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LP
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BE 007LP
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Black Editions present the first ever vinyl edition of Kan Mikami's I'm the Only One Around. For 50 years, Kan Mikami has stood as a master of the Japanese blues and outsider folk. His unmistakable, powerfully evocative voice and surrealistic poetry reveal a gritty, transgressive life on the margins shot through with evocations of sex and violence, religion and romance. Released in 1991, I'm the Only One Around was Mikami's first album with Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. label and heralded an artistic renaissance. It marked the beginning of an incredibly productive and wildly creative era for Mikami that extends to the present day. This opening salvo presents the essential core of Mikami's music; with nothing but his voice and a stripped-down electric guitar the album is a powerful, effortlessly emotional statement filled with moments of both brutal passion and gentle revelation. It is unrestrained, direct, brutally honest. It embodies Mikami's philosophy: "If you're going to make music, stake your life on it -- it's worth it. Making music is an intensely human act." In the newly translated notes to the album, Hiroyuki Itsuki, one of Japan's most renowned writers perhaps put it best: "What erupts here is all the fury and grief of Jōmon Man (the prehistoric people of the Japanese archipelago), lobbed into the middle of a 1990s city. Kan Mikami is unchanging, yet definitely in motion. He advances not forwards, but backwards. Not a retreat, rather he consciously progresses backwards. At the final destination for his full-steam astern poésie lies a massive, gaping black hole, exuding a dazzling, black light. This is the image evoked by the world of Kan Mikami that you can hear on this album." Mikami would go on to release 15 solo albums with P.S.F. as well as numerous collaborative efforts with other giants of the Japanese underground including Motoharu Yoshizawa, Masayoshi Urabe, and Keiji Haino, with whom, along with Toshiaki Ishizuka he formed the group Vajra. Features lyrics translated by Drew Stroud and newly translated notes by Alan Cummings. Remastered and cut to vinyl at Elysian Masters Los Angeles, pressed by RTI, packaged in heavy Stoughton tip-on jackets with insert featuring textured paper, gold foil stamping and metallic inks.
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CD
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PSF 8030CD
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"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
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CD
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MIKAMI 005CD
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"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."
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