Tanaka has been working on the series “Sixteen Erotic Figures (十六恥漢図)”. In this series, a woman obsessed wit sexual desire shows a symbolic gesture of mudra with her hands. Plants and flowers taken from the copies of Kano style paintings are scattered around her.
One work is depicting a woman eating potato chips. He found that the model was completely out of conscious when she was eating it. She was just following her desire.
Meitei is a Japanese artist who started out as a freelance composer, making various kinds of music across genres. Having done it for 8 years, his goal was to eventually release his own original music.
Living in Kyoto for the past two years has deeply influenced his current sound, which is a focus on musically crafting a “Japanese mood” called Meitei (冥丁) (thus, his name). Rich in history, Meitei wanted to borrow this lost “Japanese mood” and incorporate a contemporary spin on it. This led to the creation of Kwaidan (怪談).
Kwaidan is a style of Japanese ghost stories. Meitei took it as a challenge of his skill as a musician to transpose the folklore into intricate compositions, capturing this lost “Japanese mood”.
“The shocking elements in the horror have become a staple. It’s functions as entertainment. But I personally felt the mood and ambience from Kwaidan is starting to wither – while the darkness is scary, the beauty is in the curious spirit”
Kwaidan was originally released in January 2018. Evening Chants is pleased to be re-issuing this exceptionally crafted piece of work on cassette tape.
And this time the bonus track “Tsukumo / 九十九” has been added. This track was created by capturing Tsukumo-gami / 付喪神 / 九十九神 which is also an old god of folklore in Japan. Taste this, too!
