Other Music

75 Dollar Bill

Wooden Bag

Other Music

***BACK IN PRINT!!! 75 DOLLAR BILL formed in New York City in 2012; the singular music of this instrumental duo—CHE CHEN and RICK BROWN—draws various sources from around the world and across disciplines, everything from Mauritanian guitar to raw minimalism and blown-out urban blues, yet sounds unlike anything we’ve heard before. Wooden Bag is their debut vinyl release (after various cassette and digital EPs) and first for Other Music Recording Co., packaged in a limited-edition hand-stamped sleeve, download included. The band will be touring the US throughout the winter and spring. In The New York Times, Ben Ratliff wrote of the duo’s live show: “Che Chen’s guitar: a cut-rate Japanese model sketching looped figures inside old Arabic modes, pushing jagged sound through a small amplifier. But as Mr. Chen stood playing hypnotic guitar repetitions, moving with the stresses of the riffs, the drummer Rick Brown sat on a square wooden box, open in the back, and attacked it from above. Sometimes he used his heel to bounce on a kick-drum pedal, pointing backward toward the box; mostly he was striking the sides of the box with his hands and a homemade mallet, hard, finding different pitches in different places. He cued transitions in the music, building odd or compound rhythms, turning them around and blurring distinctions between downbeats and upbeats. On the surface, the rhythms were only secondary to the guitar lines; deeper down, they were enfolded. One couldn’t do without the other.”

Sakamoto, Shintaro

Let’s Dance Raw

Other Music

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork.Japanese singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist SHINTARO SAKAMOTO returns with a new full-length, Let’s Dance Raw. The album is the follow-up to Sakamoto’s solo debut, the otherworldly folk-pop masterpiece How to Live with a Phantom (2012, Other Music). While How to Live with a Phantom was the first many around the globe knew of Sakamoto, he has long been an icon in his homeland, having long fronted the psychedelic phenomenon YURA YURA TEIKOKU, a Tokyo-based band that emerged from Koenji’s legendary UFO Club scene and, across their 20-year trajectory, achieved mainstream success throughout the country. Following the group’s break-up in 2010, Sakamoto began working on How to Live with a Phantom, a bold stylistic departure that eschewed Yura Yura Teikokou’s psychedelic freak-outs for a much quieter and harder-to-define sound. From first glimpse of the cover of Let’s Dance Raw, it’s clear that once again, we are entering uncharted territory. The record’s sleeve, painted by Sakamoto, features the artist sitting upon a black throne, a steel guitar resting on his knee like a child being protected from the ominous mushroom cloud of smoke billowing behind him. A grinning skull has replaced Sakamoto’s face. This dichotomy of bright, innocent beauty and subtle perversity is the essence of Let’s Dance Raw, with Sakamoto moving even further from the tough underground power-trio psychedelic rock of his former band. He hinted at the new sound throughout his solo debut, and here the music is blown wide open, with the...