Description
The story of So-Do is both familiar and completely unique. A classically trained multi-instrumentalist with a poets sensibility and a passion for folk music meets a worldly bar owner with a love for psychedelia, post-punk and dub in the small town neither could bring themselves to leave. Over two years, they play dozens of shows in independent live houses across Japan, cut and self-release three singles two 7s and a 12 and leave behind just eight tracks, all of which are set to be reissued for the first time forty years on.
So-Dos Studio Works 83-85 collects the full output of this iconoclastic post-punk phenomenon, whose sparse, syncopated arrangements were infused with a dubbed-out flair that owed more to Dennis Bovells productions of Orange Juice, the Jah Wobble basslines of Public Image Limited or Adrian Sherwoods live dubs of Mark Stewart than even they knew at the time.
Because for lead songwriter Hideshi Akuta, music offered an escape from the existential malaise of small-town life, folding a melancholy nihilism into tracks like Kakashi and Hashiru (which translates as run), or taking aim at the inequalities and creeping apathies of the middle classes, as he does on Get Away and Nothing.
And if Talking Heads had CBGBs, Sex Pistols had the Roxy, then So-Do had Buddha. Influenced by Buddha venue owner and amateur producer Atsuo Takeuchi, Akuta turned So-Dos sound towards dub, crafting playful, ironic and funky compositions that crackle with live energy at the vanguard of Japans nascent independent music scene.So-Do is hard to explain, Takeuchi says. Its been a struggle for years to try to find the words for our music. The answer perhaps, is just to listen.
Both familiar and completely unique, So-Do extend Time Capsules genre-defining exposition of Japans reggae-inspired music of the 70s and 80s, as collected on the labels two critically acclaimed Tokyo Riddim compilations, and London-based live outfit Tokyo Riddim Band.
Embracing the rip-it-up-and-start-again ethos of the early 80s, So-Do burned bright for a short time and then burned out. Their legacy is about to be reignited. Expect it to catch alight once more. Source: Bandcamp
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