Label: Pass
Genre: Post-Punk/Electronic/Avant Garde/Experimental
Format: LP
Year: 1981 Japanese press
Condition: VG+/EX
With a new Phew record out in the world (LP due in Friday we're assured...), it's timely that a first press of the debut should land in the racks and more than coincidental since this isn't something you see every day (i don't think this has been repressed in over 30 years). Produced with Conny Plank, Holgar Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit in Cologne, Hiromi Moritani's debut as Phew remains an outlier in the post-punk firmament. Moritani trades the rudimentary abrasion of her first band Aunt Sally for a dreamier, quixotic sound, though still abrasive and odd-shaped, and of all her collaborators, kissed most clearly with Cuzkay's sonic idiosyncrasies. The person whose collection this came from says he recalls friends asking him at the time why he was buying something so strange, something they couldn't understand. Remarkably, i think that strangeness persists, and has shaped itself into its own unique form over time, pulling from an unknowable space that kind of has it standing outside of genre. It's very hard to get bored of this record, i find new small worlds within it every listen. Total classic.
nb a little foxing on the sleeve, record is in fantastic shape.
