Name: Finally, His First Album
Brand: Kazuki Tomokawa

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BF026lp

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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

2022-05-20

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Secre­tly

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

769791978867

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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.

At the tender age of twenty-five, while he was working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Kamata district, Kazuki Tomokawa released his debut record, fittingly titled Finally, His First Album. While he had already penned hundreds of songs, including his first single “Try Saying You’re Alive!,” written on a long train ride past fields and rice paddies, it was this recording that introduced Japan to one of its most unique musicians of the postwar era.

Each track, as record label exec Kiichi Takahara writes in the LP’s liner notes (here translated for the first time), is not a song but a “flesh-and-blood human being,” birthed by the singer-songwriter and the raw, guttural cries that would become a hallmark of his incomparable sound. 

1970s Japan was a time and place marked by a profound desire for authenticity amidst the onset of television and media saturation. Tomokawa arrived on the scene as a musician with “the personality of a hydrogen bomb,” to borrow a phrase from his frequent collaborator Toshi Ishizuka. In an unwieldy interview included here, members of the notorious leftist band Zun Keisatsu (Brain Police) put it bluntly: here was a man surrounded by the “disingenuous,” the “wishy-washy,” and the “superficial,” who was delivering “real life, unvarnished.” These songs are lullabies for the lost, staring not into the void but—as the fourth track declares—from inside it. 

Finally, His First Album is the first of three Tomokawa records to be reissued by Blank Forms Editions in conjunction with the US release of Tomokawa’s memoir, Try Saying You’re Alive!, the first-ever English translation of his writing. This debut captures the self-assured trademarks that Tomokawa would hone over the course of decades. Multiple tracks are performed in his native Akita dialect, a distinct and highly regional vernacular of northern Japan seldom heard outside the prefecture—and even more rarely heard in music. Tomokawa’s lyrics locate profound interiority in the rituals of everyday life, and are sung against sparse folk arrangements of tender, lilting chords—a prelude to the rock and electronic stylings to come in later years. A self-proclaimed “living corpse,” Tomokawa wallows, whispers, shouts, and cries, yet still, through his existential doubt, asks to be heard.

Finally, His First Album

Music US