Browse by Artist: NAGISA NI TE

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Songs For A Simple Moment
Label:	GEOGRAPHIC (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	GEO 011CD

"Songs For A Simple Moment was conceived as a retrospective of the music of Shinji Shibayama and the two great groups he has lead - The Hallelujahs (1985/88), and since 1992, Nagisa Ni te, a co-venture with his partner, Masako Takeda. These two projects, alongside Shibayama's sterling work for the legendary Osaka based label ORG (Maher Shalal Hash flaz, Naoki Zushi) place him absolutely at the vanguard of a type of Japanese Music which is sometimes referred to as folk-psyche. The Shibayama (and Takeda) variation is particularly beautiful, characterised by honesty and emotional nakedness, and by complex melodic structures and fragile vocals, which often give away to incredible soaring guitar solos. In Japan, Nagisa Ni te's music is on the ascendence and a new album, Feel, has just been released. At a time when interest in the Japanese underground is at an all-time High, Geographic are proud to present the stunning music of Nagisa Ni te, an extremely collectable Japanese psyche-folk group. Nagisa Ni te's music is as pure as a secret water spring; enchanted, free-flowing and beautiful. So placing them isn't easy, but what they share with groups like (their friends and collaborators) Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Belle & Sebastian and God Speed You Black Emperor!, is a purity of intent which makes their out-of-nowhere music suddenly seem really important. To take those comparisons further, melodically, you could say Nagisa Ni te are often as memorable as songs on the first two Belle & Sebastian albums, while their uncompromised pursuit of truth, and their love of heavy sounds, relates to Maher and God Speed You Black Emperor! (whose 'leader', Efrim, is a fan). The LP version of this retrospective is on double vinyl in a beautiful gatefold sleeve."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	On The Love Beach
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 045CD

"Shinji Shibayama recorded and released On The Love Beach, a beautiful, slow and entrancing work pulling equally from American and British rock traditions. Thus was born Nagisa Ni te, which means 'on the beach' in Japanese, an homage of sorts to Neil Young's 1975 masterpiece. Their psych folk tendencies notwithstanding, Nagisa Ni te also did well to take cues from the avant rock world around them at the time, comfortably implementing the minimalist credo 'less is more' throughout this record. Though On the Love Beach was Nagisa Ni te's debut, it is the second Nagisa Ni te record brought to the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. And like Feel, it does bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd, George Harrison, Crazy Horse, and Roxy Music). Maher Shalal Hash Baz's Tori Kudo may describe Nagisa Ni te best when he says: 'Nagisa Ni te's naked Progressive rock-based worldly songs, which are sung not so much deliberately as seriously, on their love beach, now fill a blank somewhere between underground hi-fi and overground lo-fi.'"

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Feel
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	JAG 046CD

"Feel, the new record by the Osaka band Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) is now available for the first time outside of Japan, the first in a series of Nagisa Ni te records to be released in the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. Nagisa Ni te ('On the Beach' in English) are on the vanguard of the burgeoning psych-avant-folk movement in Japan. Their contemporaries include Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Naoki Zushi, artists who also have work on the inspirational Osaka-based label Org (founded by Nagisa Ni te's Shibayama). The songs within Feel bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd, King Crimson, or George Harrison) while steadfastly remaining in the modern by introducing to the mix avant touches ala' Eric Dolphy, Derek Bailey or Robert Wyatt. Soaring Gilmour-esque guitar solos abet the colliding forces of heaven and nature. And that is where Shibayama and Takeda reside, either on their way towards or in the process of departing the Garden of Eden."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	The Same As a Flower
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	JAG 069CD

"Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) are back. Their new record The Same As A Flower, recorded between 2002 and the beginning of this year, is the third to be released by Jagjaguwar. Much like on previous records, the songs on the new record by this Osaka, Japan-based group are about nature, about the singularity of two people immersed in nature together, and about experiencing life as 'being', not 'becoming' or 'recovering from'. And like their previous full-length record, Feel, The Same As A Flower still brings to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. middle-era Roy Harper, Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators and early Neil Young)."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	Dream Sounds
Label:	JAGJAGUWAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	JAG 079CD

