£29.99 GBP

Time Capsule

Catalogue No: TIME021

  • Teresa Noda - Tropical Love
  • Yosui Inoue - Anata Wo Rikai
  • Juicy Fruits - Oshiete Ageru
  • Yuki Nakayamate - 3 - Trois
  • Risa Minami - Jamaican Blue
  • Kay Ishiguro - Red Drip
  • Tomoko Aran - Kanashiki Vaudevillian
  • Teresa Noda - Yellow Moon

Diving deeper into the story of Japanese reggae pop, Tokyo Riddim Vol. 2 explores an electronic, new wave and often experimental sound unlike anything Japan or Jamaica had ever heard before.


The first time Ryuichi Sakamoto left Japan, he did not go to the United States or Europe - he went to Jamaica. It was 1978, YMO were about to release their debut album, but Sakamoto was in Kingston, invited to play synths for Japanese idol singer Teresa Noda at Dynamic Sound Studios in a band alongside Neville Hinds and none other than Rita Marley. It’s not a story many know, but one which would spark Sakamoto’s fascination with dub and mark a new chapter in the ongoing Japanese love affair with reggae.

The Teresa Noda tracks they cut - ‘Tropical Love’ and ‘Yellow Moon’ - bookend this second volume of Time Capsule’s Tokyo Riddim compilation, which tells the wider story of how a fascination with Jamrock swept Japan, adding a dash of lime to that sweet city pop sound, embracing a globalised musical palette and creating a whole new genre in the process.

For some, like Sakamoto, a diversion into reggae was part of broader fascination with new sounds and styles, tipped into the global disco of homage and appropriation that made Japanese music of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s some of the most creative and undefinable in the world.

You had iconic shape-shifter Yosui Inoue, who toyed with reggae, afro-beat and electro-Balearic, (and whose For Life Records released several tracks on this comp), and Kay Ishiguro, who enlisted J-reggae originator Pecker on the ambitious Stevie Wonder-esque ‘Red Drip’.

Then there were the Compass Point devotees - producers and musicians alike who were enthralled by the sound of the Bahamas studio and drew on the detached cool of Grace Jones - as heard in the music of Juicy Fruits, and the disco noir of Casablanca-signed femme fatale Yuki Nakayamate. Sometimes, as was the case with Risa Minami, the J-reggae influence said more about Japan than it did about Jamaica.

But where Tokyo Riddim Vol. 1 focused on the city pop sound, this compilation goes further, digging out the more experimental collaborations and hybrids exemplified by Tomoko Aran, who in working with Yusuaki Shimizu and Mariah emphasised just how far reggae had travelled to be recast into something entirely new on the other side of the world.

Perhaps more than anything, in connecting the dots between Tokyo and Kingston, between Jamaica and Japan, the Japanese reggae was building a musical language that existed outside of the paradigms of US and European cultural hegemony - an encounter shaped by commerce, capital and creativity that is now being recognised more broadly for the first time.

Below the Waste
£14.99 GBP £18.99
Songs Of A Lost World
£29.99 GBP £37.99
Remote Echoes
£19.99 GBP £24.99
Carnival Of Light
£27.99 GBP £34.99
Sour
£24.99 GBP £30.99
Henry's Dream
£24.99 GBP £30.99
Bark Your Head Off, Dog
£19.99 GBP £24.99
Blue Banisters
£34.99 GBP £43.99
The Lion's Roar
£21.99 GBP £26.99
God's Favorite Customer
£19.99 GBP £24.99
Closing Time
£8.99 GBP £10.99
Citizen Of Glass
£24.99 GBP £30.99
English Graffiti
£19.99 GBP £24.99
Squeeze
£19.99 GBP £24.99
The Courage Of Others
£17.99 GBP £21.99
Cowboys And Aliens
£14.99 GBP £18.99
No Singles
£17.99 GBP £21.99
The Age Of Quarrel
£27.99 GBP £34.99
Hyperspace
£18.99 GBP £23.99
'Til The Stream Runs Dry
£16.99 GBP £20.99
No Man's Land
£14.99 GBP £18.99
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
£29.99 GBP £37.99
Surrender
£14.99 GBP £18.99
The Apple Drop
£14.99 GBP £18.99
Paradise Discotheque
£21.99 GBP £26.99
Nirvana
£25.99 GBP £32.99
Queen Of Denmark
£22.99 GBP £28.99
Come Away With ESG
£19.99 GBP £24.99
In A Dream
£24.99 GBP £30.99
Karma To Burn
£19.99 GBP £24.99
Hombre Lobo
£23.99 GBP £29.99
Jonathan Goes Country
£34.99 GBP £43.99
Late Developers
£24.99 GBP £30.99
The Remote Part
£22.99 GBP £28.99
Life Is Yours
£23.99 GBP £29.99
Pornography
£24.99 GBP £30.99
Live On Two Legs
£34.99 GBP £43.99
Baggy Trousers
£26.99 GBP £33.99
There's A Riot Going On
£18.99 GBP £23.99
Chutes Too Narrow
£19.99 GBP £24.99