Sound Metaphors’ Yuzo Iwata has curated this cool compilation for the store / distributor’s Miss You label. The selection serves as a sampler, mapping out how reggae and dub influenced Japan’s punk and then new wave scenes. Collecting tracks from between 1980 and 1985, the album documents not only how this cross-pollination took hold, but also how popular music and technology evolved. 

Given the time frame, and music , refusing to stand still, moving at a clip, a variety of sounds and genres are represented. Business’ “Minato No Cafe” is slick, sweet city pop, and Masumi Hara’s fluttering “Looks Like An Angel” is also far more polished than anything else on offer. The Bananarians’ “Suna No Atama” and So-Do’s “Nothing” are very new wave. The latter, angular and kinda Devo-esque. Pressure’s “Warui Jikan”, in contrast, is a lot more experimental and abstract. Its skeletal rhythm soaked in reverb, distortion and tortured tape effects. EP-4 might be the group here that’s best known outside of Japan, since their debut “Lingua Franca” was given a bespoke reissue by Switzerland’s We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want. Their brand of hypnotic, ritualistic art-funk, with its megaphones, feedback and cowbell, pulling in comparisons to 23 Skidoo and Liquid Liquid. 

Many of the tracks feature mad skilled guitarists, who within the confines of punk seem to trying really hard not to show off, but can’t help themselves. Switching between rock ’n’ roll tremolo twang and screeching, screaming shredding. Chinggis Chan Dread’s “Yattane Babylon” riffs on the 60s TV “Batman” theme, before dissolving in washes of extravagant echo. The Air Music International’s horn-fuelled “Hot Steppers In A Dub” is punkier, and funkier. Boasting a stomping, lop-sided beat and bulbous bass. Each buckling beneath its own weight. Lizard’s similarly, gloriously grungy “Sa.Ka.Na” is a live sounding, seriously distressed, deranged mix of wild shouts and strange percussion. Both, to my ears, are standouts, and Pablo Picasso’s “Tsun” is another highlight (1). A melodica-led, metallic roots mutant. Full of ricochets and overworked delays. Perhaps enthralled with Adrian Sherwood and Kishi Yamamoto’s On-U Sound, and serrated by sharp, Keith Levene-like guitar shards (2). 

NOTES

(1) I picked The Lizard 45 up assuming it had something to do with the legendary On-U Sound bass man Keith Logan. It didn’t, but I wasn’t  disappointed, since it is, nonetheless, very New Age Steppers.

(2) The Pablo Picasso track has long been a personal favourite, after discovering it, along with a load of other post-punk gems, in a Kichijoji store called Ballroom Records.