Decades-old stuff that was fairly unknown in the West but suddenly got very famous online (aka: the Fishmans thread)

Since there's a bit of discussion going on about this in the 1996 -> 2021 thread

Maybe overlaps a little with this:

Songs that became famous because of a system glitch

Long Season by Fishmans obviously gotta be the king of this thread. the album was released in 1996 and at the start of 2010 it had about 15 ratings on RYM. it now has over 20,000, the vast majority of which came in the last few years. It is not exactly clear to me how this happened.

I guess the first guy who comes to mind here is Haruomi Hosono, particularly these two releases:
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/%E7%B4%B0%E9%87%8E%E6%99%B4%E8%87%A3-%E9%88%B4%E6%9C%A8%E8%8C%82-%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%8B%E9%81%94%E9%83%8E/pacific/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/%E7%B4%B0%E9%87%8E%E6%99%B4%E8%87%A3/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AB%E6%B0%B4-hanani-mizu/

Pacific is a weird collaboration that went from a piece of obscure YMO-related trivia to actually getting reissued on Great Tracks. It has nearly 2300 ratings. At the beginning of 2013 it had 10.

Hanini Mizu is a super obscure BGM tape that wasn't even listed on RYM until recently. it's somehow become one of his most popular releases.

amusingly, Hosono does not remember making either of these.

another example is this bizarre CD out of Thailand from 2000 (hey, that's decades old) which features two lengthy Casio jams (which may just be the same 3-4 minutes looped over and over). somehow it became a meme and now has over 1000 ratings.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%93%E0%B8%B0-%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B8%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%B5/%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%AB%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%B7%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%9A%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%87%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%81-%E0%B8%8A%E0%B8%B8%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B5%E0%B9%88-8-9/

how this was discovered I have no clue.

anything else?

wasn't this the case with Rodriguez-- super popular in South Africa but unknown in his own country until like 12 years ago

Aaj Shanibar by Rupa (and that whole Disco Jazz album in general)

When I first heard Fishmans, Kuchuu Camp had by far the most ratings (maybe 200, now it's 6600). I'm a little doubtful of those phenomenons that attach themselves to exotic stuff.

Not comparable to any such degree, but this cool Indonesian tape from 1980 has blown up in ratings in 2016, around the time I first heard it. It's pretty out of this world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akbnkfqMSNc
Itoh Masyitoh & Rineka Swara - Naon Margina

Another one from 1980 Guinea that had about 25 ratings and has now risen to 340, maybe just because it's excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RRJeMJYeEM

Previous examples of this phenomenon: Ata Kak (I saw that guy live), Antena, Egyptian Shumba, Selda maybe, Japanese 80s new ave / art pop, Aqsak Maboul, Trout Mask Replica, How we gonna make the black nation rise

The second one is Super Mama Djombo - Na Cambança

The thai thing just made me remember Les Rallizes Dénudés, never understood the craze really.
And speaking of loops or quasi-loops, it's not quite decades old (2005), but it's well worth posting this monster. As someone said, it hooks to a reptilian part of your brain and does not let go. It's probably my most amazing obscure find these past 10 years. Not that it had no following, but I can only imagine it will grow in popularity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMam34cfuuU
Ladybird - Shit and Shine

I think I can post all-day. For a while, this band was the poster child of digging into afro-funk LPs until it became a slightly obscene and absurd sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYkwxb5YQrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S10OZqd8DS0
T.P. Orchestre Poly Rythmo De Cotonou

Not comparable to any such degree, but this cool Indonesian tape from 1980 has blown up in ratings in 2016, around the time I first heard it. It's pretty out of this world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akbnkfqMSNc
Itoh Masyitoh & Rineka Swara - Naon Margina

hell yeah this rules

Lewis

oh shit and shine are great! thought they were uk for some reason

but you still get stinkface for not liking LRD

Hiroshi Yoshimura - Music For Nine Post Cards, etc. fits in with the Japanese YouTube algorithm-core OP mentioned

I thought Yasuaki Shimizu's 'Kakashi' was the king of this? Went viral on YouTube I believe, the cute cat on the cover probably didn't hurt.

I remember playing Pedro (Sorongo/)Santos - Krishnanda for a crate digger friend who'd never heard it a decade ago. He was impressed and asked how on earth I came across it (a Portuguese language mp3 blog, probably). Last week I was at his place, he put it on to demo some audio gear, asked if I'd heard it before and I reminded him of this. Now one of the most sought after Brazilian LP's with multiple reissues.

