Shinsuke Honda 本多信介's silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album & other things
A quick Friday update from me to you.
Selected Works is a regular newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell. Yes, that’s me. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.
Last month, Toshiya Kawasaki from the longstanding Japanese record label Mule Musiq sent me a very nice email asking if I’d like to write the sales notes for the first official reissue of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s rare silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album. If you’re an ambient guitar enthusiast like I am, you might consider this one a bit of a grail. Unsurprisingly, I jumped at the chance. Anyway, with silence = サイレンス (夕映え) rapidly popping up as a pre-order on record stores across the internet, I figured it was a good time to share my sales notes with you.
Shinsuke Honda 本多信介 - silence = サイレンス (夕映え)
Originally released in 1983 through Apollon Music industrial corp’s ALTY sublabel, Mule Musiq sub-label Studio Mule presents the first official reissue of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s rare silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album. recorded as part of ALTY’s resort mind music series, Honda-san’s contemplative guitar instrumentals tint the air with nostalgia, longing and a gentle sadness at the impermanence of all things, transporting the listener to an eternal sunset of the mind.
A masterful guitarist and composer with a well-listened ear, Honda-San grew up in Hiroshima during the middle years of the 20th century, eventually making his way to Tokyo in the early 1970s, where he spent several years as a member of the pioneering Japanese language folk-rock group Hachimitsu Pie. after they disbanded, Honda-San spent some time in Japan’s jazz and experimental rock scenes before turning his hand to film and television soundtrack work in 1978.
Five years later, as new age and kankyō ongaku (environmental music) became commercial record label concerns, alty offered him a record deal. Over silence = サイレンス (夕映え)’s eight songs, Honda-San collapsed time and space, effortlessly integrating his sepia-toned memories of the rock instrumentals of his childhood with his adult love of jazz, minimalism, electric blues and soundtrack composition.
Although Honda-San went on to have an accomplished career in soundtrack work, along the way scoring the Japanese films Target of Lust (1979), Koichiro Uno's Shell Competition (1980) and Moonlight Whispers (1999), and working on the theme music for the Fuji tv travel program Kazemakase Shin Shokoku Manyuuki, his early work spent decades languishing in obscurity, until it was rediscovered in recent years by record diggers like Tsunaki Kadowaki (sad disco) and Diego Olivas (fond/sound).
Forty years on, Mule Musiq and Studio Mule are very pleased to be able to contribute to the critical re-evaluation of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album as an essential desert island disc for lovers of ecm contemporary jazz, steel-string blues and Balearic guitar bliss.
Right now, you can preview and pre-order the album via Deejay.de, Laterna Records, Kompakt.fm, omimi.biz, and diskunion. If you want to learn more about Honda-san, check out some of the articles over at FOND/SOUND here.
BONUS:
Sampology’s Middle Name Records have just released ‘Space For Space’, the first single from Brisbane-based drummer-producer Charlie Hill’s forthcoming Yore EP. You can pre-order Yore here.
This week, I wrote about Pel Mel’s Late, Late Show album for Test Pressing. Check out my review here.
FIN.