"Dream Sounds may be the closest Nagisa Ni te ever gets to a greatest hits record. And although there are only four tracks on this compact disc (some previously released, but all re-recorded, re-mixed and re-mastered for this special edition), the record clocks in over forty minutes, runs the whole gamut of the sounds and moods of Nagisa Ni te's songcraft over the years, and contains their most moving moments. This full-length record is the perfect introduction to the dreamy and nature-obsessed universe of Nagisa Ni te. Nagisa Ni te is Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda are from Osaka, Japan. This is their sixth album."

Artist:	NAGISA NI TE
Title:	On The Love Beach
Label:	P-VINE RECORDS (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	PCD 5810

"Reissues of the three Nagisa Ni Te albums originally released on the Osaka-based, barely distributed Org label. Org are probably best known for the monumental Return To Rock Mass 3CD by primitive mystics Maher Shalal Hash Baz, portions of which were reissued in a more user-friendly form on the recent Geographic retrospective, From A Summer To Another Summer (An Egypt To Another Egypt). But delving deeper into the Org label can turn up a clutch of other lo-fi psych-pop gems. Perhaps chief amongst them are the albums by label head Shinji Shibayama. Shibayama has been a mysteriously central figure in the Kansai psych underground since the '80s, showing up a clutch of barely documented units like Idiot O'Clock, Yakeppachi no Maria, Hallelujahs (whose sole album of misty folk-psych was the first release on Org and was later reissued by PSF), Love Beach, Cold Breath (in the rain) Rock n Roll Band, and probably several more. Nagisa Ni Te is his crowning moment, though. Their three albums are wide-eyed and wonderful paeans to the delights of love and togetherness (the group's core is Shibayama and his partner-muse Masako Takeda) that seem permeated on some cellular level with a power to invoke memory. Dreamily recollected feelings of wistful regret at the end of the summer holidays, unforgettable reveries, and joyful instances of boy-girl oneness when time seems to stop. Moments of childlike wonder-melody are wrapped up in arrangements that are at once spontaneous and perfectly realised. Honesty and direct simplicity are the keynotes, songs sometimes trembling on that ever so fine edge between profundity and profound embarrassment as songs are stripped back to the bare bones of punk emotiveness. At times, Shinji and Masako's vocals crack and tremble, the acoustic strumming falters, and they seem on the verge of plummeting into an abyss of abject amateur ineptitude, borne up merely by the thinnest layer of conviction and deep truth. It would be a mistake, however, to try to rank Nagisa Ni Te with the (perceived) innocence of your Shonen Knifes. While they do aim to evoke childhood experience and response, this is a deliberate attempt to create a simpler personal world, one that finds its own values far from the everyday realities of life in an Osaka suburb. Furthermore, the pop sensibility that informs the group's music is one that has drunk deep on Tims Hardin and Buckley, the Velvets, Kevin Ayers, Leonard Cohen, Peter Ivers, Anthony Moore, Fujio Yamaguchi -- wherever blinding instants of musical epiphany have seized the quiet soul, Nagisa Ni Te have followed. In a way, their exploration of emotions and everyday satoris are as single-minded as Merzbow's is of noise, or Haino's is of mystery. Each of their albums has something unique to recommend it. The debut, On The Love Beach, is essentially a Shibayama solo album, with overdubbed contributions from a clutch of friends, including Chie Mukai, Kenichi 'Idiot' Takayama, early Hijokaidan member Naoki Zushi, Maher-ists Tori Kudo and Hiro Nakazaki, and drummer Ikuro Takahashi. On the original Org release, Masako was credited with (no sniggering at the back) 'wind' throughout. It's perhaps the most pop of the three releases, focusing as it does on Shibayama's vocals. The way the rhythm slows for an instant before the closing fuzz guitar solo on the title track still raises chills no matter how many times I hear it." --Alan Cummings/Oppobrium. Originally issued as ORG-007 in Nov. 1995.

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