I'm wondering how or whether this differs from "list some beloved 'international' reissues".

Are we talking "internet famous" or "music nerd-famous"?

I guess the latter?

I'm wondering how or whether this differs from "list some beloved 'international' reissues".

well I'm specifically talking about stuff that just suddenly went viral. by the time Music For Nine Post Cards blew up Yoshimura had been dead for a decade and a half. I'm not sure how his stuff was received in Japan but I reckon that if you told him in 1997 "your 80s albums will become popular in America 20 years from now" he'd be very confused

I'm interested of course in how that even happens - I think Yoshimura was due to a glitch/quirk in the algorithm, and then the reissues came later?

"Famous to internet music nerds"? lol

It's an interesting distinction though. Thinking for example about Mort Garson's Plantasia, which has been pretty well-known among electronic music nerds for a long time but skyrocketed into quasi-mainstream popularity in the last five or six years thanks to the algorithm

xp yeah that's basically how it happened with Nine Post Cards: Root Strata blog [via Spencer Doran] posts album in 2013 -> Album gets uploaded to YouTube -> algorithm does its thing -> album gets reissued in 2017

Thanks for clarification, I think the two I mentioned def qualify, can probably think of more and excited to check out whatever I hadn't heard, this is generally my favorite stuff.

The same thing basically happened with Alice Coltrane's Turiya Sings and other devotional albums from the 80s and 90s but unfortunately none of them have been properly reissued yet

Also Krishnanda is sooooo good

It is! Extremely deserving of the recent interest.

Even as a longtime fan of "Music for Commercials", "Kakashi" eluded me pre-YT fame

This shouldn't become a 'weren't blogs great for a while there?' thread but weren't blogs great for a while there? Root Strata being one of the best.

"progbs not frogbs" :D

Seriously tho, make a thread for that if there isn't one already? Might be fun to resurrect a few favorites, though dead links will cause some frustration

Thinking for example about Mort Garson's Plantasia, which has been pretty well-known among electronic music nerds for a long time but skyrocketed into quasi-mainstream popularity in the last five or six years thanks to the algorithm

Is "The Ann Steel Album" one of these? It seems to be much more famous than it was but idk how or when that happened

These two obscurities have somehow floated to huge streaming numbers due to Youtube’s algorithms, despite being completely unknowns when they were released:

Nail “Cassiopeia” (1993)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK08qmwz-w8

PJ “Elysian Fields” (1995)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LInCH-K3yQk

Amazing tracks indeed, but funny how that goes.

okay holy shit fishmans

i mean ffs, besides everything fucking else going on here there's a section on the live performance of long season that's basically predicting andrew bird's fuzzed out pizzicato and violin loop station doodlery about... idk, we'll say a decade before that actually happened?

it honestly sounds like what i wished the beta band sounded like before i had actually heard them and all i had to go on was descriptions of their music.

(no shade to the beta band; they're fine.)

this is blowing me away completely. like if you told me this was released in the last 12 months, i'd believe you without question.

fishmans are really good but they also sound extremely 90s idk

their best material is uchu nippon satagaya and "yurameki in the air", long season and the live album are a little overrated

early impressions are that the "melodic song" portions of long season are about as timeless as music gets. i like that sort of thing, so overrating at this point seems like a foreign concept.

they're still very good just rym got weird about elevating those compared to everything else idk

yeah, i actually think you're both right? it sounds very 90s. but also there's a lot of mannerist stuff now that's so uncanny, and i could almost believe it as some late 60's thing that somehow sounds really 90s, like when the DJ Shadow drums kick in on the Millennium Ballroom intro track. I wouldn't say it's timeless exactly, but there's something about it that taps into the uncanny experience of seeing the past or the future.

Never really got rym's Fishmans 'thing'. Sort of an easy listening A.R. Kane? Which means they're still good. But in small doses (i.e. not the 300 hours of that live album).

I clicked on 'Long Season' and notice that Masayoshi Takanaka's 'All Of Me' is up to 2m views, that's the one I get popping up the most atm, along with Yoshimura's 'Wet Land'

like i'm sorry to go all "plastic love" but i'm ready to declare this easily one of the best songs of the 90s and further-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q24RM_t1K-I

"season" (1996)

what a find. to be completely honest this is the kind of stuff that i always hoped would randomly pop up on somewhere like turntable lab, but never did. there's no other way it could have possibly been on my radar. i wonder where the "hype" came from with these guys?

