation composer and priest Tomás Luis de Victoria’s requiem, written in 1605, is one of my favorites.

I will say that because this was written right along the outer edges of what’s defined as “early music,” it shows a lot of early baroque tendencies, which is to say that it’s lacking the stark, alien-sounding movements of really early polyphony, like Pérotin. This Requiem is more along the lines of the traditional, baroque kind of prettiness that sounds pretty familiar to 2018 ears. I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing, but if you’re after more brutal, ascetic medievalism, this isn’t it. This is gorgeous, gut-wrenching, deeply pleasurable harmonies all the way. It’s remarkably versatile, too–if you want to make whatever you’re doing at home feel very important and beautiful (reading! writing! washing dishes! brushing your dog!), pop this on. You won’t regret it.

Note that the first ten tracks are Victoria’s Requiem in its entirety, and the last track,  “Versa Est In Iuctum,” was written by Alonso Lobo, one of Victoria’s contemporaries. For more early sacred choral music, including more work by always great Tallis Scholars, see here, here, here, here, and here.

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25 Favorite Releases of 2017

In the spirit of the season, I wanted to share some of my favorite releases of the year. Obviously not exhaustive; just some personal highlights. Quite a few of these are giant major label releases, so I’ll be taking down those download links quickly or leaving them off accordingly. Let me know if links are broken. Happy holidays!

Previously: 2016 | 2015

Alice Coltrane – Divine Songs, 1987
buy comp / download
Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir – Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Vol. 2, 1987
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Cleaners From Venus – Going To England, 1987
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David Sylvian – Secrets Of The Beehive, 1987
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Depeche Mode – Music For The Masses, 1987
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dip in the pool & Masahide Sakuma – 黒いドレスの女 OST, 1987
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Dolly Parton, Linda Rondstadt & Emmylou Harris – Trio, 1987
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Elicoide – Elicoide, 1987
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Eric B. & Rakim – Paid In Full, 1987
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Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle – Baby Wants To Ride/Your Love, 1987
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Geoffrey Landers – Many Hands Make Light, 1987
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George Michael – Faith, 1987
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Haruomi Hosono – The Tale Of Genji, 1987
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Ichiko Hashimoto – Mood Music, 1987
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Isabelle Antena – Hoping For Love, 1987
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Laraaji – Essence/Universe, 1987
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Masahiro Sugaya – Music From Alejo, 1987
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Meredith Monk – Do You Be, 1987
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Michael Jackson – Bad, 1987
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Pet Shop Boys – Actually, 1987
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Phuture – Acid Tracks, 1987
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Pizzicato Five – Pizzicatomania, 1987
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Prince – Sign O’ The Times, 1987
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Sinead O’Connor – The Lion And The Cobra, 1987
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Yasuaki Shimizu – Music For Commercials, 1987
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Haruomi Hosono – 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji), 1987

Another favorite from the Hosono canon. This was the score for the first animated adaptation of The Tale of Genji, a sprawling piece of 11th century literature written by noblewoman Shikibu Murasaki, considered by many to be the first modern novel in recorded history. (Isao Tomita later write his own symphonic adaptation of the story.) The anime was directed by Gisaburō Sugii, and while it only covers a small part of the epic storyline, the score is highly ambitious.

Scan courtesy of Kaleidophonics

Unlike much of Hosono’s catalogue, here synthesizer mostly acts as an atmospheric texture and instead puts traditional Japanese instruments, particularly koto, flute, and drums, front and center. What’s really astounding about this soundtrack is the layering of instruments, piling them up until they become unfamiliar: droves of fingerpicked strings sound like a hive of insects, waves of gentle hand percussion feel like the swells of inhales and exhales, processed flute suggests the shrieking wind. Despite a pervasive mysteriousness, and even ominousness, this is unmistakably gorgeous music, and structured in such a way that it will appeal to fans of more conventional synthetic ambient music–but retains a feverish futurist-classical elegance all its own.

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Ichiko Hashimoto – Mood Music, 1987

Odd that this is my first Ichiko Hashimoto post, given how much I admire her work–though her catalogue covers so much ground that it’s hard to know quite where to start. A trained jazz pianist, composer, and singer, Hashimoto was one half of Colored Music (friendly reminder that this record is so great), made a slew of ambitious solo records, performed with YMO, collaborated with Belladonna of Sadness composer Masahiko Sato, and scored an anime series, all while establishing herself as an powerful and singular composer, arranger, and producer. Though she’s worked across many genres, she’s maintained a signature proclivity towards gently sinister and avant-garde arrangements, and lugubriouis, pillowy vocals (her love of chanson-style singing pops up all over her discography, not just here).

Mood Music might not be her most canonical record, but it’s a personal favorite and has been on repeat recently. Comprised mostly of jazz standards, the record cribs heavily from bossa nova, samba, and exotica, but Hashimoto quietly subverts these textures into something darker, and at times, less familiar. Her quavering, syrupy-swoony orchestration suggests a Scott Walker-esque approach to sentimentality, particularly on thick and headier arrangements like “Poinciana” and “Night and Day.” The record’s two original compositions, “Flower” and “Île De Étrange,” are its most interesting, with the former a white-knuckled, percussionless tower of taut-string urgency, and the latter a hypnagogic, dubby piece of acid jazz. Mood music indeed.

