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LP
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DC 727LP
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2022 repress. "Eiko Ishibashi's sixth solo album, The Dream My Bones Dream, rides the rails into a partly envisioned, partly imagined past. Eiko's previous songs-with-singing records explored the ambitions and intoxications of pop music -- but never so dramatically as with The Dream My Bones Dream. Here, her songs open up into reflections upon the vast spaces that exist between people as close as family members -- in other words, reflections on the things we spend our whole lives drinking and cursing about! When we're not trying to forget what we were told about god, that is . . . It's been four years since Car and Freezer, a time during which Eiko has been steadily working, writing for stage and cinema, playing live and recording (and hanging out with her no-goodnik boyfriend!). In 2016, she toured Europe and released Kouen Kyoudai (Editions Mego), a collaboration with Masami Akita. At Sinnerfama Lisbon later that year, she won the Best New Music Award for her soundtrack to The Albino's Trees. In 2018, Black Truffle released Ichida, her collaboration with Darin Gray. Amongst all this abject jet-setting and debauched gadding about, the music of The Dream My Bones Dream started to gather. It began with the death of Eiko's father. Going through family effects in the aftermath, she found photos from a time she knew nothing about: her father's childhood. A taciturn man, he had never discussed this period of his life. Classic dad! As it transpired, it took place in an infamous setting of recent Japanese history, the occupation of China's Manchurian region in the 1940s. In the light of this, questions about Eiko's lost family history took on a larger resonance. No, not war crimes! Please try and keep your head out of the gutter. We're talking about lyrical things here -- the ever-changing relationships between people and places in our lives, okay? The music is richly conceived in cinematic arrangements with details referencing Eiko's grandfather, who worked as a railroad man in occupied territory. The few images Eiko had to base her exploration on are set in shifting landscapes colored by the unreliable narrators of history. For Eiko, the train that ran through this rough terrain is now headed for her future, and only by accepting its past will she able to direct it through what is to come. Something to think about, yeah? We at Drag City are hopeful that this musical message will be blared down the main streets of Fascist Everytown, USA -- at least until they come to get us! On The Dream My Bones Dream, as with Eiko's previous albums, the diverse sounds within the musical arrangement and the qualities of Jim O'Rourke's mix (off the couch and mixing again!) are crucial to the achievement. The Dream My Bones Dream is a record of exquisite musicality and deep emotions, a travelogue pointed towards a time hopefully better than the future we see coming down the line! Any eventuality where we can listen to The Dreams My Bones Dream would be preferable to that one."
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LP
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BT 084LP
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2023 repress. Black Truffle announce For McCoy, a new work by Eiko Ishibashi dedicated to the widely loved character of Jack McCoy, portrayed by Sam Waterston in Law & Order. Following on from Hyakki Yagyō (BT 064LP), For McCoy finds Ishibashi further exploring the unique space she has carved out in recent years, bringing together musique concrète techniques, ECM-inspired jazz, lush layers of synths and hints of pop into immersive and affecting structures crafted in her home studio, aided by a group of close collaborators. Beginning with overlapping layers of descending flute lines, the expansive "I Can Feel Guilty About Anything" (whose two parts stretch out over more than thirty minutes) unfolds with a free-associative logic, embracing dreamlike transitions and unexpected cinematic cuts. As a hovering cloud of synthetic tones and multi-tracked voices fans out from the spare opening moments, Joe Talia's skittering cymbals settle into a gently propulsive groove, soon joined by melodic fragments performed by Daisuke Fujiwara on multi-tracked saxophone. As the drums cede to field recordings and ominous synth figures, the uncommon meeting of saxophone and electroacoustic techniques call to mind the more spacious moments of Michel Redolfi and André Jaume's Synclavier-propelled oddity Hardscore or the early work of Gilbert Artman's Urban Sax. As the piece continues on the LP's second side, distant dialogue rumbles beneath a surface of processed flutes, blurring into a cavernously reverberant backdrop for stark ascending lines performed by MIO.O on violin. Eventually, the piece settles into a gorgeous passage of abstracted dream pop, where Ishibashi's multitracked vocal harmonies glide atop synth chords, errant pings and snatches of outdoor sound. Fragments of melodic material reappear throughout the spacious opening piece, finally stepping to the forefront on the closing track, "Ask Me How I Sleep at Night". Here, over a shuffling groove supplied by Jim O'Rourke on double bass and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on drums, layers of flutes, saxophones and guitars sound out melodies whose combination of twisting irregularity and soulful immediacy calls up prime Keith Jarrett, while their closely voiced harmonies suggest Kenny Wheeler or even Wayne Shorter's Atlantis. In a classical gesture of closure, the web of melodic lines eventually leads back to the descending flute figures with which the record began. Presented in an immersive, impeccably detailed mix by Jim O'Rourke and arriving in a sleeve featuring Ishibashi's beautiful drawings of Jack McCoy, For McCoy is an essential release for anyone following the enchanted and unique path being forged by Eiko Ishibashi.
