Woman of the Hour: Junko Yanagida



For the longest time, London-based Concrete and Clay (http://www.concreteandclay.com/) has been giving the world music from a largely invisible singer-songwriter/spoken word artist, Junko Yanagida (sometimes called, simply, JUNKO). This bilingual intern at Professional Sound Services (http://www.pro-sound.com) in New York, New York went to school at the university of Hilo in Hawaii and later went to school in NYC for SSL, DBX, ProTools, and other sound-type equipment. She does quite a bit of sound design and music. Miss Yanagida has quite an interesting ear for music, and does genre experimentation quite unlike anything I've heard before. By juxtaposing an equal amount of two different languages, she gives many of her songs an almost bipolar feel - her flowery english languages is both balanced out but at the same time thrown totally off-kilter by the insanely dramatic japanese. Her overall effect, often acheived by sampling classical works over a simple hip hop beat, gives the effect of japanese surrealism while maintaining a certain amerian familiarity. However, she does experiment with other things as well.

By The Beach.MP3 - By The Beach is an earlier song of Junko's. This is a short and simple track that features the lighter and airier side of her voice set to a strumming acoustic guitar. The chord progression works quite well though. A second version of this song, "sea turtle wireless" features the same track, except an advertisement for a fictional communications company (of the same name) is overlayed to the original.

Sakura Michi.MP3 - This is, of course, a bit of a play on words.
In Japanese, Sakura means "Cherry Blossom". and "michi" translates into both "path" or "method" and also "not yet known". Junko speaks of unfufilled spring love in the time where the famous cherry trees of Japan are blooming - a time of great cultural signifigance in the Land of the Rising Sun. notice the creepy flute and the japanese drums interlaced with the slow beat. Also, I really dig the eerily childlike voice in the bottom parts of the track.

Flowers.MP3 - a quintessential track. I LOVE the sampled flute.

Junko's Japanese text is darker than her English - and if it was in English it would probably sound unbearably overwrought:

"If I can forget everything, I want to forget everything. If this is my decision I cant blame it on anyone else. Everything I can see is messed-up and makes me puke. I want to throw it all away but I can't runaway from it. I need help but no one will help. Damnit! I want to do something. Kill. Damn!"

The Japanese are so dramatic with their entertainment. Then Junko switches to English and the flower talk. This is a very creepy, cool track that, if done by a native English-speaker, would probably sound like garbage art-school schlock. Wait for that chorus to hit. Call me a sucker for 1) anything Japanese, 2) classical music and 3) hip-hop (ha) but this is an amazing song in general.

Enjoy the songs and if you have any comments for the artist she can be contacted at Smallfry2004life@aol.com.

Well, that's it for now! I will be yelling about someone else soon.