Thursday, September 6, 2007

PHEW-S/T, LP, 1981, JAPAN




Finally, following my posts of her "View" and "Himitsu No Knife" albums, here's the much requested debut release by this idiosyncratic Japanese vocalist, though with Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebzeit and Conny Plank featured as members here (and Conny engineering and co-producing), this is as much a krautrock record as it is a document of the Japanese underground. Never one for particularly showy vocal gymnastics, it's more often the warped context in which her vocals maneuver that catches the ear then her technique per se. Interestingly, it really goes to show what spending a long while away from an album can do to distort your perceptions, as I'd originally cited her follow-up LP "View" as being "Every bit as appealingly quirky as her others", a notion quickly dispelled by exposure to this gem, self evidently a stronger piece of work and considering the personnel, for all the expected reasons. Jaki and Holger's sinuous undergirding here anticipates their work on the following year's "Full Circle" collaboration with Jah Wobble and also glances off various other Can-related interventions into new wave praxis (like Michael Karoli's work with Bits) while still leaving room for truly peculiar gestures that reference her totally twisted "Shokyoku" single in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto from the same period.

***************NEW LINK POSTED OCTOBER 2012***************

Get it here  

***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD***

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much
truly amazing.

MZ
Iran

fuzztunnel said...

Track 2 doesn't seem to be an .mp3...?

RudeBoy Noah said...

R U Ever Gonna Post The Compilation:
Your Secret's Safe With Us?

DarkJesus said...

Second track is in aif format. You might want to fix that.

I just oggenc'd it, so it is fine.

Anonymous said...

hello

track 1 is corrupt

Anonymous said...

PHEW! indeed ... THANG Q ! ~C

Anonymous said...

thank you very much :)

Anonymous said...

great album!

thanks*

Anonymous said...

This is amazing; it's blown my mind, the vocals are startling and unsettling at first, but I've learnt to love them! Thanks for posting this (and every other great record that I'd probably never have heard).

Anonymous said...

last time I heard tracks from that on the radio was 24 years ago - and now I found out, that the artist is spelled Phew (I always thought it was 'Few')- and that it's been released on CD.

Anonymous said...

Interesting stuff. Now that I've heard it a few times I'm going to have to order the CD with the bonus tracks. Lots of surface noise and popping on the well worn vinyl you used to create the MP3s. I can understand why. After first listening I wasn't sure about this but there is something about the music that is addictive.

I hope you'll post some more Phew music.
I'm downloading "View" next...