SHOKUBUTSU

Description

Inc. Insert with English & Japanese lyrics Shokubutsu is a reissue of the 1984 debut album by the Osaka-based duo Salon Kitty. The Japanese title means “plants”; fittingly, there is a gentle, stately and yet powerful life force to this music, a floating metric flexibility which allows the duo’s viola, accordion, piano, bass and occasional bells to breathe freely and aspire to the heavens with a sense of shifting space and drifting acoustic melancholy. The instruments move in a linear flow of color; the spare vocals have an intonation reminiscent of the recitation of traditional Japanese Waka poetry or the chanting of Noh drama. The absence of typical rhythm instruments, born of a desire to “liberate rhythm” and create a sense of elastic phrasing, is highlighted in the calm pacing, the hints of French impressionism, the faint Gagaku smears — the notes ebb and flow, sway in the movement of air, earthed yet simultaneously reaching upward. There is a dialectic sense of creation here, searching for a “new Japanese chamber music.” This flowing and flowering music of beautiful breathing shadows is available on CD/LP. The mastering and quality lacquer cutting for the vinyl version were handled by Kassian Troyer, an esteemed engineer at D&M. The CD version includes a bonus disc of the “lost and legendary” second album, Hanten to Choyaku: Salon Kitty Last Live 1985.8.30. The mastering for the CD and digital versions was done by Yasushi Utsunomiya, one of Japan's leading engineers, giving the music a fresh new life. The LP version provides a DL code for Hanten to Choyaku.