first things first: i moved all my “song a day” posts to their own page; that’s what the little S.A.D. tab up there is for. i thought it would be better to separate these from the real posts/keep the main page/rss feed devoted to real posts.

second things second: last week i made the twenty hour/1200+ mile trek from denver to portland to see maher shalal hash baz; despite the brevity of the set (30-40 minutes) i can assure you it was well worth it. (this also explains why there haven’t been any new S.A.D. posts for a week or so). anyway the show was literally in a basement of a house…maybe 40-50 people there…as intimate as you’d surely want a Maher show to be. on top of that they only played new material which i assume is soon going to find it’s way onto the upcoming Maher album. there were some other bands, all of which were astoundingly good, in particular The Watery Graves, a sort of twenty-first century lo-fi free-jazz outfit; my lady friend got a cassette of theirs so if you can’t immediately find any give it a week or so and I’ll digitize it and vslam it. sadly, about ten minutes prior to Maher i realized i’d left the damn tape recorder at the hotel…but don’t worry, i’ve got a surprise in store for all you loyal readers in the next few days that i think will more than make up for my forgetfulness (honestly with the way i forget things it’s a miracle the tape recorder even made it to portland).

third things third: the bad/sad news is that there were no wildly rare Tori/Maher lps/tapes/discs/whatevers to spend an ungodly amount of money on. the good/happy news is that the first two discs to be released on Hyotan Records (the brand-newly established record label put together by some of the members of Maher) were for sale at a somewhat reasonable price considering their “import” status and complete unavailability stateside until Tori showed up with them last week. their first two discs are Reiko Kudo’s new albums (you may, or may not, remember Reiko as Tori’s wife): “Hito” (HYOTAN 001) & “Kusa” (HYOTAN 002), which feature Tori on piano and some help from a few friends. the packaging on these is absolutely beautiful; and from the looks of it fairly expensive to produce. both albums were recorded in Tori’s pottery studio and feature sounds from the natural environment (bugs, birds, weather, etc) in the mix. comparatively “Rice field silently riping in the night” or “Fire inside my hat” seem almost pop-ish. Tori’s piano is, as usual, right on the line between dissonant and complete breakdown. Reiko’s vocals are, as usual, haunting and serene in a way i think only the japanese can manage. Teruki Tamayanagi & Leon Lo add some strings in places on “Kusa” that represent some solid new sonic territory for Reiko.

the pair of discs more than make up for the Kudo’s absence of late from the “new release” bin in your local record shop. if you’re one of those rabid Tori Kudo fans who just can’t wait for the delay between release in japan and release in the states do yourself a favor and scour the internet for a distributor, these are probably a couple of the most unique albums that you’re going to find this year; “Kusa” is easily in my top three picks for 2006.

as sorrowing but ever rejoicing & siro & go to see the sunset

fig & this fall & morning glory

(sorry for the tiny artwork, but the internet (read: google) had little to offer in the way of selection and i’ve not had the time to scan’em up yet; and anglicizing the track names, but i was fearful of what kanji characters might do to that unmentionable web browser)