I’ve just stepped into an alternate reality time machine where I’m looking in a mirror and seeing a 20-something Japanese version of myself, surviving on cup noodles, party beer, cheap rent in a house full of like-minded hippies, spending every last cent on records and concerts, and having just blown through my entire week’s paycheck at the record store in one go, with absolutely no concern or worry that I now have no funds for food. Don’t worry, I’ll subsist on music…
Meet Natsuki, who I caught up with outside Coconuts a couple of weeks ago, who in a way really did make me wish I had a time machine to be able to go back and re-live a lifetime of loving music. There was something about Natsuki that was so effervescent, an evident pureness of deep musical love and appreciation in his face, you could just recognize it, and it only took one look at the choice of records he scored (one, an aspirational-Big-Band-Latin-Jazz-sung-in-French record from 1957, another, a collection of Lounge Legends that, no doubt, could provide a library of source material for endless sampling and remixing, to finally, an experimental electronic/Hip-Hop/Pop record whose name only needs mentioning “VIDEOTAPEMUSIC”) to know at some point he’ll be back home in his cathedral of music (he mentioned having over 1000 records) and him putting these records on, maybe on headphones, closing his eyes and metaphysically ascending out of himself and into the music, literally INTO the music, becoming one with it, until the music ends and lets go of him and gentle places back into fixed reality, both in a state of heightened empathetic presence and one of pure awe.
I suppose it’s a weird and too-specific picture to paint, but all-genre-musical-appreicating-vinyl-junkie recognizes all-genre-musical-appreicating-vinyl-junkie. It just does. And what can I say, if Natsuki didn’t win me over with his taste in records, or just his overall vibe, or our banter about Brazilian artists, he admittedly stole my heart with the Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt he scored on a recent trip he made to the States, just to see them. Maybe there is hope for the next generation, after all.
More Tokyo Records Style on the way.
Michel Legrand And His Orchestra – Legrand In Rio
Label: Columbia – CL 1139
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Mono
Country: US
Released: 1957
Genre: Jazz
Style: Space-Age, Big Band, Latin Jazz
https://www.discogs.com/release/2422229-Michel-Legrand-And-His-Orchestra-Legrand-In-Rio
Various – Lounge Legends
Label: Universal Marketing Group GmbH – 556 688-1
Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation
Country: Germany
Released: 2002
Genre: Funk / Soul, Jazz
Style: Soul-Jazz, Soul, Funk
https://www.discogs.com/release/2595060-Various-Lounge-Legends
VIDEOTAPEMUSIC – On The Air
Label: Kakubarhythm – KAKU-086
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Japan
Released: Mar 30, 2018
Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop, Pop
Style: Sound Collage, Dub, Ambient, Downtempo, Latin
https://www.discogs.com/release/11797790-VIDEOTAPEMUSIC-On-The-Air
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