"2023 reissue. Bill Wells with Tori Kudo's free-spirited Japanese collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Originally released in May 2006 through the German label Karaoke Kalk, Osaka Bridge was an album that captured the joyful amateurism of Tori Kudo's free-spirited Japanese collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Bill Wells's rich, wistful, and easy sense of melody. Approaching brass band and jazz music with a knack for making playing imperfectly feel perfectly right, Osaka Bridge became nothing short of groundbreaking when it was released to critical acclaim, becoming an instant classic among musicians and fans alike. Coinciding with the release of the second LP of Wells's on-going collaboration with Danielle Price on tuba, The Sensory Illusions, Karaoke Kalk makes this highly sought-after record available again on vinyl for the first time in 16 years. The pairing of the prolific Scottish pianist and composer and the fluctuating collective active since the mid-1980s was an easy, natural one -- a union particularly apt and complementary. But this is not to say that the 15 recordings which made up Osaka Bridge were in any way seamless. The horns played by these self-taught musicians strain and struggle with Wells' luscious arrangements; each note is given all the stiff emphasis that you'd expect of a high school brass band at its first rehearsal. Songs fall in and out of rhythm, and a track like "Poxy" misses its intended swing feel by a country mile. Of course, this is all part of the magic. Maher Shalal Hash Baz take Wells's melodies and strip them back to their emotional core, disallowing all artifice and revealing a stark, serene beauty. Particularly affecting are "On The Beach Boys Bus" and "Time Takes Me So Back", the two tracks sung by Kudo's wife Reiko. Inspiration for both pieces came to Wells in dreams. The former was sung by a group of tanned Californians on the way to a Beach Boys convention, the latter by his grandmother shortly before she passed away. Reiko's voice gives each song a haunting fragility that enhances their phantasmagoric character. For the most part, the instrumentals are concise -- a melody stated once and then dispensed with -- but their brevity only heightens the impact. Even (or especially) 16 years later, Osaka Bridge continues to be an almost accidentally timeless document that captured fleeting moments and personal revelations at their most spontaneous and unaffected. Edition of 500." - Karaoke Kalk.
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
