Yasuo Sugibayashi - The Mask Of The Imperial Family (2017)

Lullabies For Insomniacs go below and beyond into the Japanese underground, compiling the first ever reissue of Yasuo Sugibayashi’s brilliant “rhythmic noise” obscurity, The Mask of The Imperial Family backed by cuts from his two equally obscure and similar sounding 7”s, all originally self-released thru his Mimic Records label.

Inspired as much by Brian Eno and David Cunningham’s studio works as everyday life in Tokyo, Sugibayashi pursued a wide reaching, rhythmelodic sound thru a Roand System 100M synth and reel to reel tape which cannily lived up to his intentions, recalling to us the hustle and motion of a perceived life in Tokyo at a time caught between echoes of tradition and the bittersweet tang of electronic futurism. It sounds like somewhat like NON or Bruce Gilbert might have cooked up if they came thru in the same place and time.

Of course, the Mutant Sounds blog was aware of this one a long time ago, so we’ll leave you with their astute appraisal:

"Both profound and profoundly jaw dropping, the esoteric moves of this massively rare and insanely obscure 300 copy Japanese marvel have until now remained the sole preserve of a handful of heavyweight collectors. It's time to let the cat out of the bag on this one. The dankly cavernous and unsettling acid maneuvers of Dome circa their first three LP's (though absent vocals) are the nearest antecedent I can summon for the principal thrust of the sound here. So too, there's a ritualistic dimension to this stuff thats also a bit suggestive of something like Vasilisk or The Hybryds, though the arcane initiatory atmosphere here is far more penetrating than anything I've heard either of those two muster."