Fountaindale Public Library

Finally, his first album, Kazuki Tomokawa

jpn

libretto or texthistorical information

rock music

not applicable

Finally, his first album

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Originally released in 1975

Kazuki Tomokawa

Fountaindale Vinyl Record Collection

"A poet, soothsayer, bicycle race tipster, actor, prolific drinker, self-taught guitarist, and living legend of Japanese sound, Kazuki Tomokawa catapulted into Tokyo's avant-folk scene in the mid-1970s, forging a sound and sensibility marked by throat-wrenching vocals and searing ennui. Among his musical peers in postwar Japan, Tomokawa distinguished himself as a pioneer of radical individualism. He had 'the personality of a hydrogen bomb'--as the notorious ultraleft band the Brain Police once put it--and a sound to match. Tomokawa shouts, cries, wails, and croons, his folk stylings tinged with psychedelia and swelling into ground-shaking rock. Many tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a highly regional vernacular of north Japan rarely heard beyond the prefecture, and even less often used in music. Matching his guttural, all-out vocals are profoundly existential meditations on everyday life and the world around him; this is, as record executive Kiichi Takara dubs it, 'I-music.' It looks toward the interior, the quotidian, and the domestic with piercing and ever-honest eyes."--Blank Forms Editions website

adult

not applicable