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LP
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BT 064LP
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2023 repress, last copies. Black Truffle announce a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first for the label, following on from the duo recording Ichida alongside bassist Darin Gray (BT 039LP, 2018). Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the "Japan Supernatural" exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards. As with The Dream My Bones Dream (Drag City, 2018), the album is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present, but finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging. The two side-long parts of Hyakki Yagyō feature layered synthesizers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse, and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements. The influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman, and Strafe Für Rebellion can be traced, yet at the same time Ishibashi evokes the flute and string sounds associated with Japanese storytelling, and draws directly on the subversive literary tradition of Kyoka ("mad poetry") with a verse by the 15th-century poet Ikkyū Sōjun repeated throughout the album. Revisiting what has gone before, re-thinking what is possible musically, as a way of articulating what else might be possible in the future. As Ishibashi's liner notes make clear, the album reflects an attention to persistent dangers, myths and evasions in Japanese culture -- as well as the lurking uncertainties that might threaten positive change. This would seem to be manifested in the emerging melodies soon met by dissonance, erratic collisions, and near silence, as well as the eerie manipulation of the double-tracked vocals. Ishibashi's underlying concerns ring true more widely of course. Hyakki Yagyō is a work of multiplicities, and mystery, a landscape where nothing is as it seems at first, and everything is vulnerable to sudden violent interruptions. The album was produced with regular collaborators Jim O'Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), and features dancer and choreographer Ryuichi Fujimura performing Ikkyū's satirical tanka. O'Rourke's immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi's various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways. White vinyl; inner sleeve featuring artist portrait and liner notes from Eiko Ishibashi. Cover and label design by Shuhei Abe. Back cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Mixed and mastered by Jim O'Rourke.
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LP
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DC 612LP
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"Since each album requires its own approach, the session for Car and Freezer provided another chance. In the spring of 2013, Eiko convened with her band -- but in contrast with the previous album, she did not come prepared with arranged demos. Instead, she and the band stared unblinking at each other for DAYS, seeking to divine the elusive communal flow for her songs! No, actually, Toshiaki Sudo, Hatano Atsuko, Yamamoto Tatsuhisa, and Jim O'Rourke all got it right away -- make Eiko's kind of pop music, but bring themselves forward in their playing. In this approach, Eiko was drawing from her background of improvised music to inform the direction of her new songs. Guest musicians Shinpei Ruike on trumpet and Daisuke Takaoka on tuba added to this process by playing with sensitivity and focus along with the band. In the booth, O'Rourke also doubled as producer, providing directions for Eiko to choose from while moving forward in her unclear path. The new approaches clearly paid off: the sound of Car and Freezer has a swinging openness, with looser, rolling rhythms that suit the mood of exploration and the sense of introspection that are so much a part of Eiko's songs. The band's expertly precise playing is contrasted by their intuitive choices within the songs, which are seized upon by Eiko for mood and color. And Jim doesn't hurt the sound a bit by focusing on interesting and unconventional sounds whose presence in the mix help define a sense of the unexpected."
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LP
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DC 566LP
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2022 restock. "Drag City presents the first domestic release of any kind from the Japanese singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi -- and the first vinyl release of any kind on this already accomplished performer. And what a release! Imitation of Life isn't just another pop record from another part of the world -- it's got a sci-fi theme and is produced by none other than Drag City's old friend, Jim O'Rourke. With an understanding of band dynamics developed through her many live shows and recordings, Eiko's delicate, precise compositions are arranged with a dramatic-yet-humorous prog-pop sound. Eiko plays piano, vibraphone, and flute as well as nylon-string guitar, a first for her, on Imitation of Life. The flowing backgrounds she has conceived for her light, sweet melodies are captured by O'Rourke with a lively sense of play, which matches Eiko's lyric concept. The lyrics in this album embody a science fiction story which brings the album to a challenging new level. The variety of sounds, the impact of lyrics and her imagination keeps expanding, and in the latter stages of the album, the songs achieve a shattering impact."
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