I’ve gotta admit. Few albums stump me to describe. Of the few that do, AQ! Ishii’s and Hiroko Taniyama’s 楠劇場 オリジナル・アルバム (Kusunoki Gekijou) must be up there in my personal canon. Much like Mariah’s うたかたの日々/ Utakata No Hibi, Aragon’s self-titled debut, and Godley & Creme’s Consequences, to name a few close brethren, so too does this work, by this duo, inhibit some really foreign sonic territory, divorced from our regular, cotidian, imagining of pop music that spitballs into becoming it.
楠劇場 オリジナル・アルバム (Kusunoki Gekijou) was the contribution of producer/sound designer AQ! (pronounced Akira) Ishii and notable leftfield J-Pop artist Hiroko Taniyama to Futureland’s sometime, wonderfully imaginative Animage soundtrack series. Released in 1988, somewhat quietly, outside their more known work, Kusunoki Gekijou served as a quite haunting soundtrack to Kei Kusunoki’s horror manga “Kusunoki Gekijou” that you can page through here.
As for those involved, it allowed one of them to finally take a step outside the shadows and show all intriguing, completely avant-garde ideas flow freely, in ways perhaps not-so-quietly hidden in prior coordinations. This means that for the purposes of this post/review, I’ll stress its focus on the work of one AQ! Ishii — we’ll round back to Hiroko, eventually, on this blog. But for the purposes of history, AQ!’s and Hiroko’s became intertwined sometime around the recording sessions for 1981’s 時の少女.
Although produced by the equally genius Ichiko Hashimoto, it was during those sessions she was introduced to the mysterious Akira Ishii. Already vacillating in the background of groups like Colored Music and contributing music to various animated features, it was his ideas on sonic treatments and electronics that intrigued Hiroko.
In 1985, many would take notice to a shift in musicality on Hiroko’s 空飛ぶ日曜日 (Flying Sunday). Shifting away from her more known quasi-prog, quasi-psychedelic sound for one that was more “ethno”-influenced and “difficult”, it was AQ! Ishii’s influence as producer and arranger that focused her work towards more uncharted territory, even if that meant losing much of her long-running audience weaned on her “New Music” folkish beginnings. Over a decade into Hiroko’s long career, it felt like where she was going was more her direction. And much like AQ!’s own little-heralded work behind the scenes for Ichiko Hashimoto (see: Vivant), all he did was make sure to give them the soundscapes that took their influences into the future. Some Of Hiroko’s best, deep cut works, like 水玉時間 and 透明なサーカス would attest to this flowering professional relationship.
By the time of 1988’s 楠劇場 オリジナル・アルバム (Kusunoki Gekijou), this format, the one of the soundtrack album, one where they can write for a specific audience in mind, presented an opportunity. Hidden behind the pages of the manga, one that (somehow) continues my unconscious love of manga-derived soundtracks for demon-possed ladies, was a story that had all the makings of a deeper diversion. Largely absconding of Hiroko’s more light-hearted/twee work, they turned toward a dark side that could be as equally compelling.
Presenting the titular tale of the protagonist, the duo of AQ! and Hiroko became transfixed with mixing sampled sound with poetry, then using a very minimal base to build songs that oscillated between possession and expulsion. Inspired by Japanese ethnic folk and court music, the duo lost themselves to recreating the story on tape. AQ!’s and Hiroko’s, rightfully, sticking to And aiding them to flesh out all these, admittedly, mysterious arrangements were like minded musicians like the unforgettable Yoko Ueno from Zabadak (on many of the lead vocals), Real Fish’s Hitoshi Watanabe, and even the manga creator himself, Kei Kusunoki, joining to narrate and write lyrics for a few of the tracks.
Seemingly, all hands were on deck letting Hiroko and AQ! float in and out of arrangements, float in and out with all sorts of sonic indulgences, treat one track as a piece of ground-crawling atmospheric music, then come in with the next as a slice of dream pop. That’s where songs like “鬼少年”, “プロローグ・Sunset”, and “リカちゃんのポケット” mirror the territory of the story. One doesn’t need to read Japanese to picture the stories’ pendulum swing back and forth from youthful exuberance to adult introspection, all presented through this fable of the “akuma” living within love cut too short. So, too, largely, the music forgoes any strict harmonic runs, favoring instead the use of indecipherable percussive instrumentation and all sorts of wandering, dissonant “melodies” to present all sorts of mercurial feelings.
Want to bear witness to why I hate to describe what’s inside this album? Simply listen to the fourth track, “半蛇の女” (or half-snake woman). On the only track co-written by Hiroko and AQ! we get to hear Hiroki take her innocent affectations through the looking glass, into the surreal subconscious id, while AQ! tries to scrub the tapes trying to breathe whatever life he can into that journey. 楠劇場 オリジナル・アルバム (Kusunoki Gekijou) is just something you have to listen to experience. And that experience can be yours by guiding your eyes below…