It’s been a couple weeks since we last got a full length post in and it appears that this will be the last one for the next little while. However, because of that there is a lot to catch you all up on, in terms of what’s happening for us. There are a lot of records to show as we’ve been coming across some great new stuff!
One record we pulled out, that goes down super smooth is, “Come Along Home II” by Tatsuro Yamashita. This is a compilation of tracks that features interludes and overlays by Katsuya Kobayashi and Kamasami Kong, who add a lot of flavor to this one!
Another record that cropped up for us, was “Tokyo Barbarism” by Jun Togawa, who is both an actress and musician. While this one isn’t smooth in the same way as, “Come Along Home II”, it is an incredibly eccentric and unconventional ‘synthpop, new wave’ album. As well, Haruomi Hosono contributes bass to track four on the B side!
“A Penguin’s Memory”, is possibly the most bizarre thing that we have come across while grading records to post online yet, but in a good way! This record is actually a soundtrack for an anime film that is scored by none other than Seiko Matsuda! Reading about the film online was definitely one of the spaciest wormholes we’ve dove down on the internet. “A Penguin’s Memory” is a post war Vietnam Drama that deals with ‘Mike’s’ wartime trauma and amateur boxing career. From what we could dig up online the film deals in genres such as: sci-fi, horror and erotica and is told entirely with characters that are penguins. It appears to be available with English subtitles online, if any of this has piqued your curiosity!
Lastly, we found the “Original Best Hits [of] Teresa Teng”, which at first glance appears to be a rather normal ‘greatest hits’ record. However, the asking and median price of this record suggest it is anything but normal. It has a median selling price of 69.42 euros and available copies begin at 124.99 euros! Reading into this one showed that Teresa Tang or Deng Li Jun was an incredibly popular singer, who originally came from Taiwan and was one of the most well known singers across east Asia and Chinese Communities. Teng was a polyglot and sang in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, French and Malay. She reached such a level of popularity that, according to one source we found, there is a Chinese saying about her which runs; “wherever there are Chinese people, there will be Teng’s songs”.
