Phew

Back in our very first post on January 4th we speculated where a marginally hip Japanese kid would have been on the same day in 1980. The answer was in the studios of Nihon Terebi to see the brilliant Plastics introduce the New Wave template to Japanese Pops. But what if, instead of being merely marginally hip, you were 100% avant hip to the bone: what would entice you then? Along with a select few others in the know, you might have been jammed into a tiny performance space to see this. The band is Japan’s first No Wave act Aunt Sally and the singer with the nihilism to spare is Phew:

Phew (real name a closely-guarded music industry secret, apparently) started out with Aunt Sally in the Kansai area in the late ’70s but is best known for some incredible solo recordings from the early ’80s. The subterranean howl of that first band may have seen her tagged as the Japanese Patti Smith but a more expansive sweep of Phew’s recording career would suggest she’s followed the path of a Nico: moving through an impeccable cast of collaborators while always fogging everything she touches with her, uh, let’s just say distinctive depressive aura. Phew’s vowel sounds are peculiar, even in Japanese, and she quickly exchanged the blunt ranting of Aunt Sally for a stuffy-nosed singing style that sounds not unlike Nico’s English.

Phew made her solo bow in 1980 with the single Shūkyoku (Finale), a bizarre electronic experiment done with Ryūichi Sakamoto. It made enough of an impression outside Japan for Phew to travel to Germany the following year and record her debut album with two members of Can, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, and Krautrock über-producer Conny Plank:

Now, anyone with even a vague knowledge of electronic and industrial music history is probably already alert to the fact that the Japanese Nico teaming up with Can and the producer behind Kraftwerk, Neu!, Harmonia and DAF among others to record an album in 1981 is a recipe for hair-raising brilliance. And that’s exactly what Phew turned out to be: thirty extraordinary minutes of ice-cold machine funk like sample track Signal, a corrosive robo-disco anxiety trip about the movements of people and cars:

Phew - Signal

This month’s issue of Japanese culture bible Studio Voice heralds Phew as the third best Japanese alternative album of all time in a list that seems otherwise geared towards shifting copies of underselling albums released in the past year. If the writers of Studio Voice were seeking historical moments of real avant greatness to lend weight to recent alternative offerings, they couldn’t have chosen better than this.

Phew’s vocals have subsequently been sought out for collaborations with ex-members of DAF and Einstürzende Neubauten, Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Otomo Yoshihide and the Boredoms’ Seiichi Yamamoto - making her probably the most well-connected living Japanese musician, even if she’s far from being the most famous. A fuller discography is available at the ever-informative Improvised Music From Japan site here.

Delving into Phew’s previous activities also brings one eventually to the band Novo Tono. A kind of mid-90s Japanese noise supergroup including Phew and members of the Boredoms and Ground Zero, Novo Tono released only one album, entitled Panorama Paradise, in 1996. Like Phew’s debut, this one’s definitely worth seeking out. The eclectic cast of participants does make for an extremely schizophrenic listen: the demented mishmash of music concrete, noise flips and delicate folk pickings having virtually no precedent in music except perhaps the Brazilian psychedelic band Os Mutantes. Here’s one of the prettier, more together moments:

Novo Tono - Sasaekirenai Kurasa