Minimal Wave Records

We’re honored to an­noun­ce an ex­quisite doub­le LP re­lease by ob­scure Japanese art­ist Tomo Akikawabaya. As long time ad­mir­ers of Akikawabaya’s 1980s re­leases on his own label Castle Re­cords, we had at­tempted to reach him for many years with­out any luck. Fin­al­ly at some point in 2014, a con­ver­sa­tion was struck and one thing lead to the next. It was through Nao Katafuc­hi that we fin­al­ly made con­tact with the legend him­self, and began speak­ing about the pro­posed re­lease idea. It tur­ned out that the ad­mira­tion was mutu­al, which was sur­pris­ing as we thought Akikawabaya had dis­ap­peared com­plete­ly. After work­ing through the track selec­tion and artwork ideas, we came up with the re­lease plan. We’re very ex­cited to pre­sent this doub­le LP en­tit­led The In­vita­tion of The Dead. The col­lec­tion of songs in­clude the en­tirety of both The Castle (1984) and Anju (1985) re­leases, all newly re­mas­tered. They sound fresh­er and strong­er than ever be­fore, ex­act­ly as the art­ist had in­ten­ded them to sound when he re­cor­ded them 30 years ago. The songs that span this doub­le LP are per­son­al and uni­que; they are dark syn­thpop gems. The art­ist still re­mains a mys­te­ry, as does his re­lationship to the model Rena Anju featured on this and all but one of his album co­v­ers (Kojiki to Onna). The In­vita­tion of The Dead doub­le LP is a li­mited edi­tion of 999 co­p­ies. The first 300 co­p­ies will be pre­ssed on 160 gram black vinyl with white haze for the A/B sides and white vinyl with black haze for the C/D sides, and the re­maind­er will be pre­ssed on 160 gram black vinyl for the A/B sides and white vinyl for the C/D sides. The doub­le LP will be pre­sen­ted in a gatefold sleeve de­sig­ned by Peter Miles featur­ing cover photo by Alao Yokogi. The re­lease will be avail­able in late Sep­temb­er. Ad­dition­al de­tails and pre-order in­for­ma­tion (when avail­able) will be post­ed here.