Browse by Artist: MIKAMI, KAN

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Hoi 1973-1992
Label:	MIKAMI KOMUTEN (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	MIKAMI 004CD

"Hoi (Addendum) is another long-rumoured record that at last sees the light of day. It was originally scheduled to have been released by Mikami's fanclub as a follow-up to the 19 years 2 months 16th night DLP, but the project was shelved at the last minute. Now, ten years down the line, the world finally gets to hear this wonderful trawl through Mikami's deepest archives. Eighteen tracks, all previously unreleased, comprising live versions, outtakes and much more. Special card jacket, limited edition of 1000."

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Kanryu: Debut Live in Korea 2006
Label:	MIKAMI KOMUTEN (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	MIKAMI 005CD

"Kanryu: Debut Live in Korea 2006 sees Mikami reunited with the masterful Korean komungo player and vocalist Shin Heyon, who played together with him on the Fukon group release. Eight years on that epochal cross-cultural meeting, Mikami journeyed to Seoul for two nights of concerts. Shin's stringed komungo brings a thick and knotted presence to the overall sound, while Seoul resident Japanese musician Sato Yukie tosses in swirling metallic blats of electronics and guitar. There's a gorgeous languorous, slow-motion flow to the proceedings as Mikami revisits classics from the full span of his back catalog, including a spine-tingling version of 'Kid with a Gun,' his once-banned ode to teen-murderer-turned-death-row poet Nagayama Norio. Limited edition of 1000 in gatefold digipack."

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	U.S.E.
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 030CD

His 3rd for PSF. "Kan has perfected a form he calls Japanese Blues, but every album he has made over the past 20 years has raised it to a new height of creative intensity... regulars come back year after year to hear songs that are raucous, splendiferous, surreal, Japan Itself, both image and critique. The words are sometimes soft, as limp and multidimensional as Dali watches, other times razor sharp, slicing through the screen of conventional morality. And the triumphant voice! Like gravel scratching on a riverbed, a crow and then an eagle, screaming out of range, then soft and mellow, silky and sublime. There's nothing like it in Japan. And there's no rival to Mikami Kan anywhere else, either."? Drew Stroud.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Jazz And Other Things
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 060CD

Fifth album for the label, and another astounding visionary triumph for the emotionally bursting singer/guitarist. The second track here, where Mikami enunciates just one word over and over, is one of the most spirally, physically stroked tracks in the extensive PSF catalog (we're only talking about the world's most aesthetically perfect record label). "Mikami is the blues; pure uncut humanity and universal force that don't need no words ? you going to tell me you didn't understand a single word of Blind Willie Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night,' or Loren Mazzacane's early moaning, or even Ayler's soul scream? Mikami's got a voice, a soul, and a guitar and you should be able to deal with those." ? Alan Cummings. Comes with English notes and lyric translations.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Dune 963
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 072CD

Sixth solo album for PSF. "There's not really a lot to say about Japan's most powerful singer-songwriter of the post-war generation. He is simply one of the most unique artists you're ever likely to hear (or not). This CD sees the shaven-headed powerhouse in a slightly more pensive mode than the previous Jazz, and Other Things -- there's a warmer, gorgeous semi-acoustic glow to the proceedings (at least compared to the last outings full electric attack). Some amazing Tsugaru tongue-action too. It's still not too late to remedy your ignorance re: one of the contemporary world's original truth-tellers. You need this." --Alan Cummings.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Arashi Ame Arashi (Storms Rain Storms)
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 097CD

"Eighth (!) PSF solo record for Japan's mythic, acerbic underground folk singer. The previous seven (not to mention his appearances with Vajra and the Haino/Yoshizawa/Mikami trio) have defined a perfectly-realized world entirely his own, in which pearls of surreal poetic wisdom delivered in Kan's immediately recognizable powdered-glass-in-chocolate baritone ram head on into a unique riff-rhythm guitar style. The guy is honestly a living national treasure -- an inspiring outsider-philosopher-poet, with a dark soul the size of Fuji. No one was particularly surprised when he name-checked enka legend Akira Kobayashi, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Glenn Gould in a recent interview. Kan's work is non-referential emotional and intellectual genius of the highest order. If you haven't got it by now there's no particular reason to think that you're going to get it with this one. Your loss." --Alan Cummings.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Lesbos
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 8012CD

