Name: A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth
Brand: Kazuki Tomokawa

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BF028lp

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2022-05-13

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Secre­tly

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

769791978904

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Kazuki Tomokawa

Genre US

Asian

Label US

Blank Forms

Kazuki Tomokawa is a prolific Japanese folk singer, songwriter, poet, essayist, actor, betting tipster and artist. He was born on February 16, 1950 in Akita prefecture. Since releasing his first single on Toshiba in 1974, Kazuki has become known for his powerful songwriting abilities. His songs have been covered by various artists over the years. From 1993 onwards, he has released albums through P.S.F. Records.

With a diverse range of talents and creative pursuits, Kazuki Tomokawa has made a significant impact on the music industry and beyond. As an accomplished singer-songwriter and poet, his works resonate with audiences across Japan and beyond.

Throughout his career spanning several decades, Kazuki's unique blend of folk music has captivated listeners with its emotional depth and raw authenticity. His thought-provoking lyrics touch upon various themes such as love, life struggles, and social commentary.

In a generation of musicians that came of age in postwar Japan, Kazuki Tomokawa stands as a pioneer of radical individualism, with a sound marked by shocking intimacy and blistering honesty. In his third album, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched Between My Teeth, released by Harvest Records in 1977, Tomokawa creeps “ever more inward,” as Kiichi Takahara writes in the record’s original introductory text—embracing an attitude pervasive amongst musicians of the time who interrogated the prosaic and the profound alike, eschewing politics and society in favor of an “attitude of total self-containment.”

Tomokawa recorded the album over the course of a month—from August 24 to September 25, 1977—at Tokyo’s famed Onkio Haus studio in the bustling Ginza district. The arrangements, accordingly, are amped up: paired with the Black Panther Orchestra, Tomokawa’s “screaming philosopher” vocals find their match with the orchestra’s electric guitar, bass, piano, tuba, and ground-thumping drums played by the Brain Police’s Toshi Ishizuka—who appears on Tomokawa’s first three records and remains his collaborator to this day.

“This is Kazuki Tomokawa in the flesh,” concludes Takahara. A String of Paper Cranes Clenched Between My Teeth is, in Tomokawa’s uncanny way, able to cut through facade and artifice in pursuit of truth. “You call that life?” he heckles, exhausted by the melodrama and nihilism of youth counterculture, “try saying you’re alive!”

A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth

Music US