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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      €10 EUR  or more

     

  • Vinyl Reissue
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Product notes:
    - Edition Of 500
    - 140g Black Vinyl
    - Spined Sleeve 3mm, 4-colored
    - Black Inner Sleeve
    - Sealed

    Includes unlimited streaming of Osaka Bridge via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Rye & Guy 04:53
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Tipsy Cat 02:43
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Duck 01:04
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Oddults 01:46
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Poxy 04:53
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Family Sighs 01:42
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about

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’ 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’ 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’ 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«—described by colleague Jens Lekman as the »the most beautiful melody I’ve ever heard«—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. »Cowtail Calypso«, on the other hand, was born when Wells asked Tori Kudo to sing Roger Miller’s »King Of The Road« over a syncopated, propulsive melody. Kudo’s ambiguous response (»maybe,« which according to Wells usually translated to »forget it«) resulted in a brief, idiosyncratic track that nevertheless exceeded all of Wells’ expectations.

Of the instrumental tracks, »Liquorice Tics« stands out for its rolling rhythms and circular melody, while »Family Sighs« creates a brooding atmosphere which perfectly encapsulates the conflicting feelings many people have for their immediate family. 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. As someone put it so aptly in a Discogs comment a few years back, »this is the album which is able to make aliens understand what humankind is about.« You better turn up the volume so that everyone can hear it everywhere.

linktr.ee/karaoke_kalk

credits

released February 10, 2023

recorded on 23.08.04 by Bunsyo Nishikawa
at Osaka Bridge, Osaka

All music by Bill Wells except:
3 by Bill Wells, Stefan Schneider, Annie Whitehead and Barbara Morgenstern
9 by Bill Wells and Reiko Kudo
10 by Bill Wells, Stefan Schneider and Annie Whitehead
13 by Bill Wells and Tori Kudo

All tracks mixed and produced by Bill Wells.
Mastered by Norman Blake at Spaghetti.

Personnel: Bill Wells - piano / sampler
Tori Kudo - vocals / clarinet / melodica / percussion
Reiko Kudo - vocals
Shiro Kobayashi - trumpet / whistle
Naoki Otani - trumpet
Mako Hasegawa - cornet
Natsumi Shibuya - trumpet / french horn
Naoto Kawate - baritone horn
Takuya Sugimoto - accoustic guitar
Satoru Ono - electric guitar
Koji Shibuya - electric bass
Namio Kudo - drums / laptop.

Special guest:
Nobuki Yamamoto - slide trumpet on track 8

Thanks to:
Thorsten Lütz at Karaoke Kalk,
Stephan and Katrina at Geographic,
Laurence and Harry at Domino, Kazumi Nikaidoh,
Saya Ueno, Takashi Ueno, Takuji Aoyagi,
Narita Munehiro, David Keenan, Andres Lokko,
Guy Blackman, Bal, Billy Jenkins, Momus,
Hiromi Oda, Junko Kai, Kazuki Tomita, Hideaki Kido,
Koji Imuta, Masato Yano, Kenichi Takechi,
Naoko Takechi, Gien, Shinji Shibayama,
Shonen Yoshida, Emi, Shiu, Ryuta Koga, Mr Tanaka,
Kazue Okubo, Haruo, Jiro Fukunishi, Soichiro Date,
Taro Morita, Takahiro Akiba, Hideki Kobayashi,
Kiyofumi Onozaki, Hideki Kaji, Saki Morohashi,
Satomi Ishiwatari, Hidetsugu Ito,
Tsuyoshi Kawatsoe, Shino Okamura,
Bo at Calyx and Paul McGeechan at MasterCD.

Special Thanks to:
Tori and Reiko Kudo, Akinobu Oda and
Norio Fukoada at MAP and Koki Yahata at P-Vine.

Artwork and layout by Jad Fair
Cover photo by MAP

Published by Domino Publishing Co. Ltd

Mastercut Reissue by Mike Grinser at Manmade Mastering, Berlin

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