(song is so incredible. i am made of cheese and i am melting omg.)

like was that on the recent pfork list? i don't care enough to look, but it should be.

very classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM12zSzYq44

^documentary on the band. haven't watched it yet.

I think the hype started on RYM or at least that’s the place where I first noticed people being very supportive about them.

well since there's no official fishmans thread, i'm making it this one.

on that note, the next project of bassist yuzuru kashiwabara is (was?) polaris. the last thing they released was in 2020. catalogue is fairly large and so far the first album (home, 2002) is highly recommended if you you like fishmans.

and again: if i had known about this band 20 years ago, i would have been a huge fan.

I think the first time I listened to them was smoking weed with some friends, we all loved them. they never sounded as good to me after that though

Thanks so much for the link to that documentary Austin, I am so in the tank for 3 hours of Fishmans.

I wonder if you might also like the band Clammbon too (singer Ikuko Harada pops up near the beginning)

and again: if i had known about this band 20 years ago, i would have been a huge fan.

Alvin Lu wrote about them in his "City God" column in San Francisco Bay Guardian over 20 years ago - must have been some of the earliest writing in the US on them. The piece makes references to a long-gone English-language website devoted to them (also note that Lu couldn't track down Long Season at the time).

Night Cruising

top selling album on Bandcamp right now is....a Susumu Hirasawa live compilation. his stuff definitely seems to be finding a Western audience lately

This documentary is deadly, thanks again, about halfway in.

cheers! i'm going to give it a watch this evening.

mentioning polaris again here already— it's fairly hypnotic stuff at times and if you like those "infinite" dub vamps that fishmans would get into there's a wealth of pleasing sounds waiting for you.

thank you for the link gj! that's pretty remarkable. it brings up something i've thought about a lot: i suppose i've always been in the minority in the sense that i don't mind (and sometimes prefer) pop music sung in a language i don't understand. and again maybe just me, but i always wanted the "imports" section in the record store to be full of mystery things that i had no clue about (not just expensive reissues of the same old classic albums). so reading alvin lu's quick overview there and getting the sense that he genuinely wanted to hip other people to the group —coupled with the more recent online revival for fishmans' music— it makes me wonder just how much in the minority i've been this whole time.

polaris — "光と影" (2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2HuHD8EYMQ

and tears of joy were wept.

sorry that's "slow motion", here's "光と影"—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_2sT3uknk

("slow motion" also a very epic lovely)

everyone needs to watch that documentary.

Yes! So many thoughts about the way the documentary was made.

https://i.imgur.com/ulindD5.jpg

nice t shirt. i listened the fishmansus ca. 2013 but i still don't understand the praising.

Ata Kak - Ooba Sima

Is one of my favorites. Not sure if it qualifies because it was virtually unknown even in Ghana until Awesome Tapes from Africa unearthed it and it became popular.

Also Mariah - Shinzo No Tobira

i'm claiming the credit (indirectly) for Shinzo No Tobira taking off. I was in Eurasia records in Shinjuku, perhaps my favourite Tokyo record shop, around 2007/8. The owner was always playing great music and while I was browsing he put on Shinzo No Tobira and I flipped out and bought it on the spot. I shared a rip of it on a private music sharing site I had set up and it became the most popular track in that site's history. The version on Youtube that then went viral is the same vinyl rip I had uploaded.

I devoted a crazy amount of time to reissuing it but was ultimately beaten to the punch.

Wow thanks, stirmonster! I downloaded what must have been your rip from Root Strata about 10 years ago. It's wild that something so great can languish in obscurity for so long

hah, that's super cool, and yes I will give you the credit. sometimes I think it really does work like that. the Fishmans thing you could probably link back to one or two particularly enthusiastic fans.

I have a little bit of experience there actually - about 10 years ago I was really enthusiastic about Susumu Hirasawa and his band P-Model and since there was very little writing in English I was the guy writing stuff on RYM, blogs, various message boards, even an article for Perfect Sound Forever. I kinda thought all this was just going into the void but thanks to some soundtracks he did eventually he got a Western audience and when they looked him up I guess most of the results were just shit I had written. It's kind of surreal reading some reviews and seeing the exact same language and phrasing you used. In fact there was some long blogpost (with MP3s) that just quoted my stuff extensively. Later on I was invited to a Discord and found out that apparently everyone knew who I was and that actually a few Japanese fans were obsessed with figuring out who this random American dude was, because Hirasawa really had no presence here AT ALL. you couldn't even get his CDs shipped overseas.

