Ippei Matsui & Aki Tsuyuko ‎– Natsu No Zenbu (2025 - CD Edition in gatefold LP sleeve)

Label: All Night Flight ‎– ANF002
Format: CD - LP gatefold sleeve - plus insert
Country: UK
Released: 2025
Genre: Electronic, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Abstract, Experimental

 2025 CD EDITION IN ORIGINAL GATEFOLD LP SLEEVE - (Mint / New - with free DL)

We found that an old Japanese house with 13 rooms was being rented out at a really cheap price, it was about 40 minutes from Nagoya, just around the border between Gifu and Aichi. We decided to move there right away.

There was a railroad track behind the house (the line called Chuo Line), but it was a rural road and the train was a comfortable noise. The sound of train passing through occasionally comes in the album. A river runs nearby, and if we go about five minutes from our house, a dim mountain path and a valley appears. However, this area has been known as a haunted spot for a long time, and it is not a place to enjoy hiking and driving, but there are lonely motels and ruins. 

When we passed through the mountain path, we felt a thick and dismal air. We moved to the old house in Kozoji in spring 2008, and we brought the piano that was in Ippei's family's house and Aki's big electronic organ there. The house was surrounded by fields, and sounds of birds, frog and insects, our own voices, the sounds of the kitchen and so on, all resonated well in the huge house. We were about to get married in the fall. Ippei was unemployed and had time that summer. Aki was happy with the piano she had for the first time, and we naturally started to try recording in this resonating house. At the same time, we came up with this as a gift for our friends at our wedding party. That became our all of summer.

Longgg time in the works second release on the shop’s humble in-house label finally birthed into existence via Japanese couple Ippei Matsui and Aki Tsuyuko with their 27-track strong, homemade private epic ‘Natsu No Zenbu’.  A profound and intensely intimate collection of songs written at home throughout the summer of 2008, spurred-on after a move to an old-styled Japanese house in the countryside,  as Aki explains.. ‘We found that an old Japanese house with 13 rooms was being rented at a really cheap price, around 40 minutes from Nagoya, just around the border between Gifu and Aichi.  We decided to move there right away’.  Enjoying the freedom and secluded atmosphere of their new surroundings, they naturally began recording in their new space, day-by-day becoming more in-sync with the environment and making music to suit the pace of daily life.  The collection is centred around Aki’s minimalistic organ and piano pieces, subtly processed electronics and Ippei’s introspective moments of guitar feedback, heavily immersed within the surroundings of their natural habitat tucked safely away from the fast pace of the city.

There’s a distinct homey atmosphere, laced heavy with nostalgia. A train passes by, insects croaking in the distance and the sound of rain falling outside.  At times it feels as though you could be intruding on their privacy just by listening in, although we’re offered an alternative, simpler view of the world by two musicians creating natural music for themselves.  Aki’s simplistic, dreamlike organ play works in perfect harmony with Ippei’s gently strummed guitar work, conjuring other-worldly atmospheres entrenched in a sense of child-like innocence.  It genuinely feels as if you could have been hearing this music all along, although you can’t be sure with the sounds and languages equally familiar and inviting as they are foreign. 

It’d be wrong to single out any of the tracks individually, each playing a part in building the unique environment.  Comparisons for such singularly beautiful, outsider / DIY releases are near-impossible, yet Nuno Canavarro’s enchanting minimalist classic Plux Quba, Satie's romanic reductionism or the home-grown, everyday sounds within Ernest Hood’s Neighbourhoods would be a good place to start.  A genuine pleasure to be able to put out and finally share this special work from two true artists.  Aki & Ippei explain it more simply, ‘we want our music to sound like everyday life’.   

Natsu No Zenbu (All Of Summer) originally appeared CDr in 2008 and was given to close friends, guests at their wedding, a few stores in Japan and even trickled over to the All Night Flight site way before the shop was a thing.  This gatefold CD edition comes remastered by Miles Whittaker (Demdike Stare) and manufactured by Pallas, including original artwork insert made by Ippei, riso-printed by John Powell-Jones. 

Tracklist

1 Long time no see
2 Travel
3 Stranger's Garden
4 Afternoon Piano
5 Belladonna
6 Yellow Town
7 Tengu's Paradise
8 A Visitor from the Sky
9 Embroidery
10 Diary
11 Yutaka-so
12 A Big Black Moon
13 Dolphins's Job
14 Matsumushi Street
15 Dream Shin-Yamaguchi
16 August
17 Decade of Goldfish
18 Total Solar Eclipse
19 My Mom and Wasps
20 Fuku-san Water
21 Steam
22 Passing Game
23 Fruit and Bottle
24 Pigeons's Job
25 What A World
26 Miracle Noon
27 Grand Toit