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LP
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EM 1127LP
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Vinyl version with 4 tracks (from the 6-track CD). Innersleeve with liner notes and lyrics, as well as photos. With this release, EM Records shine a light into the dark and yet strangely uplifting world of Inryo-fuen's early '80s wonderland: a surreal, adventurously analog, positively negative realm of freedom. Following the EM Records release of Inryo-fuen's enigmatic Ho-aku (EM 1125CD), Early Years 1980-82 collects the band's earliest recordings, originally released on flexi and vinyl, here re-edited, re-mixed and remastered. With enlightening notes by band member Jun Harada providing historical background and recording information, stressing their love of improvisation and their ongoing quest for liberation, this is a landmark release, offering a glimpse into a hitherto inaccessible netherworld of the Tokyo/Yokohama post-punk underground. The music here, all improvised, with many of the pieces recorded live, have an edge-of-the-world electricity, informed by the group's fascination with the Surrealist idea of Automatic Writing. The launch point is a brutalist, knuckle-dragging Conrad/Faust thug-riff featuring the hectoring rants of a stage-invading student activist, dramatically melded with the music by the sound engineer. From there we traverse manifold realms, variously propulsive and static, dense and pointillistic, threatening and whimsical, opaque and translucent. Inryo-fuen's searching use of the basic rock instrumentation of drums, bass and guitar is augmented with keyboards and, on one piece, acoustic instrumentation. No overdubs, no vocals. Only sound and freedom.
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CD
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EM 1127CD
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With this release, EM Records shine a light into the dark and yet strangely uplifting world of Inryo-fuen's early '80s wonderland: a surreal, adventurously analog, positively negative realm of freedom. Following the EM Records release of Inryo-fuen's enigmatic Ho-aku (EM 1125CD), Early Years 1980-82 collects the band's earliest recordings, originally released on flexi and vinyl, here re-edited, re-mixed and remastered. With enlightening notes by band member Jun Harada providing historical background and recording information, stressing their love of improvisation and their ongoing quest for liberation, this is a landmark release, offering a glimpse into a hitherto inaccessible netherworld of the Tokyo/Yokohama post-punk underground. The music here, all improvised, with many of the pieces recorded live, have an edge-of-the-world electricity, informed by the group's fascination with the Surrealist idea of Automatic Writing. The launch point is a brutalist, knuckle-dragging Conrad/Faust thug-riff featuring the hectoring rants of a stage-invading student activist, dramatically melded with the music by the sound engineer. From there we traverse manifold realms, variously propulsive and static, dense and pointillistic, threatening and whimsical, opaque and translucent. Inryo-fuen's searching use of the basic rock instrumentation of drums, bass and guitar is augmented with keyboards and, on one piece, acoustic instrumentation. No overdubs, no vocals. Only sound and freedom. Includes liner notes in English and Japanese, as well as photos.
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CD
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EM 1125CD
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An enigma. A band records their second album in 1985, but sits on it for 29 years and releases it as a new album, not a "lost gem," in 2014. The authors of this enigma are known as Inryo-fuen, a Japanese trio formed in 1978, meeting via a Surrealism circle in Yokohama. With the intent of applying the Surrealist idea of Automatic Writing to sound, they began performing their improvised music in 1980, with their first performance at the legendary Tokyo venue Minor, which was run by Takashi Sato of Pinakotheca Records. This second album was recorded after the release of an LP and several singles during the period 1980-1984. The trio of Jun Harada (drums), Naoyuki Masuda (guitar), Masamichi Oyama (keyboard), although involved in the Tokyo/Yokohama underground/independent rock scene, were seemingly sui generis, avoiding punk and post-punk stylistic style-markers, yet decidedly not a part of any synth-pop or electro movements, either. This album, Ho-aku, was recorded in 1985. In the studio, the band projected slides of photos which Masuda had taken in Spain, and used these images as a springboard for the recording process. Still active, the band is, in all likelihood, the longest-running fixed-personnel improvised music group in Japan. Inryo-fuen's Ho-Aku. A new album. Recorded in 1985. Experience the enigma.
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