That's great!

I’m the one who uploaded it to youtube!

The mp3 I used came from the 20jazzfunkgreats blog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRgLhEGEetc

Everyone that doesn’t know it needs to listen to it asap

Someone wrote to me that they had the rights and wouldn’t take it down because it was popular but they’d be the ones collecting the money which I had no problem with as I wasn’t monetizing it obviously. Only thing I asked for was to please get in line for the vinyl reissue.

I’m the one who uploaded it to youtube!

oh my! small world.

The mp3 I used came from the 20jazzfunkgreats blog

20jfg guys were members of my music sharing site / friends of mine.

Thank you so much for being the one who did the crate digging and brought it back into the blogosphere. Easily a top 10 song of the 80’s for me. My mind is still blown every time I listen to it.

Btw seeing as you should get credit for doing the digging, do you want me to post a writeup or link or something in the description?

thanks for offering but i'm fine leaving it as it is.

I may have edited the description either way ;)

thanks Moka. that's very kind.

that is very cool about the mariah record!! big thanks to stirmonster & moka for bringing it into our lives

this is another one definitely seems to have got out into the wider world in recent times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGsSAVz1BBQ
Steve Monite - Only You

what a cool story, plus now I'm hearing Mariah for the first time and it's fantastic (some good comments on your YT page too Moka)

that Steve Monite track is an uber fave and another where it seems so mad it took nearly 40 years to become known more widely.

And its not even the best track off the album as i've recently learnt - Things Fall Apart is soooo good!

Steve Monite track is great.

There’s a somewhat unnecessary theophilus london + tame impala rework of it that I’ve overheard in bars instead of the Steve Monite one - which is a shame but hey better than nothing.

i get so many of these in my discover weekly. i think this one fits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfEOg67L-gg
Om Alec Khaoli - Say You Love Me

it's not really comparable to people doing god's work on here but I ripped a yann tomita record that was not available in the usual places many years ago and I get some kind of strange pride when I encounter the same rip out in the wild, with my old file naming quirks and so on

thank you stir + moka.

i'd like to go back to fishmans for a moment. feel free to scroll past. they really have been an astounding discovery for me. i'd like to tell you about it. thanks for listening.

i have a lot of mental health problems. it's caused me a lot of personal problems. i'm that annoying guy, too: if i'm upset beyond reason, sit me in a room for five minutes with headphones playing a song of my choice and i'll be fine afterwards. it keeps me grounded in ways i don't fully understand. i'm a very cheesy person, so i say silly things like "I BELIEVE IN THE HEALING POWER OF MUSIC" without any sense of irony whatsoever.

i also believe genuinely weird things like time being an experience unique to the specific user. just as some people prefer coffee with a lot of sweeteners while others can't stand anything except plain black, an hour for you is not the same as it is for me. ned raggett —who i am hereby nominating as official mascot and media spokesperson of ilx— has talked about how music has affected his sense of time when hearing a specific song by a specifically significant band: TIME STOPPED i believe was how ned described his first experience with "soon." i know my version of what he's talking about. it's one of the reasons i keep listening to music. it doesn't happen very often, but hey now! when it does. i've posted about one of my experiences.

so i seek out music a lot. i wish i could contribute more than just awe and gratitude. i do feel quite like a poseur among you guys sometimes. now is one of those times because i discovered fishmans through the rateyourmusic top rated list. i wanted to have a look at it after seeing that kendrick had become the #1 rated album on the site. discourse re:rym in mind, maybe that's where my insecurity stems from?

all that to say, whatever the case was when i hit play on LONG SEASON just over a week ago late on a saturday night, i was ready to kill myself. i had a plan and had taken at least one of the necessary steps to follow through with it.

but... time [/u]stopped[/u].

you know that feeling when you just know? call it intuition, being "fully in touch" with your preferences, or whatever, maybe i'm just high on sunshine. in any case, there's a moment about 8 or 9 minutes into LONG SEASON where the key changes ever so slightly and somebody hits this guitar arpeggio for the first time — yeah, i don't remember my first listen to the rest of the album after that but i played it several more times in the next day or so.

