V/A // Sound Storing Machines: The First 78rpm Records from Japan, 1903-1912 LP

78回転盤に刻まれた日本の最初期録音をコンパイルしたレコードです。以下、レーベル解説です。

世界中の音源を掘り起こしてきたシアトルの人気レーベル Sublime Frequencies がミャンマー、韓国に続く〈アジアのＳＰ盤アンソロジー〉第３弾として選んだのは、なんと日本の20世紀初頭の音源だった。フレッド・ガイズバーグ一行が日本で初めて録音を行った１９０３年の２月から１９１２年の間に、英国グラモフォンや米国コロンビアといったレコード会社によって出張録音された貴重な音源など15トラックを厳選。雅楽から義太夫、俗曲、落語、尺八などの器楽演奏まで、当時日本で盛んだった様々な〈音〉を収録している。オリジナルの英文ライナーのほか、本作には日本の芸能史研究の第一人者で、ＳＰレコード研究家の岡田則夫氏による日本語解説を添付し、当時の出張録音の背景から収録曲の内容まで、詳細な説明を加えてくださった。外国人から見た〈日本吹込み事始〉といった内容の本作は、改めて日本音楽の歴史を見つめ直すキッカケとなりそうだ。 

1. Bairo
2. Senryou Nobori
3. Chikumagawa
4. Kappore
5. Hokai-bushi Oiwake-bushi
6. Matsukaze
7. Rakugo: Ukiy-buro
8. Taishikichou
9. Shiokumi Kasatsukashi
10. Yokyoku
11. Sanjusangen-do Kiyori
12. Neko Ja
13. Horikawa Sarumawashi
14. Sakaya no dan
15. Joruri Taiko-ki Ju Danme

Text by Sublime Frequencies:

"The first commercial recordings from Asia were made in Japan in 1903 by Fred Gaisberg, the legendary producer and recording engineer who traveled the world making recordings for the Gramophone Company (later His Masters Voice). The recording industry barely existed at this time. Man’s ability to record and reproduce sound had only existed since 1877 (with the invention of Edison’s cylinder phonograph) and flat disc records, what we all collect and obsess over today, had only come into being in the late 1890s.

It is a miracle what these fragile discs have survived: wars with Russia and China, the fire bombings (and worse) of World War II, modernization, the onslaught of Western media. They document, through a dreamlike haze of surface noise, a Japan that had just barely begun to open its doors to the rest of the world.

Including gagaku, shakuhachi, shamisen, storytelling, folksong and more. these recordings are a unique glimpse into an ancient culture and an important document of the beginnings of the recording industry. Simple and complex. Alien and familiar. Featuring important artists and those who only appeared to sing before the strange Western recording horn and then vanished.

Sound Storing Machines spans only 9 years of recording—-from 1903 and the first commercial recordings made by Fred Gaisberg to 1912, the beginning of Japan’s homegrown record industry, including a few sides taken from Japan’s notorious bootleg 78rpm industry.

Collected on various trips to Japan and compiled by sound artist Robert Millis (Indian Talking Machine, Victrola Favorites, Climax Golden Twins, Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan, This World is Unreal Like a Snake in a Rope, etc). This is part three in a series (all produced by Millis) of early recording from Asia—including Sublime Frequencies’ The Crying Princess: 78rpm Records from Burma and Scattered Melodies: Korean Kayagum Sanjo.

(Limited edition LP with two sided insert of liner notes by Robert Millis)"

Artist : V/A

Label : Sublime Frequencies