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LP
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BELA 006-077LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/6/2026
Black Tape II is only the second widely available release by Ohkami No Jikan (The Time of the Wolf), one of the more esoteric groups of the 1990s Tokyo underground. Recorded in 1992, it illuminates a largely undocumented facet of Nanjo Asahito's psychedelic cosmology, distinct from his better-known work with High Rise, Musica Transonic, and Toho Sara. Aside from a handful of limited, handmade cassettes and CD-Rs on his La Musica label, there's only been one Ohkami No Jikan album, Mort Nuit, that made it beyond the collector inner circle. One of Nanjo's longest-running, most mysterious outfits, Ohkami No Jikan's conceptualization -- as a psych outfit "that explores 'stasis' and 'motion,' both actively and philosophically" -- hints at the intensity of the music here. There's a pellucid beauty to much of Black Tape II, with the simplest, most erotically charged chord changes descending from the heavens, Nanjo moaning consumptively as the songs slip by in an acid daze. The 1992 line-up here, with Asai Fumiyo on bass and Nagao Kouji on drums, was one of many variations of Ohkami No Jikan; simultaneously languorous and heavy, at times pushed into the red with arcing blasts of feedback, the group feels cosmically aligned with Nanjo's purity of vision. Housed in a custom die-cut, "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic ink, spot finishes and matching La Musica inner sleeve. La Musica Records was a label founded by Asahito Nanjo in Tokyo during the 1990s. It released nearly 200 cassettes and CD-r's, all handmade in micro-editions and sold at shows. The catalog featured artists and recordings largely of obscure, often completely unknown origin, sanctioned and "grey-area" documentation of the Tokyo psychedelic underground. Black Tape II is part of Black Edition's work to bring La Musica's unique and confoundingly beautiful catalog to light.
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LP
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BELA 004-017LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/20/2026
A bizarrely entrancing jewel from the depths of the Japanese underground, Doo Dah Nean was originally released in small run of hand assembled cassettes by the La Musica label in the late '90s. The album is the sole release and evidence of Nean, an entirely under-the-radar trio that crossed the sensual, disassociated female vocals of Japanese iroke kayōkyoku music with off-balance shamanic rhythm and echoing electronic rumble. Nean were the trio of Yui on bass and electronics, Naoko on voice, and Non on drums. Both Yui and Non were also part of Holy Angels, and Yui played with Ohkami No Jikan and Mauduit Nuit. Vocalist Naoko, in her lone recorded appearance anywhere, elevates the proceedings to peak outsider strangeness. Her ultra-repetitive chants and sighs balance childlike innocence with sinister knowing. Alternately distracted and humming to herself or delivering breathy, near field whispers, the simple juxtaposition of her vocalizations with Non's stumble-drunk drums, and the amorphous blobs and gloops of tone unleashed from Yui's instruments lands like an avant garde, proto-ASMR incantation. A truly confounding release in a La Musica catalogue that's not exactly thin on the ground for such form. Housed in die-cut "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic gold ink and soft touch finishes with printed inner sleeve. Vinyl pressed at RTI. Additional mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk, Stereophonic mastering lacquers by Phillip S. Rodriguez. Elysian masters executive produced by Peter Kolovos.
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LP
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BELA 005-045LP
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$27.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/6/2026
A collection of intimate songs traced from the spectral darkness by Nanjo Asahito, the notorious leader of some of Japan's key underground psychedelic units (High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Transonic, Toho Sara, etc) Recorded between 1980 and 1988 and previously only available in a cassette micro-edition released by his La Musica Records label in the mid-1990s. Remastered and available for the first time on vinyl and digital. From the original La Musica cassette notes: "A compilation of secret projects recorded over a period of twenty years. Deeply personal music that achieves a strange balance between beat folk balladry and off-key mumbling. Suggestive self-celebratory music conceived as a confirmation of existence." A lesser-known side of Nanjo Asahito -- if all you know of his work is the overloaded, intensified psych-rock and free-sound of his group projects then the solo songs on M gently redraw the contours of Nanjo's private universe. There's something gem-like in the way these five songs are formed, even as they accrue grit and dirt while drifting out of the speakers. Here, Nanjo grabs handfuls of gentle chord changes, allows them to rotate in the air, suspended in reverb, flickering in half-light, as he murmurs drowsy melodies. The closing "Eucharist" pushes everything through a thin layer of distortion; elsewhere, tinkling piano, from guest Matsuoka Takashi, who also performed with Keiji Haino's Nijiumu, disturbs dust molecules to dance through hazy air. LP is housed in die-cut "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic gold ink and soft touch finishes with printed inner sleeve. Vinyl pressed at RTI.
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2LP
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BELA 008LP
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Ten blistering performances from Tokyo's legendary High Rise. Recorded live in 1992, Disturbance Trip (BE 016LP) is a previously unreleased, distortion-saturated gem recorded in the same era as their third studio album, Dispersion. Guitarist Munehiro Narita's unmatched ability to channel the pure energy/spirit of rock and roll and hard psychedelia is on full display; his riffs are heavy and propulsive, his solos dizzying and transcendent. Nanjo's fuzz bass lays down hypermobile lines that swing and thunder as he intones lyrics that echo in the distance. Disturbance Trip is the first release on the resurrected La Musica Records, Asahito Nanjo's mystifying, apocryphal cassette label started in the 1990s and documenting the most obscure reaches of the Japanese psychedelic underground. Deluxe double LP housed in custom Unipak-style gatefold jacket and printed inner sleeves with spot metallic inks and gloss UV coating. Featuring: Nanjo Asahito {bass, vocals); Narita Munehiro (guitar); Dr. Euro (drums). Recorded Live in 1992, Tokyo, Japan.
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