it's really singular, obviously. i haven't heard every recording ever made, but it sticks out in my mind as starkly unique among the things i have. it signaled a bigger change in sound for them (which really came about on ku-chu camp) but nothing else in their catalogue sounds like it. even the way it was recorded and mastered sounds out of step with everything else around it.

i like the early pop/reggae stuff just fine. some really catchy songs in there, but i definitely prefer the "dreampop fusion" from 95ish onwards. uchu nipppon setagaya was another life-affirming first listen and that material has become my favorite. the album is a stone cold classic and the obsession with clocks and walking throughout pleases me to no end. just felt like one of those first time "five mic" listens walking through the park listening on my headphones. the surrounding material is also excellent. the non-album "season" single i posted upthread was also an instant classic. if you've never heard the walking in the rhythm remixes and you like longform kankyo ongaku sounds, it's exceptional. and ku-chu camp is not far behind all of that. all very definitively classic.

(the movie is great with reservations, btw. focuses solely on "the band," if that makes sense. there's some conflicts and deeper issues hinted at, but i did feel like a few things were maybe glossed over? i don't know the band well enough to say. there is a ton of great candid and archive footage of them. considering that, and sato's behavior as documented in the film, i feel like there's more to the story than they're saying. most likely unsaid out of privacy, which is more than respectable imo. i did finish the film with a deep sense of melancholy as the revamped band rips into "ゆらめき in the air" over the credits and motegi talks about how they want to honor sato's legacy by continuing to play his music. i can't think of anything else i would want to do if were i in his position. and yet. always gonna be a big blue tear on that smiley face next to fishmans. if you like the band, definitely watch the film.)

and here i am: still alive and still reading this discussion board and looking for more fuel. and that brings me back around to thanking you, stir + moka. i was geeking out when i saw your exchange. i don't know the whole story, but i believe both of you did play a part in the revival of that album and that song. it's because of people like you, i'm able to look it up on streaming and just be able to hear it.

which i did yesterday on my walk and immediately added "shinzo no tibira" to my `radio station` playlist. !!!tytytytytytyty!!!

anyway. as you were.

hugs 2 u austin. please stick around and keep posting <3

Cosign, I've loved reading your take on Fishmans and greatly enjoyed the documentary. I think I mentioned it upthread but I'd be interested to know what you thought of another favourite Japanese band of mine, Clammbon (whose singer Ikuko Harada is a talking head in the doc).

i third that emotion xx

Austin: that’s some deep stuff you’re sharing. I can relate as I myself have been called feisty around here and I believe in the therapeutic aspects of music. There’s been many times in my life where music has been my shelter. Even in the minor things: I might be the only one of my friends who doesn’t stress while driving in heavy traffic because it gives me time to listen to music calmly.

That said, while I feel very happy I could provide you with at least a new discovery you love, please reach out and seek professional help. We all want you to stick around.

hi i just reread my post and i didn't mean for it to have such a despairing tone. polar opposite, in fact. this place, you folks, and the things it leads me to are nothing but pure inspiration and happiness.

mares i have clammbon in my queue. ty!

(also steve monite is cool! nice!)

Austin, the Imagination record might be a good place to start, esp the tune called 'Folklore' :)

And speaking of loops or quasi-loops, it's not quite decades old (2005), but it's well worth posting this monster. As someone said, it hooks to a reptilian part of your brain and does not let go. It's probably my most amazing obscure find these past 10 years. Not that it had no following, but I can only imagine it will grow in popularity.

Ladybird - Shit and Shine

I've heard some of Shit and Shine's stuff, but never this. It's on Bandcamp now. I've listened to the whole thing twice since reading your post and it's crazy that even with the extreme length and repetition I find I want to listen again almost as soon as it's over.

Austin, that was a super inspiring post and glad you are here posting <3

hi thank you for listening!

also thank you mares, i liked imagination. it has a bit more of an "alternative" kind of feel, but yes good songs! will get to the others in time.

xp beard papa, I was turned on to Ladybird a couple weeks ago and I had the same reaction as you. It's the kind of record that deserves a rabid cult following if it doesn't have one already

...which is essentially what the post you quoted says lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aroJNFXGaOk

polaris covers "SEASON" from their 2017 ep-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5T-9ig8bbg

very faithful rendition that has brought tears to my eyes.

btw polaris highly riyl the sea and cake and it really is the next best thing after uchu nippon setagaya.

lol I thought this was the band that did the theme song for Pete and Pete

no but they also covered king crimson