News: Jiro Inagaki & Soul Media's "Dosojin" to be reissued in May!

We recently heard from The AC, who brings us this good news: "Jiro Inagaki & Soul Media's "Dosojin" is finally being reissued on CD in Columbia's Deep Jazz Reality series! Now that they've done "By the Red Stream" and "Wandering Birds", this will complete the reissue trifecta of the most interesting (at least from my perspective) Inagaki/Soul Media rarities from the early 70s. The street date is May 20, and it's up on all the Japanese webshops. Here's the Amazon Japan link"

Some of you will recall this to be one of his many great Japanese discoveries over 3 years ago now. We had it as a priority 3. Looking forward to owning this title!

News: Yoshitaka Azuma - Moonlight of Asia is on CD from Columbia

This news comes courtesy of an anonymous reader, where we learned that the "Moonlight of Asia" album was reissued last April by Nippon Columbia. He sent us the Japanese info from the label's own website (see comment under entry), but I found corroborating evidence here.

I recently added this title via the CD-R revisit project, and didn't find this CD then when searching around.

Sadly, it appears Mr. Azuma passed away in 2012, according to the same comment.

News: Jiro Inagaki and Big Soul Media "By the Red Stream" reissued on CD

This is a new title for us, but following on the AC's announcement of the Mannheim Rock Ensemble CD, he also recommends this new reissue from Nippon Columbia. Last year as we were deep diving into the Japanese underground, we featured Jiro Inagaki's "Dosojin" album, one of our Priority 3's. And while it doesn't appear that album has been reissued yet (and with all these sudden reissues out of Japan, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see one), in the interim it appears this is well worth seeking out. The AC says: "It's kind of an anti-war concept album with just four long instrumental pieces. It's basically what you would call electric big-band or electric modal jazz rather that straight up jazz-rock, but it does feature some nice organ work, fuzz/wah guitar and plenty of Fender Rhodes. A really well-done and atmospheric album, if you're so inclined. Needless to say, this one has been a very rare and expensive item in the Japanese jazz collector scene for many years, and has seemed to completely escape notice in the outside world."

The AC also provided a link to Amazon Japan, which features some sound samples as well.

News: Mannheim Rock Ensemble reissued on CD

We've recently heard from the AC who informs us that along with the Miyama album, Columbia also reissued The Mannheim Rock Ensemble "Rock of Joy" album. This was another AC discovery from last year that we featured. Be sure to read his thorough review! Not a high priority item by any means, but certainly worth mentioning for fans of the crazy early 70s Japanese psych culture.

News: Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd - Tsuchi No Ne (Nippon Densetsu No Naka No Shijou) to be released in December!

Thanks to a comment from a reader, we learned that Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd's "Tsuchi No Ne (Nippon Densetsu No Naka No Shijou)" album will be reissued by Nippon Columbia and released on December 5th.

More info here

Here's our feature for the album. This was one of the AC's amazing finds.