Browse by Artist: INABA, SHUJI

Artist:	INABA, SHUJI
Title:	Yoenzange
Label:	LAST VISIBLE DOG RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	LVD 025CD

"Perhaps this wispy history, built as much upon the shadow ground of myth, rumor and superstition as upon sun-kissed fact, accounts for the spooked air that animates Inaba's every breath. The spirit of personal myth permeates too his lyrics, which at their most opaque seem to float through the mists of a timeless rural antiquity. Heard here in his natural element of a live concert (his previous two albums, Innen Kaho on Planktone and Land of Prayer on PSF were both studio recordings) we can hear true the spirit winds whistling through ancient cryptomeria groves, stirring the bark shingles on shrine roofs." -- Alan Cummings.

Artist:	INABA, SHUJI
Title:	The Rapture of Being Destroyed...
Label:	LAST VISIBLE DOG RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	LVD 050CD

"Shuji Inaba is a Japanese avant-folk singer and guitarist who hasn't reached the same level of documentation as peers like Kan Mikami and Kazuki Tomokawa. No 13 CD box set for Shuji yet! And some might find the prospect of such a box set quite frightening -- a single disc of his raw acoustic guitar playing and whisper-scream vocalizations will be more than enough for a lot of folks. Others will find Inaba's Rapture Of Being Destroyed to be a harrowing yet compelling listen. With some tracks filled with stark outbursts from silence and others more 'song' like, this is a great record recommended for those who already dig the likes of Dead Raven Choir and the aforementioned Kan Mikami. This Last Visible Dog cd release comes with Inaba's poetic lyrics translated into English by Alan Cummings." -- Aquarius. Shuji has appeared on PSF records and has two releases on Planktone records. Similar to Kan Mikami and Kazuki Tomokawa. This CD includes a lyric sheet with translations by Alan Cummings.

Artist:	INABA, SHUJI
Title:	Land Of Prayer
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 105CD

"Deep and cracked, raw Outsider Folk from the deepest depths of rural Japan. First PSF release by a name that will be unknown to most of you. Shuji Inaba has had one previous self-released CD (Innen Kaho) on his own Planktone label two or three years ago. That record was notable for its out-of-nowhere trembling, almost theatrical intensity of emotional virulence. Inaba lives in rural Shimane on the Japan Sea coast of western Japan, and has apparently been playing for the last ten or so years. That, it seems, as much as anyone knows about him. Sonically Inaba is very much out of the Kan Mikami (indeed Inaba's vocals are close enough in places to deceive the casual observer) school of one-man-against-the-universe, guttural outsider folk. Dripping with melancholy, his lyric concerns would seem to be of the environmentalism/ghetto mother/Hiroshima issue-driven ilk, though with a finer than most eye for the telling image. What sets this release apart is a consummate PSF sense of music fully-inhabited, of individuality and emotional purity. That it comes from an unknown voice from the boondocks is testament that the genius-impulse that gave rise to Mikami and Tomokawa still flares in secret. Great skewed folk percussion on a couple of tracks too." -- Alan Cummings

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