Yodo - Memories

ETORANZE (self-released) - LP

Japan, 2015

Indie / Cinematic / Folk

The world is vast and filled with strange and beautiful music - that's a necessary thing to acknowledge to get into digging. No matter how annoying diggers may seem, such an assessment is at the core of a very humbling world view: we'll spend a lifetime digging, and we'll only scratch the tip of the iceberg. Let's just break this iceberg into a smaller bit - Japanese 21st century indie music - a place I feel like I've been venturing into for a while now. And yet I found myself completely disarmed when I stumbled upon this odd-looking LP, on a rather unsuccessful day spent rummaging through record crates in Koenji, earlier this year. An odd-looking record, but, so evidently-titled: Memories. 

A very obvious choice, as I found out later that it took the band 17 years (!!!) to release this debut album. Formed in 1998, Yodo has since been led by postman Tokuhiro Kuroyanagi, occasionally joined by whoever felt attracted to the project - a pure product of Nagoya's underground that eventually released a first LP in 2015. What should have hold the freshness of a debut album rather sounds like summers long since passed, so heavily tinged with melancholy.

The lo-fi quality of the songs (of very varied sound quality) is not some aesthetic ornament, but testifies of that extremely long gestational process - the result being the precious distillate of 17 years spent writing and playing music as Yodo. But what's truly remarkable about Memories, and makes it stand appart from other cherished releases from that era (Shizka Ueda's a small sun or wasuregosa's mimikurige) is the fact that the album is not a mere collection of songs, but a psychic maze, very similar in tone to the sublime psychedelic labyrinths of Shūji Terayama (Grass Labyrinth, Labyrinth Tale). 

To end with what feels an even more on point cinematographic comparison, I'd say that Memories shares with Edward Yang's films - especially A Brighter Summer Day - that indescribable quality, of being complexe and elusive, and yet, so strikingly familiar, and thus meaningful in a very intimate way. A quiet masterpiece. (Mint - deadstock copies - 1 per customer please!)