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Geoffrey Landers – Many Hands Make Light, 1987

Guest post by Jonny Garciamons (NTS)

Many Hands Make Light, the last of four releases from the elusive Cauhaus Records, is an un-genrefiable conclusion to the mysterious solo discography of American artist Geoffrey Landers. With design appearing to be an independent family affair–jacket layout and cover artwork done by Kelley Jo and Benjamin Landers respectively–the 8-track album was released exclusively on CD in 1987. Written and recorded solely by Geoffrey Landers during what seems to have been the end of the Cauhaus era, this is the only of his three albums to credit no other collaborative efforts.

Being heavily involved in the Denver industrial/punk/new wave scene, Landers was inspired to create a recording studio “available to artists regardless of their financial circumstances.” He thus opened The Packing House Studio in 1981 at the site of a former slaughterhouse in the Denver stockyards. The analog 8-track recording facility was active until 1984, with the studio releasing recordings from only a few credited artists and groups, most notably Allen Ginsberg. It was during this time that Landers released his first two records, Habitual Features & The Ever Decimal Pulse, as well as his only single, a 7” titled Breedlove.

Cauhaus Records, Landers’s only label, was an “entertainment subsidiary” of Local Anesthetic Records. They appear to be the only two labels to have released music recorded at The Packing House, aside from a small cassette-only label named Endemic Music. Landers is credited with mixing on one of the releases on Local Anesthetic’s releases, which suggests that Landers might have mixed for Local Anesthetic in exchange for production and handling of his imprint Cauhaus (the name of which seems like a nod to the studio’s slaughterhouse history).

The silent years in Geoffrey’s discography span from 1984 to 1987 — with ’84 being the year in which output from the both The Packing House and Local Anesthetic seem to die down. This leaves me wondering what happened in those three years to prompt a final release from such a unique musical trajectory. Was this his final go at production after years running The Packing House? Does this release serve as a demo compilation of tracks from the studio’s golden era? Did this record take three years to make? Why was it only released on CD only? The questions are infinite, but the result is truly a masterpiece.

New wave guitars, voice pads, resonant post-punk bass lines, hip swingin’ drum loops–this thing has it all. The stand-out should-have-been-pop-hits come in “Camella” & “Say You’ll Say So,” the former of which is a unique DJ-friendly new wave infused boogie jam with a HUGE snare drum hit sure to light up any day party. The nostalgic feeling induced by tracks “Body Angel,” “The Alluring Pause,” “1 by 1,” and “Carry Me Off” lead me to believe that Many Hands Make Light is in some way a tribute to the golden years of The Packing House, with the title serving as a humble thank you and tribute to all the many hands making light at the studio and label.

A very special thank you goes out to Flo for introducing me to Geoffrey’s music earlier this year.

“It takes time, I — I know that you know I’ll get to you”

Note that while this is long out of “print,” Music From Memory is about to release a compilation of Landers’s work which includes most of the tracks from Many Hands Make Light, and, if the track they’ve previewed on YouTube is any indication, features some gorgeous remastering. With the hope that you’ll pre-order the compilation, I’ll be removing this mp3 download link after a few days.

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Portable Rock – Dance Volunteer, 1987

Guest post by Giacomo Lee

Today we bring you Dance Volunteer, the second and final full-length from Japanese new-wavers Portable Rock. It’s from 1987, but this isn’t the sleek “city pop” sound which contemporary acts like Kero Kero Bonito or Especia aspire to recreate today. Nor is it the coquettish shibuya-kei style which members of Portable Rock went on to pioneer after reuniting to form the much beloved Pizzicato Five. No, this is the big, bold 80s synth pop that time forgot. It seems a lack of commercial success led to the breakup of Portable Rock, and I’m surprised. The songs on Dance Volunteer are full of big, memorable hooks and the kind of spacious synth production that has aged particularly well for modern audiences. Maybe the slick production is the culprit for the abandoning of the project, as it was presumably expensive, and money means more pressure to chart. Yet Dance Volunteer has oddities all over it. Audio quirks stand out everywhere, like little square pegs in the round synth holes that are trying to steer the album into more marketable territory.

Listen to the way “憂ウツの (Hold Me)” breaks periodically to turn into the future, channeling the intro of a 90s house track for trance-like seconds of airtime. Hear how the title track (“ダンス・ボランティア”) is carried by a kind of strange wolf whistle, with an almighty injection of guitar in its chorus that sounds as heady as your first kiss. It’s heart racing stuff. I’m also in love with the vocal lick that “スムース・トーク” (“Sumusu Toku,” a Japanese phoneticization of “smooth talk”) coasts on for its entirety, sounding like a Disney soundtrack to a sunny convertible ride. And the lunar grooves of the ninth track, “キュートな事情” (“Kyuto No Jijou”) make a strong case for it being the first trip-hop track ever made. Listen to this, then cast an ear on any Massive Attack collaboration with Horace Andy, and you’ll see what I mean.

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Cleaners From Venus – Going To England, 1987

A bit out of character (guitars!), but I’ve been thinking about Portland a lot this week, and Cleaners From Venus reminds me of biking around leafy Oregon residential areas in the spring. By 1987 the band had effectively became a vessel for Martin Newell’s oddball pop ethos, one which was fraught with contradictions. Sharp, smart, often really pretty pop songs recorded in ragged-edged irreverence; serious musicianship undercut by clownish interlude samples; distant, aching vocals suggesting alienation, followed by frenetic, jangling optimism–all this marked by Newell’s signature relentlessness. His enormous catalog and the consistency of his output in spite of having been largely ignored by the music industry until much later in his career suggest an incredible commitment to a sensibility that, in spite of drawing so heavily on nostalgic references, was still far ahead of its time. This is one of my favorite of his, and it hasn’t been printed since 2003. Enjoy!