Due to unprecedented delays in global production, we are anticipating a May 2022 release date for the upcoming Kazuki Tomokawa releases.
At the tender age of twenty-five, while he was working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Kamata district Kazuki Tomokawa released his debut record, fittingly titled Finally, His First Album. While he had already penned hundreds of songs, including his first single “Try Saying You’re Alive!,” written on a long train ride past fields and rice paddies, it was this recording that introduced Japan to one of its most unique musicians of the postwar era. Each track, as record label exec Kiichi Takahara writes in the LP’s liner notes (here translated for the first time), is not a song but a “flesh-and-blood human being,” birthed by the singer-songwriter and the raw, guttural cries that would become a hallmark of his incomparable sound.
1970s Japan was a time and place marked by a profound desire for authenticity amidst the onset of television and media saturation. Tomokawa arrived on the scene as a musician with“the personality of a hydrogen bomb,” to borrow a phrase from his frequent collaborator Toshi Ishizuka. In an unwieldy interview included here, members of the notorious leftist band Zunō Keisatsu (Brain Police) put it bluntly: here was a man surrounded by the “disingenuous,” the “wishy-washy,” and the “superficial,” who was delivering “real life, unvarnished.” These songs are lullabies for the lost, staring not into the void but—as the fourth track declares—from inside it.
Finally, His First Album is the first of three Tomokawa records to be reissued by Blank Forms Editions in conjunction with the US release of Tomokawa’s memoir, Try Saying You’re Alive!, the first-ever English translation of his writing. This debut captures the self-assured trademarks that Tomokawa would hone over the course of decades. Multiple tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a distinct and highly regional vernacular of northern Japan seldom heard outside the prefecture—and even more rarely heard in music. Tomokawa’s lyrics locate profound interiority in the rituals of everyday life, and are sung against sparse folk arrangements of tender, lilting chords—a prelude to the rock and electronic stylings to come in later years. A self-proclaimed “living corpse,” Tomokawa wallows, whispers, shouts, and cries, yet still, through his existential doubt, asks to be heard
Kazuki Tomokawa (b. 1950) is a prolific singer-songwriter from Hachiryū Village (now the town of Mitane) in the Akita Prefecture area of northern Japan. Since his first release in 1975, he has recorded more than thirty albums. The 2010 documentary about his life, La Faute des Fleurs, won the Sound & Vision award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, and that same year saw the Japanese release of the book Dreams Die Vigorously Day by Day, a collection of his lyrics spanning forty years. His most recent albums are Vengeance Bourbon (2014) and Gleaming Crayon (2016), both on the Modest Launch label.
The Shadow Ring (1992-2002) –
11xCD + DVD box set with book
The Shadow Ring
$200 USD
Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Atrás del Cosmos
$25 USD
Turzets –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
James Rushford
$25 USD
Live on KFJC –
Limited Edition Cassette
The Shadow Ring
$15 USD
DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS!!!!!!!!! –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Charlemagne Palestine
$25 USD
Turning in Space –
'Motorwave' Cassette
Áine O'Dwyer
$15 USD
Turning in Space –
'Playing Place' Cassette
Áine O'Dwyer
$15 USD
Turning in Space –
'Slipstream' Cassette
Áine O'Dwyer
$15 USD
Turning in Space –
Triple Cassette Box Set
Áine O'Dwyer
$35 USD
Turning in Space –
Triple Cassette Box Set (art edition)
Áine O'Dwyer
Sold Out
Put the Music In Its Coffin –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
The Shadow Ring
$25 USD
City Lights –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
The Shadow Ring
$25 USD
Solo for Tamburium –
Limited Edition Compact Disc
Catherine Christer Hennix
$20 USD
Solo for Tamburium –
Limited Edition Double Vinyl
Catherine Christer Hennix
$35 USD
Texas Music –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Jerry Hunt, Philip Krumm, Jerry Willingham
$20 USD
Music of Dary John Mizelle –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Dary John Mizelle
$20 USD
Music of BL Lacerta –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
BL Lacerta
$20 USD
Hybrid Musics –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Larry Austin
$20 USD
Cartography –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Gene De Lisa, Robert Michael Keefe, Rodney Waschka II
$20 USD
Works –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
James Fulkerson
$20 USD
Cantegral Segment(s) –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Jerry Hunt
$20 USD
Neo Seven –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
7038634357
$25 USD
Aphorisms –
Limited Edition 2xCD
Graham Lambkin
$20 USD
Aphorisms –
Limited Edition 2xLP
Graham Lambkin
$30 USD
The Cat & Bells Club –
Limited Edition LP
The Cat & Bells Club
$25 USD
Larynx –
2xLP
Lary 7
$30 USD
May 99 –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts
$25 USD
New Sense of Hearing –
Limited Edition CD
Takehisa Kosugi + Akio Suzuki
$15 USD
New Sense of Hearing –
Limited Edition Vinyl LP
Takehisa Kosugi + Akio Suzuki
$25 USD
Irida Records: Hybrid Musics from Texas and Beyond, 1979–1986 –
Limited Edition 7xLP + Book (Box Set)
Various Artists
$225 USD
Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams –
Limited Edition Double LP
Jerry Hunt
$30 USD
Kazuki Tomokawa 1975–1977 3xCD Box Set
$35 USD
Blank Forms Editions Brooklyn, New York
Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices. ... more