"For the past twelve years, the coming of spring has also heralded a new Kan Mikami album. Lesbos, his 11th solo album for the label, is yet another step into that same everflowing river of truth that Mikami has been bathing in for over thirty years. The format is unchanging -- rough and abstractly percussive electric guitar accompaniment, a voice capable of a delicate caress, a wistful cajoling, or flesh-stripping ferocity, and songs of arcane wisdom as personal and poetically impenetrable as anything Jandek has ever laid down. This time out the topics include the mystery of Michael Jordan, the rain in Rome, and cans of pineapple chunks. Just like Heraclitus's river, Mikami's world defines it eternity through constant flux. Isn't it about time you stepped up and got your feet wet?" -- Alan Cummings.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	1979
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 8015CD

"Twelfth solo album from Kan Mikami in as many years -- and, seemingly, the last in this monumental series. Mikami is Japan's undisputed, one and only voice of urban folk surrealism. 1979 presents few surprises for the converted -- tightly gripped clusters of electric A-minor riffing, weird phrasing, and those unmistakable honey-over-broken-glass vocals. Even better than usual are Mikami's bizarre and incisive ruminations on the state of modern Japan (megaliths in the garden, a Gibson guitar hang from the rafters of a rural shrine, the return of Elvis, sake-guzzling crabs and the resurrection of the dead). As a poet-analyst of middle-aged male frustrations and everyday epiphanies in the toilet, Mikami has no equal (well, maybe Richard Meltzer). Comes with full English translations of the lyrics and linernotes." -- Alan Cummings.

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Barking Practice///White Lines
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	PSF 8026CD

"Two new heavy-hitting blasts from Japan's indefatigable master of the psychedelic, surrealist blues. After a recent European tour and an hour-long special on Japanese television, the wonderfully titled Barking Practice /// White Lines finds Kan Mikami back in the studio in one-take guitar and vocal mode. There's a depth of song spirit on display here that beggars belief -- the guitar bites in all the right place, and Mikami's voice is tuned to a new pitch of hard-won soulfulness, in turns bristle-harsh, lush, fractured, deep as all hell. Staggering work. Includes English lyrics and some fabulously atmospheric photos by Paolo Patrizi."

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	-1 (Minus 1)
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	PSF 8030CD

"With the coming of spring, another year brings another bulletin from the mind of post-war Japan's greatest blues singing surrealist poet, Kan Mikami. Part of the pleasure of Mikami's annual solo releases on PSF is plotting the changes in his rough-cut voice and guitar style. This time around the blues and enka feel of the last two or three albums has been pruned back to a more restrained psychedelic core. The voice too seems deliberately held in check, the melismatic flourishes excised in favour of a plain and meditative directness. The lyrics are as scabrous and bewildering as ever, focusing again and again on images of his native place in the north of Japan, but also devising a great triptych of spread legs, Bush and the wall of a Dada toilet. Another classic, then. Six tracks, twenty-nine minutes. Lyrics in Japanese and English." -- Alan Cummings

Artist:	MIKAMI, KAN
Title:	Yuyake No Kioku Kara - Aomori Live
Label:	SHOWBOAT/SKY STATION (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$28.00
Catalog #:	SWAX 075CD

"Originally released in 1976 on the legendary Victor SF series documenting outsider folk activities in Japan, this is one of the hardest Mikami LPs to track down, apart from his first two albums. This record sees Mikami returning to his home base, the northern prefecture of the bone-chillingly cold and weather beaten Aomori, delivering an intimate performance where he accompanies himself just on guitar with no back-up. A stunning and blood curdling live performance that proves once again that he is the ultimate acid folk/rural beatnik guttural hero. He wails out elegiac songs with enough conviction to strip the paint of the walls. But at the same time it is possibly -- partly due to his return to the motherland after having spent so much time in the concrete jungle of the capital -- his most private statement to date, loaded with cries of sorrow and grief, introspective mind trips and venomous laments that suggests he cries his heart out for dead souls and lost memories. In other words, his performance squeezes the last whiff of air out of your longs, leaving you exhausted and emotionally distressed. Great, only superlatives do him justice, all time possible highest recommendation. By the way, the audience response in the small theater is great and provides at times the ideal backup for his songs. You have to hear it in order to believe it... again quality reissue job, complete with mini-LP style gatefold jacket, obi, etc, all the works... it makes you drool just to hold it in yer hands."

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