Oh, the joys and pains of promoting private press records. First of all, a huge debt of gratitude is extended to one Discogs record collector (mvns) who kindly shared with me this beyond interesting release by Japanese band (or solo act, hard to tell, at times), Milky Way Band. Released in 1989, through infinitely small quantities, on a nondescript label simply titled the “Athene Record Ind. Co., Ltd.”, Quarter Diary (figuratively) has no business existing in our digital world.
Unless you dig far enough to fall down a rabbit hole of your own making, no way would you have stumbled upon it. Yet, here we are because someone like him did so. mvns suggested to me that in the raw audio I’d hear something FOND/SOUND readers would like ie. a different set of music that had many fingers stuck on genres like ambient, fourth world, folk, Pop, and more. That we’d be able to find something worthwhile and new in this music that had no easy genre to slot into. Listening to it, I wish I had a better story to tell, elucidating to you about the mind (or minds) behind this work. However, it seems this one might remain a mystery for a good while. The music, however, remains genuinely inviting.
Quasi lo-fi in sound, the Milky Way’s Quarter Diary feels a bit more of our time. On songs like “Sound Diary” it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine some unknown bedroom musician trying to splice his ideas on tape, discovering deep emotion through deliberate meanderings, sometimes striking on brilliance. That’s the thing about Quarter Diary, for nearly 60 minutes we get to hear a Japanese band — perhaps the second generation of this type — attempting to strike out on its own, through influences that are vintage and others that still are very raw, untapped. Although, the title of the album is Quarter Diary, the spirit of this music is really in it being a “sound diary”.
Songs like the opener “Milky Way” marry tape hiss with gorgeous indie folk balladry steeped in the music of Happy End, Sugar Babe, and possibly Television, to instantly place you in this hazy, personal musical space. A slack “cover” of “Honky Tonk Blues” then keeps you on your toes, notifying you that it’s best not to expect a certain sound out of this record. As I can glean from the brief liner notes to this record, K. Furumi (who may be the leader, or sole person behind this group) seemed to be writing songs attempting to memorialize or capture something special that occurred to in their daily life. “Turtle Life” this simple little electric piano ditty, sounds like walking music to the fuller mix of field recording and gorgeous sun-kissed ambient blues that “Sketch Of The Beach” is. “Route 53” grows from a cutesy, toy piano reimagining of “Over The Rainbow” into a melancholic shuffle that sorta sticks with you. The A-side then veers from a little boogie jam into something that sounds like a minimalist tape instrument (with piano).
Slowing down the record to normal LP speed, the flip side of the record grows ever more personal. Exploring the blues, ECM Jazz, melancholia and folk music, the Milky Way Band tries to reconcile mandolin music with Japanese folk on songs like the pastoral “The People of Pastoral”. Then, they take McCartney-like aim at simple Pop songs that hint at Hawaiian influences, in pieces like “Remember 1962” and “Rock and Roll”. “Message 69” then finds them creating tone poems of sort, with found sound and tape recordings that still hit those breezy, vacation-like kind of notes, but in a way that remind you of melancholic, nostalgic memories. This was a collage of summer through a very vaporous memory of it.
“Wind Summer” reminds of the work done by Steve Hiett to intertwine “sunshine” music with deep bittersweet notes never entirely hidden during that season. It’s yet again another deeply interesting piece of windswept folk and ambient experimentalism. The album’s longest track “Sound Diary” as hinted in mvns’s own review of that album reminds me also of Ambient Hawai’i, that compilation of Hawaiian-inspired ambient music that looked at the music of this tropic as a source to tap into another sense of meditative music. Ruminating on all sorts of pieces, some modal jazz here, threadbare electric guitar tweaking over there, pausing on an ambient folk ballad of sorts, retreating to a Hawaiian-inspired spectral piece, then sorta ending on a different moody guitar piece, somehow, makes the longest track both deeply moving and somewhat perplexing.
I don’t even know how to end this review. Normally, some history behind the making of it would really help set the scene, but without it, all we have is the song, the cover, and very faint glimpses of the story behind it. Even then, I can’t help but admire life’s turns, allowing us to stumble upon things that move us even if we still can’t fully explain why. Hopefully, we’ll eventually to get the why part. Then, that will be some story, I imagine. In the meantime, here’s this part to begin with.
One response
Nice n’ breezy. For bumming around the house in pajamas I’d say. You’re on a roll. Thanks!